This chapter considers Eudora Welty’s essay, “Must the Novelist Crusade?” and her story “Where Is the Voice Coming From?” together. In the former, Welty claims that writers cannot and should not through their work get involved in political activism, such as the Civil Rights Movement. Yet the latter is a quickly written and published fictional account of the assassination of Medgar Evers told from the first-person perspective of the killer, which has unavoidable political content. The chapter contextualizes Welty’s story with details regarding Evers’s mandated Jackson, Mississippi television appearance to show the immediate, real world sociopolitical engagement of literature. Hence, Welty’s story marks a return of racial politics to southern literature that are no longer avoidable, despite Welty’s own pleas to refrain from political crusading.
{"title":"Eudora Welty and the Problem of Crusading","authors":"Jordan J. Dominy","doi":"10.2307/j.ctvx5w9kf.8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvx5w9kf.8","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter considers Eudora Welty’s essay, “Must the Novelist Crusade?” and her story “Where Is the Voice Coming From?” together. In the former, Welty claims that writers cannot and should not through their work get involved in political activism, such as the Civil Rights Movement. Yet the latter is a quickly written and published fictional account of the assassination of Medgar Evers told from the first-person perspective of the killer, which has unavoidable political content. The chapter contextualizes Welty’s story with details regarding Evers’s mandated Jackson, Mississippi television appearance to show the immediate, real world sociopolitical engagement of literature. Hence, Welty’s story marks a return of racial politics to southern literature that are no longer avoidable, despite Welty’s own pleas to refrain from political crusading.","PeriodicalId":436090,"journal":{"name":"Southern Literature, Cold War Culture, and the Making of Modern America","volume":"29 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132502842","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This chapter examines Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men and Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man in the context of their winning of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, respectively. While considering the authors’ resistance to reading overt political commentary in their work, favoring a moral reading instead, the chapter argues that their insistence dovetails with the purpose of such large, national literary prizes: to reward works that best demonstrate the values important to the nation. Therefore, literary prizes such as the Pulitzer and National Book Award, as well as other cultural prizes (such as the Grammys, Academy Awards, Tonys, and Emmys) reveal themselves in the context of the Cold War to be awards that reinforce and reward correct ideological perspectives in the guise of good, democratic art.
{"title":"American Canons, Southern Fiction, and the Institution of Literary Prizes","authors":"Jordan J. Dominy","doi":"10.2307/j.ctvx5w9kf.7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvx5w9kf.7","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter examines Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men and Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man in the context of their winning of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, respectively. While considering the authors’ resistance to reading overt political commentary in their work, favoring a moral reading instead, the chapter argues that their insistence dovetails with the purpose of such large, national literary prizes: to reward works that best demonstrate the values important to the nation. Therefore, literary prizes such as the Pulitzer and National Book Award, as well as other cultural prizes (such as the Grammys, Academy Awards, Tonys, and Emmys) reveal themselves in the context of the Cold War to be awards that reinforce and reward correct ideological perspectives in the guise of good, democratic art.","PeriodicalId":436090,"journal":{"name":"Southern Literature, Cold War Culture, and the Making of Modern America","volume":"38 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129945296","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"EPILOGUE","authors":"","doi":"10.2307/j.ctvx5w9kf.10","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvx5w9kf.10","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":436090,"journal":{"name":"Southern Literature, Cold War Culture, and the Making of Modern America","volume":"36 8","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133657249","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-01-27DOI: 10.14325/mississippi/9781496826404.003.0006
Jordan J. Dominy
This chapter addresses recent portrayals of the US South in popular texts of the 2010s. Through the reality television program Duck Dynasty and J.D. Vance’s memoir, Hillbilly Elegy (2017), it demonstrates how Cold War intellectuals’ and authors’ influence on discourse around the term “southern” has thoroughly permeated the imagination and political sentiments of Americans. The analysis and close reading of Duck Dynasty shows how popular culture perpetuates ideas associated with southern exceptionalism into the twenty-first-century. In the fractured political climate since the election of President Barack Obama in 2008, these portrayals of southern dialect, imagery, and values become not only a shibboleth for American, democratic values of liberty, tradition, and honor, but also are coded language for white nationalism and resistance to progressive social values.
{"title":"White Working-Class Identity and US Nationalism in Twenty-First-Century Popular Texts","authors":"Jordan J. Dominy","doi":"10.14325/mississippi/9781496826404.003.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14325/mississippi/9781496826404.003.0006","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter addresses recent portrayals of the US South in popular texts of the 2010s. Through the reality television program Duck Dynasty and J.D. Vance’s memoir, Hillbilly Elegy (2017), it demonstrates how Cold War intellectuals’ and authors’ influence on discourse around the term “southern” has thoroughly permeated the imagination and political sentiments of Americans. The analysis and close reading of Duck Dynasty shows how popular culture perpetuates ideas associated with southern exceptionalism into the twenty-first-century. In the fractured political climate since the election of President Barack Obama in 2008, these portrayals of southern dialect, imagery, and values become not only a shibboleth for American, democratic values of liberty, tradition, and honor, but also are coded language for white nationalism and resistance to progressive social values.","PeriodicalId":436090,"journal":{"name":"Southern Literature, Cold War Culture, and the Making of Modern America","volume":"359 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"122815307","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Southern Studies as Area Studies:","authors":"","doi":"10.2307/j.ctvx5w9kf.6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvx5w9kf.6","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":436090,"journal":{"name":"Southern Literature, Cold War Culture, and the Making of Modern America","volume":"45-46 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132046870","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Back Matter","authors":"","doi":"10.2307/j.ctvx5w9kf.13","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvx5w9kf.13","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":436090,"journal":{"name":"Southern Literature, Cold War Culture, and the Making of Modern America","volume":"73 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130210482","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"ACKNOWLEDGMENTS","authors":"","doi":"10.2307/j.ctvx5w9kf.3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvx5w9kf.3","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":436090,"journal":{"name":"Southern Literature, Cold War Culture, and the Making of Modern America","volume":"11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"117041185","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2020-01-27DOI: 10.14325/mississippi/9781496826404.003.0001
Jordan J. Dominy
This chapter considers the editorial careers of Lillian Smith and John Crowe Ransom. Lillian Smith co-edited the little magazine South Today from 1936 to 1945 out of Clayton, Georgia, while John Crowe Ransom was the long-time editor of the Kenyon Review, a journal important in the proliferation of the New Criticism. This chapter uses these two figures, their periodicals, and their editorial decisions to show two competing criteria for a literary canon at the moment of World War II. Smith, whose magazine published many of her own essays on southern culture, was an anti-segregationist, and values literary works that established a progressive view on race relations. Smith’s ideal literary canon was a socially and politically engaged one. On the other hand, the optics of being apolitical by emphasizing aesthetics were the guiding principles for Ransom in his leadership of Kenyon Review, evidenced by the kinds of criticism and reviews published.
{"title":"Reviewing the South: Competing Canons in South Today and the Kenyon Review","authors":"Jordan J. Dominy","doi":"10.14325/mississippi/9781496826404.003.0001","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.14325/mississippi/9781496826404.003.0001","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter considers the editorial careers of Lillian Smith and John Crowe Ransom. Lillian Smith co-edited the little magazine South Today from 1936 to 1945 out of Clayton, Georgia, while John Crowe Ransom was the long-time editor of the Kenyon Review, a journal important in the proliferation of the New Criticism. This chapter uses these two figures, their periodicals, and their editorial decisions to show two competing criteria for a literary canon at the moment of World War II. Smith, whose magazine published many of her own essays on southern culture, was an anti-segregationist, and values literary works that established a progressive view on race relations. Smith’s ideal literary canon was a socially and politically engaged one. On the other hand, the optics of being apolitical by emphasizing aesthetics were the guiding principles for Ransom in his leadership of Kenyon Review, evidenced by the kinds of criticism and reviews published.","PeriodicalId":436090,"journal":{"name":"Southern Literature, Cold War Culture, and the Making of Modern America","volume":"14 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128567773","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Reviewing the South:","authors":"","doi":"10.2307/j.ctvx5w9kf.5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvx5w9kf.5","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":436090,"journal":{"name":"Southern Literature, Cold War Culture, and the Making of Modern America","volume":"29 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128426120","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This chapter argues Walker Percy’s Love in the Ruins (1971) and Alice Walker’s Meridian (1976) portray a post-South in which “southern” is not defined by geography but by sensibilities appropriated by the Cold War thinkers and the culture industry. Walker’s Meridian reveals the interconnectedness between characters’ regional backgrounds, racial identities, and roles as activists within Civil Rights movement. These connections are mediated by television, as it broadcasted for the entire US the struggles for equality that occurred mainly in the US South. Love in the Ruins is a satire about suburban American and its politics in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement, as well as a plea for political moderation. Percy’s novel also forecasts the further fracturing of America through the culture wars into red states and blue states. Walker’s and Percy’s visions of the US South show communities measured by how their values measure up against Cold War visions of American-style democracy.
{"title":"Suburbs, Civil Rights, and Southern Identities","authors":"Jordan J. Dominy","doi":"10.2307/j.ctvx5w9kf.9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvx5w9kf.9","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter argues Walker Percy’s Love in the Ruins (1971) and Alice Walker’s Meridian (1976) portray a post-South in which “southern” is not defined by geography but by sensibilities appropriated by the Cold War thinkers and the culture industry. Walker’s Meridian reveals the interconnectedness between characters’ regional backgrounds, racial identities, and roles as activists within Civil Rights movement. These connections are mediated by television, as it broadcasted for the entire US the struggles for equality that occurred mainly in the US South. Love in the Ruins is a satire about suburban American and its politics in the wake of the Civil Rights Movement, as well as a plea for political moderation. Percy’s novel also forecasts the further fracturing of America through the culture wars into red states and blue states. Walker’s and Percy’s visions of the US South show communities measured by how their values measure up against Cold War visions of American-style democracy.","PeriodicalId":436090,"journal":{"name":"Southern Literature, Cold War Culture, and the Making of Modern America","volume":"16 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-01-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124386565","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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