Red States - (New Southern Studies) by Gina Caison (Paperback)

About the Book

"This book examines how the recurrent use of Native American history in southern cultural and literary texts produces ideas of "feeling Southern" that have consequences for how present-day conservative political discourses resonate across the United States. Assembling a newly constituted archive that includes performances, pre-Civil War literatures, and contemporary novels, Caison argues that notions of Native American identity in the U.S. South can be understood by tracing how audiences in the region came to imagine indigeneity through texts ranging from the nineteenth-century Cherokee Phoenix to the Mardi Gras Indian narratives of Treme. Policy issues such as Indian Removal, biracial segregation, land claim, and federal termination frequently correlate to the audience consumption of such texts, and therefore, the reception histories of this archive can be tied to shifts in the political claims of--and political possibilities for--Native people of the U.S. South. This continual appeal to the political issues of Indian Country ultimately generates what we see as persistent discourses about southern exceptionality and counter-nationalism"--Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

Red States uses a regional focus in order to examine the tenets of white southern nativism and Indigenous resistance to colonialism in the U.S. South. Gina Caison argues that popular misconceptions of Native American identity in the U.S. South can be understood by tracing how non-Native audiences in the region came to imagine indigeneity through the presentation of specious histories presented in regional literary texts, and she examines how Indigenous people work against these narratives to maintain sovereign land claims in their home spaces through their own literary and cultural productions. As Caison demonstrates, these conversations in the U.S. South have consequences for how present-day conservative political discourses resonate across the United States.

Assembling a newly constituted archive that includes regional theatrical and musical performances, pre-Civil War literatures, and contemporary novels, Caison illuminates the U.S. South's continued investment in settler colonialism and the continued Indigenous resistance to this paradigm. Ultimately, she concludes that the region is indeed made up of red states, but perhaps not in the way readers initially imagine.

Review Quotes

Red States is a great book. Powerfully envisioned and just as powerfully realized, Gina Caison's work stands at the vanguard of a transformative new native southern studies.--Eric Gary Anderson "coeditor of Undead Souths"

About the Author

GINA CAISON is an assistant professor of English at Georgia State University. She is also the coeditor, with Lisa Hinrichsen and Stephanie Rountree, of Small-Screen Souths: Region, Identity, and the Cultural Politics of Television.