Reinterpreting Southern Histories - (Jules and Frances Landry Award) by Craig Thompson Friend & Lorri Glover

About the Book

""Interpreting Southern Histories" is a collection of historiographical essays that updates and expands upon the iconic volumes "Writing Southern History" (1967) and "Interpreting Southern History" (1987), both published by Louisiana State University Press. This third volume includes nineteen essays and an introduction co-written by the most prominent historians working in southern history today. Two scholars, typically at different stages in their careers, collaboratively wrote each essay, providing a broad knowledge of the most recent historiography and expansive visions for historiographical contexts. Each essay connects intellectually with the earlier volumes but avoids unnecessary redundancy. Each also attends to ways in which the cultural turn of the 1980s and 1990s introduced the use of language and cultural symbols, including the influence of gender studies, postcolonial studies, and memory studies. The essays also broadly consider the gradual normalization of the South, relying less on conceptualizing the South as a distinct region and more on contextualizing it within national and global historiographies. In such consideration, however, the contributors also note where the historiography continues to insist on a distinctive "South." This book will be essential reading for every scholar and serious student of southern history"--

Book Synopsis

A sweeping historiographical collection, Reinterpreting Southern Histories updates and expands upon the iconic volumes Writing Southern History and Interpreting Southern History, both published by Louisiana State University Press. With nineteen original essays cowritten by some of the most prominent historians working in southern history today, this volume boldly explores the current state, methods, innovations, and prospects of the richly diverse and transforming field of southern history.

Two scholars at different stages of their careers coauthor each essay, working collaboratively to provide broad knowledge of the most recent historiography and an expansive vision for historiographical contexts. This innovative approach provides an intellectual connection with the earlier volumes while reflecting cutting-edge scholarship in the field. Underlying each essay is the cultural turn of the 1980s and 1990s, which introduced the use of language and cultural symbols and the influence of gender studies, postcolonial studies, and memory studies. The essays also rely less on framing the South as a distinct region and more on contextualizing it within national and global conversations.

Reinterpreting Southern Histories, like the two classic volumes that preceded it, serves as both a comprehensive analysis of the current historiography of the South and a reinterpretation of that history, reaching new conclusions for enduring questions and establishing the parameters of future debates.

Review Quotes

Reinterpreting Southern Histories' twenty insightful essays explore how, in recent decades, historians have brought new perspectives to traditional topics in southern history even as they developed new avenues for understanding the South. It provides an invaluable resource for anyone serious about studying the South or anyone interested in understanding the approaches and attitudes of the historians who study it.--Gaines M. Foster, author of "Ghosts of the Confederacy: Defeat, the Lost Cause, and the Emergence of the New South, 1865-1912"

Comprehensive and up-to-date, Reinterpreting Southern Histories is an extraordinarily valuable collection of essays that sets a new standard of excellence in Southern historiography.--Raymond Arsenault, author of "Freedom Riders: 1961 and the Struggle for Racial Justice"

Of the writing of southern history there seems to be no end, and it just keeps getting increasingly analytical and more geographically, topically, and methodologically expansive. Reinterpreting Southern History is an indispensable guide to the last four decades of this fertile field of historical inquiry, and each of the nineteen co-authored chapters, along with the introduction, provide undeniable evidence of the sophistication and importance of the ongoing scholarship.--John B. Boles, author of "A Companion to the American South"

Updating the two earlier major historiographies of the American South, these twenty essays indicate not only the newest but also the classic works on a host of topics. The essays range widely and include both traditional and innovative topics from the sixteenth century to the twenty-first. Essential reading for those studying the American South.--Jane Turner Censer, author of "The Reconstruction of White Southern Womanhood, 1865-1895"

About the Author

Craig Thompson Friend is Alumni Association Distinguished Graduate Professor of History at North Carolina State University and the author or editor of nine books, including Southern Manhood, Death and the American South, and Family Values in the Old South.

Lorri Glover is the John Francis Bannon Endowed Chair in History at Saint Louis University and the author of six books, including The Fate of the Revolution: Virginians Debate the Constitution and Founders as Fathers: The Private Lives and Politics of the American Revolutionaries.