JOURNAL OF SOUTHERN HISTORY最新文献

{"title":"Teaching White Supremacy: America's Democratic Ordeal and the Forging of Our National Identity by Donald Yacovone (review)","authors":"Harry L. Watson","doi":"10.1353/soh.2024.a925457","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/soh.2024.a925457","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Teaching White Supremacy: America’s Democratic Ordeal and the Forging of Our National Identity</em> by Donald Yacovone <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Harry L. Watson </li> </ul> <em>Teaching White Supremacy: America’s Democratic Ordeal and the Forging of Our National Identity</em>. By Donald Yacovone. (New York: Pantheon Books, 2022. Pp. xxiii, 431. Paper, $20.00, ISBN 978-0-593-46716-9; cloth, $32.50, ISBN 978-0-593-31663-4.) <p>In an era of resurgent white nationalism and intense political pressure on schools, the appearance of Donald Yacovone’s <em>Teaching White Supremacy: America’s Democratic Ordeal and the Forging of Our National Identity</em> is <strong>[End Page 420]</strong> especially welcome. Mixing educational, intellectual, and cultural history, Yacovone reviews the changing messages in America’s history textbooks to trace “the origins and development of the idea of white supremacy, how it has shaped our understanding of democratic society, and how generation after generation of Americans have learned to incorporate that vision into their very identity” (p. xiv). He demonstrates convincingly that racist and nationalist pressures on history textbooks are nothing new, for schools have long taught collective identities and group cohesion. In the United States, assumptions of white superiority over time have been central to both, ever since teaching American history began in the early republic.</p> <p>More profoundly, Yacovone also insists that racist texts have done more than inculcate prejudice and national identity. By encouraging white Americans to replace class hierarchy with racial solidarity, he argues, white supremacy has created an imaginary mudsill from people of color that supports democracy for whites alone. Yacovone thus joins authors as disparate as John C. Calhoun, James Henry Hammond, William Gilmore Simms, Edmund S. Morgan, and Nikole Hannah Jones, who suggest, in one way or another and with wildly differing intentions, that what should be best about America might only exist because of its worst, because, as he puts it, “American democracy depended on Black inequality to sustain white equality” (p. xv). Far more than his documentation of textbook racism, this contention makes Yacovone’s work both provocative and problematic.</p> <p><em>Teaching White Supremacy</em> begins with a brief overview of American racism, followed by an exposition of the life and thought of John H. Van Evrie, a now-obscure figure whom Yacovone dubs “the father of white supremacy” (p. 7). Yacovone then introduces the earliest American history textbooks and the proslavery campaign to soften their portraits of the South. For the most part, northern authors complied, revealing their deep longing for national unity (and national sales). They used the same tricks to create this unity as northern citize","PeriodicalId":45484,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF SOUTHERN HISTORY","volume":"24 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140634211","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"New Orleans and the Creation of Transatlantic Opera, 1819–1859 by Charlotte Bentley (review)","authors":"Christopher Lynch","doi":"10.1353/soh.2024.a925461","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/soh.2024.a925461","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>New Orleans and the Creation of Transatlantic Opera, 1819–1859</em> by Charlotte Bentley <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Christopher Lynch </li> </ul> <em>New Orleans and the Creation of Transatlantic Opera, 1819–1859</em>. By Charlotte Bentley. Opera Lab: Explorations in History, Technology, and Performance. (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2022. Pp. [viii], 256. $55.00, ISBN 978-0-226-82308-9.) <p>The exponential growth that accompanied the transformation of New Orleans from a French outpost to a major U.S. center of commerce and culture in the nineteenth century was punctuated by disease outbreaks, social upheavals, war, economic crises, and challenges to Francophone hegemony. Focusing on this period of opportunity and precarity, Charlotte Bentley’s <em>New Orleans and the Creation of Transatlantic Opera, 1819–1859</em> probes residents’ and visitors’ understandings of themselves and their constructions of the world by examining their encounters with European opera.</p> <p>Chapter 1 analyzes the management of the Théâtre d’Orléans, uncovering a fascinating bilateral relationship between New Orleans and Paris. In some respects, the Théâtre d’Orléans resembled France’s provincial theaters, which similarly drew repertoire and performers from the French capital. Bentley delves into the managers’ journeys to Paris to consult with theatrical agents and operatic <strong>[End Page 426]</strong> trendsetters on production techniques and performer recruitment. But without the government subsidies enjoyed by French theaters, the Théâtre d’Orléans often ran at a loss, staying open because of its role in generating business for the adjoining ballroom, gambling house, and café. In chapter 2, Bentley places the New Orleans Francophone community’s allegiance to French culture in relief against its Anglophone counterpart. The French theater replicated Parisian opera productions more closely than did its primary competitor, the American Theatre, which favored substantial changes. As Francophone and Anglophone critics increasingly abandoned judging the execution of a performance in favor of assessing operas as works of art, Anglophone writers decentered France, and Francophone writers articulated Francocentric views.</p> <p>In the third chapter, Bentley’s refreshing conception of the audience includes not only the racially diverse ticket-buyers but also the many enslaved and free people who “heard and caught glimpses of productions from spaces other than the auditorium, as they worked in the corridors, foyers, loges, and on the doors during performances and rehearsal periods” (p. 83). Bentley also contrasts the often small opera audience with the much larger opera “public,” which emerged from discussions of opera that exceeded the theater’s walls (p. 80). In 1843, for example, the local magazine ","PeriodicalId":45484,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF SOUTHERN HISTORY","volume":"9 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140634334","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Wild Woman of Cincinnati: Gender and Politics on the Eve of the Civil War by Michael D. Pierson (review)","authors":"Andrew Kettler","doi":"10.1353/soh.2024.a925465","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/soh.2024.a925465","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>The Wild Woman of Cincinnati: Gender and Politics on the Eve of the Civil War</em> by Michael D. Pierson <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Andrew Kettler </li> </ul> <em>The Wild Woman of Cincinnati: Gender and Politics on the Eve of the Civil War</em>. By Michael D. Pierson. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2023. Pp. xii, 178. $40.00, ISBN 978-0-8071-7872-0.) <p><em>The Wild Woman of Cincinnati: Gender and Politics on the Eve of the Civil War</em> is a fascinating little book that will find its way into numerous classrooms due to its highly accessible use of microhistory to understand many significant cultural and political trends in the nineteenth-century United States. The work specifically focuses on a history of gender through the telling of a stage performance in Cincinnati in 1856. Thinking about con men and spectacles in the Queen City through the lens of reception, racism, and entertainment, Michael D. Pierson provides an engaging history with numerous tentacular connections to major narratives concerning the North and the South in the late antebellum era.</p> <p>Through focusing on a single event and connecting outward to other major historical narratives related to gender, partisanship, and ethnicity, <em>The Wild Woman of Cincinnati</em> explores history and historiography in enlightening manners. The central microhistory revolves around a public spectacle concerning the promoter J. W. C. Northcott and his production of a stage show concerning a supposedly “feral” woman from the Texas borderlands (p. 3). Linking narratives of race, gender, supposed Indigenous profligacy, and the American West that were prominent in the political cultures of the East, Pierson expresses how white male populations fantasized about their control over female bodies of many different races through a connective desire to hold capitalist markets in the North, land in the West, and enslaved people throughout the South.</p> <p>Chapter 1 looks explicitly at the press concerning the Wild Woman show and the principal components and promoters of the show, including Northcott, the attendant Ann Walters, and the Wild Woman herself. Debating the truthfulness of the story, which itself is internally contradictory and most likely false in most of its aspects, the chapter exposes how con men came to be able to tell such fantastical false stories to their audiences in the antebellum era. Through comparisons to P. T. Barnum’s Joice Heth, daredevil Sam Patch, and wild women stories from earlier decades, Pierson shows how audiences acknowledged possible false narratives as part of entertainment due to traditions of hoaxes that included many tropes, which became commonly understood by audiences in both uncanny and clearly accepted ways.</p> <p>The second chapter looks at the decline of the Wild Woman show due to a","PeriodicalId":45484,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF SOUTHERN HISTORY","volume":"23 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140637343","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Capital's Terrorists: Klansmen, Lawmen, and Employers in the Long Nineteenth Century by Chad E. Pearson (review)","authors":"Dennis Patrick Halpin","doi":"10.1353/soh.2024.a925478","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/soh.2024.a925478","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Capital’s Terrorists: Klansmen, Lawmen, and Employers in the Long Nineteenth Century</em> by Chad E. Pearson <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Dennis Patrick Halpin </li> </ul> <em>Capital’s Terrorists: Klansmen, Lawmen, and Employers in the Long Nineteenth Century</em>. By Chad E. Pearson. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2022. Pp. x, 314. Paper, $34.95, ISBN 978-1-4696-7173-4; cloth, $99.00, ISBN 978-1-4696-7172-7.) <p>In <em>Capital’s Terrorists: Klansmen, Lawmen, and Employers in the Long Nineteenth Century</em>, historian Chad E. Pearson makes an important contribution to labor history, the history of capitalism, and ultimately the history of the long Reconstruction and Progressive eras. Over six chapters, Pearson brings <strong>[End Page 448]</strong> readers into the clandestine gatherings held by business owners, Law and Order Leagues, cattlemen’s associations, Citizens’ Alliances, and the Ku Klux Klan. These meetings happened throughout the United States, and Pearson hops around locations. In doing so, he spotlights events in smaller, lesser-explored cities, like Sedalia, Missouri, and profiles the actions and thoughts of lesser-known anti-union activists. Pearson’s cast is ostensibly a motley crew. They worked in different industries, at times held differing political views, and lived in different regions of the United States. Yet they were bound by the privileges stemming from their whiteness, class, and commitment to labor repression. The picture that emerges from this patchwork of smaller places and lesser-known figures is nothing short of a concerted campaign to repress efforts at working-class organization by any and all means.</p> <p>For Pearson, the story of capital’s terrorists was not easy to uncover. Historians have long been aware of the limitations of the archives when examining the histories of the marginalized. Pearson discovered that the archives posed similar problems in recovering the thoughts of the elite men at the center of his story. It is not that these men were reticent—quite the contrary. As Pearson points out, these men created public narratives, but they were much more circumspect in these settings, usually folding their anti-union philosophies into a discourse of “upholding ‘law and order’” (p. 20). They left their most incendiary thoughts and ideas for the private planning sessions where they could let down their guard. Their secrecy was mostly effective. However, it was not airtight. A host of actors, including journalists, spies, and defectors, forced these gatherings into the archives when they publicized these secret proceedings.</p> <p>Pearson’s examination of these men and their efforts has led him to a pointed conclusion: these men were terrorists. This categorization is central to Pearson’s argument. Readers’ individual reaction to the a","PeriodicalId":45484,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF SOUTHERN HISTORY","volume":"122 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140637408","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Conservative Radicals and Radical Conservatives in the Civil War Era and Today","authors":"Joseph P. Reidy","doi":"10.1353/soh.2024.a925436","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/soh.2024.a925436","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> Conservative Radicals and Radical Conservatives in the Civil War Era and Today <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Joseph P. Reidy (bio) </li> </ul> <p>C<small>urrent events reveal the pervasiveness of conservative</small> influence in virtually every facet of life, from religion and popular culture through public policy debates on topics ranging from global warming to school library books. If today’s conservatives may appear more comfortable with the ideas and tactics of Oath Keepers than of William F. Buckley Jr., it should come as no surprise because conservatism has never been monolithic or static. Yet, for the past six decades, intellectual and political conservatives have presented themselves as the custodians of the received wisdom, as well as the political, economic, and social order, bequeathed from prior generations. Most profess Christianity and champion traditional, biblically derived values—particularly those pertaining to the nuclear family—personal freedom coupled with individual responsibility, and private property. Although conservatives of the past generally boasted privileged, if not downright wealthy, backgrounds, in recent years various pursuers of the American Dream—including aspirants to the professional and entrepreneurial middle class, the economically, socially, or culturally marginalized members of the working class, and recent immigrants—have assumed the label of conservative. The resulting mixture features class, ethnic, racial, and religious diversity.</p> <p>Today’s conservatives also share the belief that the modern world’s most serious ills are the result of progressive initiatives that, apart from their programmatic flaws, display a moral and cultural relativism that flouts the achievements of Western civilization and the unique place that the United States occupies in the history of nations. By advocating for personal rights in the realm of identity politics—same-sex marriage and transgender rights, for instance—liberals and their progressive allies, conservatives charge, threaten fundamental Christian values if not the <strong>[End Page 215]</strong> future of humanity itself. Similarly, conservatives argue, liberals’ recent campaigns against the military, the police, and Second Amendment rights, coupled with their leniency toward crime, undermine social order. And, in conservatives’ view, the restrictions that the regulatory, administrative state has imposed on private property imperil the freedoms of individual citizens. Most of all, conservatives fault social welfare programs—the legacy of the New Deal and the Great Society—for speeding the nation toward bankruptcy while rewarding the undeserving. If left unchecked, they fear, such initiatives will culminate in redistributionist practices designed to atone for social injustice perpetrated in the past, the prime exhibit of which is reparations","PeriodicalId":45484,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF SOUTHERN HISTORY","volume":"12 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140637334","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Southern History in Periodicals, 2023: A Selected Bibliography","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/soh.2024.a925439","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/soh.2024.a925439","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> Southern History in Periodicals, 2023: <span>A Selected Bibliography</span> <!-- /html_title --></li> </ul> <p>T<small>his classified bibliography includes most scholarly articles</small> in the field of southern history published in periodicals in 2023, except for descriptive or genealogical writings of primary interest to a restricted group of readers. If an article was published in a year other than 2023, the appropriate year is marked with a bracketed notation. Entries under each heading are arranged alphabetically by author.</p> <h2>AFRICAN AMERICAN</h2> A<small>dair</small>, G<small>eorge</small>. The Bryce Hospital Coal Mine Lawsuits: African Americans’ Pursuit of Justice in a Time of Triumphant White Supremacy. <em>Ala. Rev.</em>, v. 76, July, 217–50. A<small>dams</small>, J<small>ohn</small> A., J<small>r</small>., and B<small>ill</small> P<small>age</small>. John Nathaniel Johnson: The Great Political Agitator, Educator, Journalist, Attorney, and Doctor. <em>East Tex. Hist. Jour.</em>, v. 61, Spring, 7–47. A<small>lridge</small>, D<small>errick</small> P., A<small>dah</small> W<small>ard</small> R<small>andolph</small>, and A<small>lexis</small> M. J<small>ohnson</small>. African American Historians of Education and the Griot’s Craft: A Historiography. <em>Hist. Educ. Quar.</em>, v. 63, Feb., 3–31. A<small>nderson</small>-D<small>avis</small>, S<small>tuart</small>. Frederick Douglass in the British Isles (1845–1847): A Reassessment of Approach, Achievement, and Legacy. <em>New North Star</em>, v. 5, pp. 1–24. B<small>aker</small>, B<small>enjamin</small>. “There’s a Day Coming”: The Origin, Reception, and Conception of the Catastrophic Apocalypse among Black Captives. <em>Jour. Af. Religions</em>, v. 11, no. 2, pp. 153–97. B<small>ardes</small>, J<small>ohn</small> K., and K. S<small>tephen</small> P<small>rince</small>. “There Is No God in Heaven”: Black Religion, Resistance, and the Police Power in Jim Crow New Orleans. <em>Jour. Af. Am. Hist.</em>, v. 108, Spring, 220–43. B<small>arnes</small>, B<small>ryant</small> K. “Are Not Our Interests the Same?”: Black Protest, the Lost Cause, and Coalition Building in Readjuster Virginia. <em>Genealogy</em>, v. 7, no. 1, online only. B<small>arton</small>, C<small>hristopher</small> P., E<small>rica</small> J<small>ohnson</small>-E<small>dwards</small>, and K<small>iley</small> M<small>olinari</small>. Broadening Our Horizons: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Student Collaboration at Francis Marion University. <em>Hist. Archaeology</em>, v. 57, Sept., 873–84. B<small>aumgartner</small>, A<small>lice</small> L. Burrill Daniel’s Claim: A Freedom Seeker in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands, 1865–1870. <em>Southwestern Hist. Quar.</em>, v. 127, July, 80–106. B<small>ay</small>, M<small>ia</small>. The Revolution in Black and White. <em>Jour. Early Rep.</em>, v. 43, Winter, 619–29. ","PeriodicalId":45484,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF SOUTHERN HISTORY","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140637441","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"American Inheritance: Liberty and Slavery in the Birth of a Nation, 1765–1795 by Edward J. Larson (review)","authors":"Matthew R. Hale","doi":"10.1353/soh.2024.a925449","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/soh.2024.a925449","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>American Inheritance: Liberty and Slavery in the Birth of a Nation, 1765–1795</em> by Edward J. Larson <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Matthew R. Hale </li> </ul> <em>American Inheritance: Liberty and Slavery in the Birth of a Nation, 1765–1795</em>. By Edward J. Larson. (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 2023. Pp. x, 358. Paper, $17.99, ISBN 978-1-324-07521-9; cloth, $32.50, ISBN 978-0-393-88220-9.) <p>As Edward J. Larson notes in the preface to his new book, <em>American Inheritance: Liberty and Slavery in the Birth of a Nation, 1765–1795</em>, “The role of liberty and slavery in the American Revolution is a partisan minefield” (p. vii). While “some on the right,” he states, “dismiss the role of slavery in the founding of the republic,” “some on the left see the defense of state-sanctioned slavery as a cause of the Revolution and an effect of the Constitution” (p. vii). Despite this opening reference to politics, Larson does not mention, although he is clearly aware of, the more intellectually rigorous, intrapartisan debate on the left concerning related issues. That omission is suggestive, as Larson fully enters neither the Left-Right “minefield” nor the Left’s intrapartisan dispute. Rather, he attempts to traverse lightly both conflicts for the sake of providing a popular audience with a readable overview of the career of liberty and slavery in late-eighteenth-century American society.</p> <p>In many ways, that attempt is successful. In less than 270 pages of main text, Larson ingeniously surveys virtually every well-known phenomenon dealing with slavery and liberty between 1765 and 1795. Even a partial list of the topics discussed in the first 120 pages—John Locke; the relationship between chattel slavery and the rhetoric of political slavery; Crispus Attucks, John Adams, and the Boston Massacre; the <em>Somerset</em> case; Black and white antislavery activism; the Declaration of Independence; George Washington’s stance on African Americans in the military; Lord Dunmore’s Proclamation; Phillis Wheatley; Rhode Island’s recruitment of Black soldiers; and various state constitutions—reveals the scope of authorial ambition. The book’s big idea—that “the American Revolution and the new American nation became less about liberty or slavery than about liberty and slavery”—is less a well-developed original thesis than an organizing theme (p. 15). Even so, Larson, a Pulitzer Prize winner and gifted storyteller, offers insightful commentary at every turn and deftly glides from one topic to another.</p> <p>The adroit narration of so many developments could allow this text to work well in undergraduate surveys or American Revolution classes. Students sometimes benefit from wrestling with a book that is less than fully invested in carving out a clear historiographical position because it affords them the","PeriodicalId":45484,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF SOUTHERN HISTORY","volume":"19 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140637041","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Hillsville Remembered: Public Memory, Historical Silence, and Appalachia's Most Notorious Shoot-Out by Travis A. Rountree (review)","authors":"Ryan D. Chaney","doi":"10.1353/soh.2024.a925480","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/soh.2024.a925480","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Hillsville Remembered: Public Memory, Historical Silence, and Appalachia’s Most Notorious Shoot-Out</em> by Travis A. Rountree <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Ryan D. Chaney </li> </ul> <em>Hillsville Remembered: Public Memory, Historical Silence, and Appalachia’s Most Notorious Shoot-Out</em>. By Travis A. Rountree. (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2023. Pp. [viii], 174. $35.00, ISBN 978-0-8131-9722-7.) <p>Though not introduced in this way, <em>Hillsville Remembered: Public Memory, Historical Silence, and Appalachia’s Most Notorious Shoot-Out</em> is, unfortunately, well suited to grappling with our present, repetitious American reality of mass gun violence. Examining representations of a 1912 courthouse shooting that left five people dead in a small Virginia mountain town, Travis A. Rountree thoroughly and thoughtfully clocks the violent event’s local, regional, and national reverberations, the multiple scales on which all collective traumas, then and today, resonate. One of the text’s strengths lies in asking us to consider connections and dissonances between how a violently traumatic event might be experienced proximally, shockingly, or even intimately, and how representations of the event are abstracted in various degrees of spatial and temporal remove. In that effort, <em>rhetorical remembering</em>, defined as “how individuals create public or private artifacts or memories that construct meaning about a public event,” is Rountree’s lens onto newspaper accounts and balladry of the time, museum displays and narratives, and a set of recently conceived and performed dramatic interpretations of the tragedy (p. 9). <strong>[End Page 451]</strong></p> <p>Reaching a wide American audience, the contemporary news media renderings, in particular, reflect a national-cultural construction, and thus a remembering, of the shoot-out and its succeeding events. The problem with national-cultural imaginings of Appalachia and things that happen there, as Rountree notes throughout, is that they depend, too often, “on speculation and specter instead of reality” (p. 145). Another salient value of <em>Hillsville Remembered</em> is thus its contribution to the critiques of literary, pop-cultural, and even scholarly representations of Appalachia animated by stereotypes of “hillbilly” lawlessness or nostalgia for the noble but naive backwoodsman, two generically familiar projections of an uncivilized Other onto Appalachian peoples and places. The way newspapers swarmed to document but mostly sensationalize the Hillsville tragedy emblematizes such projections, inflected with anxieties and desires of America’s waning Progressive era. These tropes were signified, for instance, by cartoonish representations of Floyd Allen, the man whose trial and conviction sparked the violence, and his familial accomplices as b","PeriodicalId":45484,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF SOUTHERN HISTORY","volume":"19 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140637344","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Rethinking American Disasters ed. by Cynthia A. Kierner, Matthew Mulcahy and Liz Skilton (review)","authors":"Robin L. Roe","doi":"10.1353/soh.2024.a925451","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/soh.2024.a925451","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Rethinking American Disasters</em> ed. by Cynthia A. Kierner, Matthew Mulcahy and Liz Skilton <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Robin L. Roe </li> </ul> <em>Rethinking American Disasters</em>. Edited by Cynthia A. Kierner, Matthew Mulcahy, and Liz Skilton. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2023. Pp. [viii], 247. Paper, $34.95, ISBN 978-0-8071-7993-2.) <p>Since the early 2000s, major disasters have had serious consequences for a growing number of Americans, leading to both a growing public awareness and contentious debates over response and interpretation. Scholarly work on historical disasters, almost nonexistent in 2000, has also expanded rapidly, starting with the interdisciplinary collection of essays <em>American Disasters</em> (New York, 2001), edited by Steven Biel. Now a new collection of interdisciplinary essays, <em>Rethinking American Disasters</em>, edited by Cynthia A. Kierner, Matthew Mulcahy, and Liz Skilton, reexamines the key questions that drive American disaster studies.</p> <p>The editors clearly introduce the essential scholarly debates about historical disasters, including the most fundamental question: What is a disaster? The answer is quite complex, given the breadth of events that can be identified as <strong>[End Page 412]</strong> disasters, but at its most simplified, “A ‘disaster’ can be any incident that negatively impacts a group of individuals” (p. 3). Human loss of some sort, in other words, creates disaster out of incident. These essays draw a small sample from that wide scope, ranging from the geological, to floods and hurricanes, to biological epidemics and cancer rates. Contributors use cultural, political, and environmental lenses for their analysis, though these often overlap. Temporally, contributions range from the early British North American colonies to an analysis of the recent collision of diabetes and SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19).</p> <p>Matthew Mulcahy, Benjamin L. Carp, and Jonathan Todd Hancock each examine early public perceptions of disasters, including how authorities tried to control narratives about such events, covering days of prayer and fasting in colonial New England, conspiracy theories during the American Revolution, and even a volcano hoax during the already disastrous 1810s. But by the 1810s, Americans were slowly turning from providentialism to science, even if flawed, to understand geological disasters. Scott Gabriel Knowles and Ashley Rogers, Richard M. Mizelle Jr., and Sarah E. Naramore focus on longer histories of medical disasters: public response to yellow fever between 1793 and 1820; the tragic interplay of diabetes, COVID-19, race, and class; and the continuity of racial violence, from enslaved African Americans on the German Coast of Louisiana to their descendants, who experience extraordinarily high cancer rates tied to p","PeriodicalId":45484,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF SOUTHERN HISTORY","volume":"40 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140637345","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Reimagining the Republic: Race, Citizenship, and Nation in the Literary Work of Albion W. Tourgée ed. by Sandra M. Gustafson and Robert S. Levine (review)","authors":"Amanda K. Frisken","doi":"10.1353/soh.2024.a925477","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/soh.2024.a925477","url":null,"abstract":"<span><span>In lieu of</span> an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:</span>\u0000<p> <span>Reviewed by:</span> <ul> <li><!-- html_title --> <em>Reimagining the Republic: Race, Citizenship, and Nation in the Literary Work of Albion W. Tourgée</em> ed. by Sandra M. Gustafson and Robert S. Levine <!-- /html_title --></li> <li> Amanda K. Frisken </li> </ul> <em>Reimagining the Republic: Race, Citizenship, and Nation in the Literary Work of Albion W. Tourgée</em>. Edited by Sandra M. Gustafson and Robert S. Levine. Foreword by Carolyn L. Karcher. Reconstructing America. (New York: Fordham University Press, 2023. Pp. xviii, 280. Paper, $35.00, ISBN 978-1-5315-0137-2; cloth, $125.00, ISBN 978-1-5315-0136-5.) <p>Albion W. Tourgée, best remembered as lead counsel for the plaintiff in the <em>Plessy v. Ferguson</em> (1896) case, was also a celebrated novelist in the decades after the Civil War. <em>Reimagining the Republic: Race, Citizenship, and Nation in the Literary Work of Albion W. Tourgée</em> restores its subject’s advocacy for Reconstruction-era advances in race relations and human rights as a novelist, editor, and literary critic. Grouped thematically in three sections, this collection’s essays illuminate Tourgée’s literary quest for racial justice.</p> <p>The first section considers Tourgée’s approach to racial representation. Robert S. Levine argues that Tourgée channeled gothic tropes in his first novel, <em>Toinette</em> (1874), to suggest slavery’s lingering impact on postemancipation American life. While, as John Ernest contends, unacknowledged white privilege in <em>A Fool’s Errand</em> (1879) may limit the novel’s relevance today, Nancy Bentley’s essay argues that Tourgée also “uncovered a dissonance between white” legal conceptions of family and the complexities of Black kinship in his second Reconstruction-era novel, <em>Bricks Without Straw</em> (1880) (p. 50). Further, Tourgée’s insistence that “true Christians” repent for slavery distinguishes <em>Pactolus Prime</em> (1890), as DeLisa D. Hawkes points out, “as one of the earliest American novels to make a case for reparations” (pp. 60, 58). He also influenced African American literature. As Tess Chakkalakal’s essay demonstrates, his glowing endorsement of Charles W. Chesnutt’s early fiction helped Tourgée “alter the American literary landscape” (p. 76). Jennifer Rae <strong>[End Page 447]</strong> Greeson argues Tourgée’s “inescapable” literary presence left persisting traces in the fiction of both Chesnutt and Anna Julia Cooper (p. 85).</p> <p>Part 2 explores Tourgée’s political ideals, beginning with his oft-repeated faith that the edifice of “republican citizenship” was sufficient to stem the tide of violence unleashed by former elites to reverse Reconstruction policies (p. 102). Though Tourgée’s ideals of citizenship often centered the experiences of elites rather than working-class Black communities, his Reconstruction-era fiction nevertheless established his expansive c","PeriodicalId":45484,"journal":{"name":"JOURNAL OF SOUTHERN HISTORY","volume":"122 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2024-04-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"140637415","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"历史学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}