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This chapter examines how the contours of American literature have changed over time by focusing on the shifting geospatial dynamics associated with the American South. In particular, it juxtaposes South America with the American South in order to highlight the historically variable nature of their interrelationship and the complicated ways in which these domains have intersected over time. The chapter first considers how the American South was imagined in the writings of William Bartram, William Gilmore Simms, and José Martí before discussing the notions of southern “regionalism” and pseudo-geography in the works of Zora Neale Hurston and Elizabeth Bishop. It also analyzes the fiction of William Faulkner and Frederick Barthelme.

This chapter argues that during the 1760s and 1770s, distinctly evangelical visions of manhood and womanhood emerged which became structured into early church membership. In the late colonial era, Baptist ministers and converts to the faith found the South a hostile and often dangerous place. Colonial authorities attacked and imprisoned preachers; Anglican ministers denounced Baptists from their pulpits; mobs disrupted Baptist services and dragged ministers from their congregations. This era of conflict acted as a defining moment for the Baptists and helped them to construct an identity for themselves as a heroic and martyred people. Baptist ministers began to write and collect firsthand accounts of persecution and new conversions in the 1770s. The stories that Baptists told about the disputes centered on gender, and gender became an integral part of the conflicts between dissenting sects and the established church. In particular, embracing new gender norms became a chief strategy for countering opposition and spreading the faith. Women and men were constantly praised for discarding conventional gender roles and assuming new behaviors to serve the evangelical cause. Not only did the Baptists explore distinctly evangelical visions of manhood and womanhood, but they structured them into church membership.

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the institutional transformation of the American South after the U.S. Civil War. Although the emancipation of former slaves and political upheavals of Radical Reconstruction are perhaps the most evident features of this institutional transformation, it touched upon almost every aspect of Southern society, ranging from urban life to class structure to the organizations that populated the region's agriculture and industry. The New South that resulted after Radical Reconstruction evidenced a more capitalist and market-driven society than its antebellum counterpart. Enduring uncertainty was a defining feature of this transition between precapitalist and capitalist institutions. The chapter then formulates a general theory regarding the evolution of uncertainty over the course of institutional transformation, and discusses the specific transitions toward capitalism that occurred in the economy of the U.S. South during the postbellum era.

This chapter charts the stellar success and then tragic failure of Simon Bolívar’s attempt to unify several states in northern South America into Gran Colombia. Despite his great charisma and military skill, Bolívar was unable to hold together his state for long after independence. The chapter argues that the Napoleonic Wars cropped Spanish power and hobbled its finances, such that the previously formidable colonial power transformed into a minimal threat. This reversal in Spain’s fortunes drove the initial successes and ultimate failure in South American unification. Leaders that acted in accord with this reality advanced while those that did not were destroyed. External threat explains Gran Colombia’s trajectory.

Several previous General Social Survey-based studies have revealed increasing acceptance of nontraditional gender roles. This chapter builds upon and extends these findings. It shows that adults became less predisposed toward a “separate spheres” conception holding that women should specialize in caring for children and households while men predominate in the more public arenas of employment and politics. Most growth in acceptance of broadened women's roles took place by the mid-1990s, however, mirroring trends in women's labor force participation and their representation in political office. The chapter then illustrates the regional convergence noted by Fischer and Hout (2006), showing that southerners continue to espouse more traditional views about gender, but less so over time.

This chapter examines how Max Weber's travel through the American South helped him gain a better understanding of the problems of race and race relations in the former Confederacy, forty years after the end of the Civil War. Weber's reasons for making the journey from St. Louis, Missouri, through Memphis, Tennessee, to New Orleans, then north through Tuskegee, Alabama, to Atlanta and beyond are not entirely clear. He was interested in questions about race and the consequences of slavery, and his interest in agrarian economies also would have attracted him to the post-Civil War South. The chapter first considers Weber's exchanges with W.E.B Du Bois, which illuminate the former's focused interest in the problem of race in America, before discussing the lessons learned by Weber from his stay at Tuskegee. It also explores how Weber's experience in the South influenced his ideas about race, ethnicity, class, and caste.

This part of the book describes how the people of the American South spend their free time. Looking at sports and recreation tells us much about the cultural development of the South; it provides insight into the everyday life of southerners. Historically, the South's sporting and recreational life was long structured around institutions and activities that reflected a patriarchal and racially conscious society. The entries that are in this section of the book demonstrate the breadth of recreational activities in the South today.

This chapter begins by discussing what people think about the 1954 declaration stating that in public schools segregation was unconstitutional. It then talks about the effects of this declaration on the conflict happening between the white and black people. It mentions some of the most aggressive forms of defense that white southerners used. It notes that massive resistance, therefore, represented a potent challenge to the advancement of racial equality. It explains that the study of white segregationists is important not simply as a means to enhance understanding and appreciation of black civil rights activism, but should be of intrinsic interest to any serious student of the American South. It gives a brief discussion of all the topics discussed in this book.

This chapter focuses on three South Asian American adolescents and their engagement with the post 9/11 racial targeting of South Asian Americans. As a result, these adolescents find themselves seeking stronger ties to their heritage and histories. The three literary texts discussed in this chapter (Neesha Meminger’s Shine, Coconut Moon; Marina Budhos’ Ask Me No Questions; and Anjali Banerjee’s Looking for Bapu) challenge the dominant perceptions in mainstream United States of the stereotype, in the popular imagination, of the “brown Middle Eastern Muslim” that led to post 9/11 attacks against South Asian Americans. The post 9/11 generated Islamophobia and the attacks on South Asians, cause the South Asian American adolescent characters to confront feelings of alienation, belonging, and acceptance as they negotiate the meaning of their South Asian American identities.

The basic pattern of racial violence in the South was largely determined by the attempts of landowners and commercial farmers to gain mastery over a world turned upside down by the end of slavery. Emancipation raised two dire threats that struck at the heart of the former slave society: the emergence of a free market in labour and the plantocracy's lost grip over land. Landowners across the South mobilized against these twin threats, employing all mechanisms at their disposal to regain their former dominance. This chapter argues that landowners' quest for political and economic control forms the indispensable point of reference for any discussion of extra-legal racial violence, providing the terrain for even plebeian whites to participate in the lynch culture of the New South.

The South Asian American population includes immigrant Hindus, Muslims, and Christians. This chapter highlights initiatives of South Asian Christians to evangelize fellow South Asian immigrants, often in cooperation with nonimmigrant evangelical groups and volunteers. Three cases are examined: (1) Indian evangelists, (2) Telugu Lutheran congregations, and (3) a Christian center in the heart of Chicago's South Asian community. “What we do is friendship evangelism,” explains a staff member at the Christian center. “We want to be the aroma, the love, and the hands and feet of Jesus in the community. We live the Gospel first, and then we give it vocally.”

This concluding chapter sums up the key findings of this study on the relationship between religion and politics in the American South. The history of the South has been, most fundamentally, the story of the struggle between liberalism and conservatism in a variety of venues and in a spectrum of areas. And in overarching struggle between liberalism and conservatism, the latter won out repeatedly and the South is still the most conservative region of the U.S. In the final analysis, the stream of toleration, progressivism, and self-criticism is still a distinctly minority current in the South and this is most apparent in the critical intersection between politics and religion.

This introductory chapter discusses how literary scholars, reviewers, and especially NetSAP book club members shift among various models of what constitutes South Asian authenticity in the United States. It explores how ideologies of authenticity shape communal practices of reading among South Asian American readers. Such ideologies can serve to reinforce gender inequality in the construction of transnational South Asian literary culture, promote ethnic homogeneity, and encourage complacency around their own privilege, even as South Asian American readers envision the terms of South Asian belonging in the United States as based in ideals of gender equality, ethnic heterogeneity, secularism, and class and caste consciousness. In this way, ideologies of authenticity, as they operate in transnational South Asian literary culture, produce ambivalence as a structuring feature of South Asian belonging in the United States.