Brian Ward
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- September 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780813044378
- eISBN:
- 9780813046471
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813044378.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
This chapter uses the memoirs of Caryl Phillips and the theoretical writings of Atlantic historian David Armitage as the springboard for a wide-ranging critical survey of scholarly and creative ...
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This chapter uses the memoirs of Caryl Phillips and the theoretical writings of Atlantic historian David Armitage as the springboard for a wide-ranging critical survey of scholarly and creative attempts to place the American South in an Atlantic World framework. Spanning a variety of traditional disciplinary and temporal divides, it evaluates those efforts in the context of other moves within American Studies and the New Southern Studies to place the nation and the region in Global and Hemispheric (or New World) contexts. Noting the tremendous technical challenges posed by situating the American South within a comprehensive Atlantic World framework, the essay stresses the value of “granular” approaches to the mutually constitutive relationships between the American South and the Atlantic World: a granularity evident in studies that focus primarily on particular places, individuals, groups, moments, or themes in order to trace the significance of much broader Atlantic forces as they flow in and out of the South.Less
This chapter uses the memoirs of Caryl Phillips and the theoretical writings of Atlantic historian David Armitage as the springboard for a wide-ranging critical survey of scholarly and creative attempts to place the American South in an Atlantic World framework. Spanning a variety of traditional disciplinary and temporal divides, it evaluates those efforts in the context of other moves within American Studies and the New Southern Studies to place the nation and the region in Global and Hemispheric (or New World) contexts. Noting the tremendous technical challenges posed by situating the American South within a comprehensive Atlantic World framework, the essay stresses the value of “granular” approaches to the mutually constitutive relationships between the American South and the Atlantic World: a granularity evident in studies that focus primarily on particular places, individuals, groups, moments, or themes in order to trace the significance of much broader Atlantic forces as they flow in and out of the South.