Thanks!

I just wanted to say thanks to everyone for making this an enjoyable semester. It was good to have a group of students who seemed engaged with the material.

Have a great summer!

JN

Burke - Second Half

Please post your questions for the second half of Burke below.

Please post your comments about the first half of this book below. Consider examining both the characters and plot lines and what they tell us about southern identity and history.

The Final Paper (or Papers)

For your final, you will do one of two things:

Option 1: Write two three-page papers, one analyzing James Lee Burke's Jolie Blon's Bounce and a second analyzing the film Sling Blade in the context of our other materials on southern identity.

Option 2: Write one five page paper comparing Jolie Blon's Bounce and Sling Blade in the context of southern identity.

These papers will be due the day of our scheduled final exam. To wit, Tuesday May 5. They are due by 5:00 PM, and may be submitted electronically via Google Documents or paper format in my drop box on the door of Bishop 315

Some people call it a Kaiser Blade...

Please post your Sling Blade comments below

No South?

In this last chapter that we will read of Cobb, we will consider whether or not the South remains today a distinctive place. I have also added to Blackboard a copy of a paper that I presented on the crime fiction of James Lee Burke. If you would please read it so that we might discuss.

The South of Guilt and Shame?

As we move into this last section of class, we will be using the Wallace video, lecture podcasts, and Cobb's Away Down South to help us analyze contemporary popular culture about the South. To wit, you will write an essay examining some aspect of James Lee Burke's Jolie Blon's Bounce and the movie Sling Blade. Both engage many of the themes found in southern history and explore dimensions of southern identity.

Use this post for your discussion questions for the Cobb chapter that we will discuss on Thursday.

Writing tips

Here is a copy of Dr. Ownby's writing tips. They are good rules to follow.

By the way...

In case any of you are interested in what your instructor writes in his "free time," you can check out my food blog:

http://nystromtable.blogspot.com

Enjoy!

Settin' the Woods on Fire

You will be able to find a copy of the DVD for the George Wallace documentary, Settin' the Woods on Fire, in the hopper on my door after 2:00 PM today. The only problem is that I only have 26 copies of the DVD. This means that we are about 10 copies short and some of you will have to share. If you know that you might watch it with a friend in the class, then please only take one for the both (or several) of you.

You will find a great deal of additional information at PBS's companion web site, including a full transcript.

Use this blog post for your comments.

Nonviolence Triumphant?

Robert F. Williams lived to old age. Martin Luther King died of a gunshot wound in 1968. One advocated self defense, the other, nonviolence. These themes I discussed with one of your peers after class on Tuesday. Let's continue that conversation and more. Please post your discussion question below.

The Mind of the South (really)

Okay, I mean it this time! Please post your discussion questions below. You might consider posing your question in the context of our proposed essays.

Essay 2 Options

Option 1: Tim Tyson's Radio Free Dixie, in particular, reveals the symbiotic relationship between the politics of the Cold War and the Civil Rights Movement. The use that civil rights activists made of the Cold War hinged upon the manner in which the Jim Crow-era South resembled a totalitarian state for African Americans. In your essay, make a broad survey of the various sources we have used in the course since the first essay and describe the manner in which the Jim Crow South represented a totalitarian society for all southerners.

Option 2: Our sources in this section pay a great deal of attention to black masculinity and femininity in the context of the segregated South. Using these sources, explore the contours and expressions of A) black masculinity B) black femininity or C) the interplay between black and white women in defining gender roles within the confines of segregation. Consider this question broadly, but feel free to focus on a specific aspect of the topic. For instance, you might narrow it down to exploring the role of violence directed at and employed by black men as a vehicle for demonstrating self worth in the segregated South. You might consider the role music, both the blues and gospel, in creating an environment of personal dignity and protest for black men and women. Be creative. But also be sure to email me with your idea - that is, how you plan to approach and define your essay question.

The directions and length requirements for this essay are the same as for Essay 1, and I ask that you consult that post in the blog archive for details.

NOTE: you will ONLY use these sources for your essay:

Pete Daniel, "Not Predestination"
"Feel Like Goin' Home" (Blues Documentary)
Cobb, "The Blues is a Low Down Shakin' Chill"
The Color Purple
Radio Free Dixie
Away Down South, Chapters 5 and 6

LASTLY: this assignment has a new due date: by 2:00 PM on Thursday, April 9. Submit either via Google Documents or in my mailbox in Bishop Hall.

The Mind of the South

We're beginning to consider the ways in which the mindset of white southerners come full circle in the middle of the twentieth century. W.J. Cash produced one of the most debated works of its genre in The Mind of the South. Luckily, you get to read Cobb's distillation of it.

Please post your discussion question below.

The Civil Rights Movement before 1954

The podcast lecture for today covers those elements of the civil rights movement that took place before the 1954 landmark decision Brown vs. Board of Education. Instead of a "beginning," in many ways, Brown represented the culmination of a long-term legalistic strategy that had its origins in the 1910s with the founding of the NAACP. We will consider the strategies and effectiveness of individuals like Lonnie E. Smith whose victory in Smith v. Allwright (1944) struck down the "white primary."

We will also look at the importance of the black middle and professional classes and neighborhoods like Atlanta's Sweet Auburn district in cultivating an atmosphere where civil rights activism might take place.

Chapter 5 in Away Down South examines the literary output and social activism of southern writers, both black and white, in the years leading up to 1954. Be sure to pay special attention to the rhetoric and methods these artists employed to speak out against the prevailing social norms of the South. To what degree were these writers brave? To what degree were they timid? Post your discussion question below.

The Color Purple

Tonight we will watch the film adaptation of Alice Walker's novel, The Color Purple. I often anguish over whether or not to use this film, not because it is not a great film or because it does not fit our themes so well, but that so many other people use it. As a consequence, you may find an enormous amount of information on the web that will help you analyze its content. For instance, this site even supplies plot summaries and thematic interpretations.

I encourage you, however, to actually watch the film instead of relying on internet summaries and the scholarship of others because it you will have to relate the content of the movie to our other readings for this course. Plus, because most of the internet summaries refer to the novel and not the film, there are some significant discrepancies - as there are with any film adaptation. I have received essays any number of times in the past that refer to sections of The Color Purple that are only in the book and not the film. Needless to say, the grades on such essays suffered.

Please post your discussion questions for the film at the foot of this post. Once again, I am open to you thinking about music and posting a link to something you would like to share with the class and talk about.

The Blues

Today we will look at the blues and its position in the South during a time of transformation. Be sure to post your discussion question below. If you want to discuss music, feel free to post a link to an audio file.

Southern Agriculture Since the Start of World War II

From Hopson's

The changes in agricultural technology that hit the South from the time of the Great Depression until the present altered more than the way the region harvested its crops. They also brought about a significant shift in labor and economics, and a correspondingly large number of social changes.

You should be prepared to discuss Pete Daniel's article on this transformation. Those of you who have signed up for discussion questions, please post them below.

Essay Questions and Instructions

Select one of the following options, producing an essay that conforms to the instructions listed below.

Option one: Exploring the Utility of the Lost Cause in the New South
A central theme running through all of our readings, lecture materials, and film is the notion of the "Lost Cause." Yet as an intellectual concept, the Lost Cause served many different masters - to wit, different people sought to salvage from or be inspired by different things from the memory of the Old South. Moreover, their varied memories of the Lost Cause correlated directly with their experiences, fears, and ambitions in the New South. In your essay, explore the range of attitudes toward the Lost Cause and Old South among figures as diverse as the Percys, Thomas Dixon, Henry Grady, H.L. Mencken George Littlefield, and the numerous others who have appeared in your course materials. Be sure to consider fully both what each figure cherished about the Lost Cause's romanticized vision of the past and, alternately, how aspirations or fears in the New South influenced their embrace of the Lost Cause. As a rough guide, depending on the individuals you select and how deeply you explore their thoughts, I think that anywhere from three to five contrasting portraits would supply the basis for a good essay. As with any essay option, make certain that your essay bridges a minimum of four sources.

Option two: Race and Class in the New South
Our readings in the first third of this semester come at us almost entirely from a white perspective or narration, and are heavily prejudiced toward those elites who either held the reins of political power or enjoyed the esteem of the intellectual or financial sector. These individuals had a great deal to say about the place of race in the New South, but also about the nature and viability of the old southern aristocracy. One thing is for certain, elite whites were not of a single mind in their attitudes towards those whom they identified as their social inferiors. In your essay, explore the range of attitudes held by white southern elites toward poorer whites and black southerners. Be sure to articulate the influences that shaped these world views. For instance, you might effectively compare and contrast the visions of Thomas Dixon (through Griffith's Birth of a Nation) with William Alexander Percy, exploring where they differ and are the same. Make sure you round out your analysis with other sources to establish the requisite minimum of four.

Option three: The Perils of Progress and the New South Creed
The advance of progress, or more accurately, "modernity" unleashed tensions in southern society between those who looked askance at the changes in their midst and those who actively promoted such change. The New South Creed emerged as a strategy for reconciling these two disparate impulses, but this philosophy made an imperfect marriage between the old and the new. Explore in your essay first the ways in which the New South Creed was successful in pairing incongruent ideas and then explain why over time the concept became increasingly unworkable as the South entered the 1920s and 1930s. Again, there is a four source minimum.

Sources: A KEY objective of your essay is to show me how well you have read and thought about the assignments that we have considered in this class. Please do not bring in material you have read for other classes no matter how relevant and articulate. I will not count any of it toward your essay's grade. Recycling is fine for aluminum cans, not for this class. The questions have been crafted so as to allow you to discuss themes across the sources provided. If you address a particular point that is extensively and directly covered by one of our readings and you do not use that reading (likely because you have not read it) it will leave a glaring hole in your essay and be marked accordingly. YOUR ESSAY must incorporate at least FOUR different sources listed below in some meaningful fashion.

Citations: When quoting a passage from a written work, use parenthetical notations such as (Cobb, 224) or (Percy, 117). I do not need a bibliography, as I assume that your sources will be the following:

• Lectures 1 to 3 & class discussion
• Cobb, Away Down South, Chapters 3 and 4
• Daley, "Massacres and Manners"
• Percy, Lanterns on the Levee
• Primary documents from Walter White, Henry Grady, and W.E.B. DuBois
  
• Birth of a Nation
• Fatal Flood (do not forget that the full transcript is available online)
• Young, "Not in Memoriam but in Defense"

Length: The desired target length for your essay is approximately 1600 words, or 5 double-spaced pages typed in 12 point Times New Roman with 1 inch margins. I expect that you will want to utilize all five pages available to you in order to make your points. Please try to refrain from exceeding 1600 words. An eight-page essay, for instance, is unacceptable. Conversely, a thin, verbose, and over-stretched four page essay is also unacceptable. The objective is for you to compose five well-considered pages of text.

Plagiarism: Many students are confused about what constitutes plagiarism. It is not simply taking word-for-word the text of another. It also includes making close summaries of ideas that others have formulated and not crediting. I periodically run across fragmentary plagiarism, where clauses or otherwise partial sentences will be copied out of the text. Consider that your instructor has read the works for this course numerous times and will be able to quickly spot such instances of plagiarism. So please make sure your work is your own. All violations are subject to receiving a zero on the assignment.

Due Date & Turning in your Assignment:
You can turn in your completed essay in a printed form to my mailbox on Thursday, February 26 NO later than 2:30 PM. Class will not meet on Thursday.

ALTERNATIVELY, if you can successfully turn your paper into a Google Document and share it with me online, I will grade it online. Note, however, that I will not print out your paper, but grade it using Google Documents and return it to you electronically. If you choose to submit your paper as a Google document, you must use the following naming convention: H332LASTNAME-ESSAY1 for your document. I must also receive this document by 2:30 on Thursday. I will NOT be accepting emailed papers.

Stark Young and the Agrarians

No, it is not the name of a new band to hit the Square! The Nashville Agrarians appeared in Cobb's chapter 4. Now you get an opportunity to read what one of the "Twelve Southerners" had to say in their classic volume, I'll Take My Stand. Please post your discussion questions below.

Also, note that we will dedicate at least half of class on Thursday to the discussion of your essay questions which will post shortly. Please come to class prepared.

Southern Industrialization and its Discontents

One of the main themes that we have been exploring in the early part of this semester is the tension between the past and future in the southern mindset. We are going to dig a little deeper into this theme today.

Our podcast lecture outlines efforts made by private enterprise as well as local and state governments to industrialize the South. Be ready to discuss the ingredients of southern industrialization and to what extent it succeeded or failed.

These changes, however, did not go unnoticed, and not everyone appreciated what the push to industrialize had done to what they saw as the South's imperiled culture. Our reading today from Cobb's Away Down South discusses the reaction of southern writers and intellectuals to the "New South Creed."

As we discussed in class last Thursday, you might consider formulating your discussion questions by tying them to our other materials, in this case Percy and Birth of a Nation.

As a side note, you might want to take a look at this video produced by the Oxford Chamber of Commerce in 1987 and consider how some of the tensions between the selling of the South and the preservation of its culture remain a factor in our lives.


OXFORD - The Right Place from The Oxonians on Vimeo.

Lanterns on the Levee - Part 2

Please post your discussion questions about the second half of Percy here:

Viewing Fatal Flood

One of the great things about using episodes of PBS's American Experience series is that their website has a full transcript of the documentary in question. Fatal Flood is no exception. You may find the companion web site here.

William Alexander Percy and Lanterns on the Levee

Please post your discussion questions for the first part of Lanterns on the Levee below.

Links to Primary Source Readings

Henry Grady's "New South" pitch.
Booker T. Washington's "Atlanta Compromise"
Walter White recalls the 1906 Atlanta Riot

The Danville Riot

Post your discussion questions for the Jane Dailey reading below.

Birth of a Nation

First, let me just say how happy I was with the first three discussion questions that students posted for the first reading assignment. You should be paying attention to these postings, and in particular the three from yesterday as they each offer excellent themes for interpreting tonight's film, Birth of a Nation.

To remind all, I will screen the film tonight, Wednesday, January 28, in the Tupelo Room at Barnard Observatory. I will begin the film promptly at 8:00 PM. It is roughly 3 hours long. Those who have signed up to post discussion questions may do so tomorrow morning before we meet. Please post your observations below this blog post.

The Legacies of Reconstruction

The Civil War and, perhaps even more importantly, the postbellum struggle for social and political mastery had a profound impact upon the memory and identity of all southerners, whether black or white. It was key for the development of not only the Lost Cause and New South ideologies, but also sewed the seeds of twentieth-century black political activism.

Please post your discussion questions (for which as of 11:00 AM on Monday, I have not yet had anyone sign up!) below for Reading Assignment 1 (RA1).

Accessing the Podcasts

In order to access the seven podcast lectures for this course, you will need to either subscribe to them using a program like iTunes by pasting http://www.history.vt.edu/nystrom/lecture5.xml into the URL for a podcast, or you can listen to them in Mozilla Firefox by merely clicking on THIS LINK.

I recorded these in the Spring of 2007 while teaching at Virginia Tech, but the information pairs up well with what we are doing in the Spring of 2009 at Ole Miss. They are intended to contextualize the readings and serve as a basis point for discussion.

Welcome Back!

If you are just arriving at this weblog, you will want to take some time to explore. You will find on the sidebar to the right links to a course calendar with assignments, the syllabus, and the sign-up sheet for discussion questions (you will have to email me to get your name on this - it is not an online form, per se.) This blog will be important to your success in the class, so I suggest you either bookmark it or subscribe to it with an RSS reader. You will also have to be a registled blog user to post comments, which you will need to do in order to post assigned discussion questions. If you find this confusing, I'll be going over it in class on the first day. Be sure to be in attendance!