- CC 300 CX - Race and Class in the American South
- 3 Credits
MWF 2:00-2:50 pm - Professor Elder
Cross-listed with HIST 492 BX
Fulfills diversity requirement.
Tell about the South. What’s it like there. What do they do there. Why do they live there. Why do they live at all.
–William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom! (1936)
Set apart from the rest of the nation by a history that is by turns tragic and triumphant, the American South is many things: a geographical region, an overplayed stereotype, a magnolia-scented myth that hides a heavy historical burden. It is America’s “will-‘o-the-wisp Eden,” the setting for the original sin of slavery and the redeeming saga of the Civil Rights movement in the nation’s collective creation narrative. Southern identity, yesterday and today, springs from a set of common historical experiences that are unique in an American context. Southerners nevertheless experienced this history in profoundly different ways, and held widely variant viewpoints on its significance and meaning. This course will examine a variety of southern experiences throughout the region’s history with an eye to the ways in which race and class shaped these experiences. In particular, we will examine the ways in which the categories and definitions of race and class shifted and intersected at specific times and specific places in southern history. We will encounter the experiences of free Africans in early Virginia, the arguments of the proslavery southern planters before the Civil War, the disorientation of post-war southern whites moving off the farm into pre-fabricated textile mill towns, the poems of a biracial writer in a rigidly racial society, and the fear and bravery of black life under Jim Crow and during the Civil Rights era.
The six required readings for the course includes histories, original documents, short stories, memoir, and poetry. We will also consider one or two films. Requirements include active participation in class discussion, weekly one-page reading responses, and two 5-7 page papers on topics drawn from course readings.
Texts include:
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Edward L. Ayers, Southern Crossing: A History of the American South, 1877-1906, Abridged. (Oxford University Press, USA, 1995). ISBN-13: 978-0195086898
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T. H. Breen and Stephen Innes, “Myne Owne Ground”: Race and Freedom on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, 1640-1676, 25th ed. (Oxford University Press, USA, 2004). ISBN-13: 978-0195175370
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Paul Finkelman, Defending Slavery: Proslavery Thought in the Old South: A Brief History with Documents, First Edition. (Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2003). ISBN-13: 978-0312133276
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James E. Goodman, Stories of Scottsboro (Vintage, 1995). ISBN-13: 978-0679761594
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Ron Rash, Eureka Mill (Hub City Writers Project, 2001). ISBN-13: 978-1891885266
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Timothy B. Tyson, Blood Done Sign My Name: A True Story (Broadway, 2005). ISBN-13: 978-1400083114
