New Reconfigurations and New Constructs

In contemporary southern literature, one of the prevalent and recurring elements is the writer’s reconfiguration of race, ethnicity, marriage, and class so that the new constructs mirror new perceptions and conceptions of the southern experience. Using two of these categories, discuss how two of the following texts—the excerpts from Gates’ Colored People, the excerpts from Styron’s The Confessions of Nat Turner, Fields’ “Not Your Singing, Dancing Spade,” or the excerpts from Marshall’s Praisesong for the Widow—add a new or fresh dimension to our understanding of the southern imaginary. Restrict your response to 300 words and post it no later than Thursday, April 22, by 9 a.m.

The Changing Southern Imaginary

Contemporary southern literature is comprised of new constructs, a reflection of a broader, more inclusive and a more daring figurative landscape of materials not featured in earlier southern writing—all of which contribute to new perspectives about the South since the Second World War. Drawing on two separate and different aspects of two of the following texts, analyze to what extent they exhibit new dimensions of contemporary literature: Welty’s “A Curtain of Green,” the excerpts from Haley’s Roots, the excerpts from Percy’s The Last Gentleman, or Williams A Streetcar Named Desire. Your response, which should not exceed 250 words, must be posted no later than Thursday, April 8, 2010, at 9 a.m.

Tradition and Identity Reevaluated

One of the prominent trends in modern and contemporary southern writing is the challenging and repudiation of tradition and the concomitant reevaluation of personal identity. Focusing on one of the following texts—the excerpts from Walker’s “Everyday Use,” Wright's “The Ethics of Living Jim Crow,”or Ransom’s “Old Mansion, indicate how the author challenges southern tradition and rescripts the notion of southern identity in the process. Limit your response to 250 words and sign your name. All responses must be posted by 9 am on Thursday, March 25, 2010.

As I Lay Dying: Perspectives of Peripheral Characters

While most of the interior monologues in Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying come from Bundren family members, an expression of their innermost thoughts, others come from the viewpoint of outsiders—peripheral characters— who observe and comment on the actions of the Bundrens. Such characters are either the Bundren’s neighbors or townsfolk. Using a single monologue of one of the eight peripheral voices in the novel (Cora Tull, Tull, Samson, Armstid, Whitfield, Doc Peabody, Moseley, or MacGowan), carefully analyze it in terms of the following: (1) The view of or attitude toward the Bundrens , (2) Relationship of the character to the Bundrens,and (3)How what the character says affects the reader’s perspective of the Bundrens. Your response should not exceed 250 words and must be posted no later than 9 am, March 18, 2010. BE SURE TO SIGN YOUR POST.

New South Writers and the Matter of Audience

While Thomas Nelson Page seems to support the southern status quo regarding race and class structure, showing a conciliatory perspective as he does in “Marse Chan,” George Washington Cable in “Belles Demoiselles Plantation,” Kate Chopin in “Desiree’s Baby,” and Ellen Glasgow in “Jordan’s End” are more complex and more difficult to classify. Each challenges traditional southern attitudes and conventional southern thinking in regard to race, class, or gender (or a combination of these); each exhibits a serious social consciousness; but each also treads cautiously, sometimes resorting to indeterminateness in the text through ambiguity, ambivalence, a lack of closure, obscuring or softening issues. Focusing on one of the aforementioned stories of Cable, Chopin, or Glasgow (use only one story) and using an example from that text, explain how the writer tends to defuse or to downplay the possibility for controversial reader reaction, perhaps doing so to appease the demands of magazine editors or the expectations of reading audiences. Limit your response to 200 words and be sure to sign your name. All responses should be posted no later than 9 am on Thursday, February 18.

Huckleberry Finn: Jim’s decision to help Tom Sawyer

In Chapter 40, when Tom Sawyer has been shot while carrying out the plan to free Jim from slavery, Jim delays his freedom by insisting that the wounded Tom be treated by a doctor first, a noble gesture that suggests Jim places Tom’s well being above his own. Jim, in fact, does stay by Tom’s side while Huck fetches the doctor. Huck’s response to Jim’s benevolent statement that he is going to stay with Tom is: “I knowed he was white inside” (263, Signet Classics edition). But what does Huck seem to mean here by using whiteness as a benchmark for judging Jim’s character and is his assessment of Jim in these terms without racial bias? In your response, also briefly speculate what Mark Twain may have had in mind in having Huck respond in this way. Post your response (200 words) no later than Thursday, February 11, at 9 am.

Antebellum Southern Laughter

One of the most popular genres of southern writing of the antebellum period was frontier humor. Composed exclusively by men, often professional men but not usually professional writers and frequently published anonymously or pseudonymously, in newspapers, almanacs, or periodicals, the humorous sketches and tales of the Old South, in many instances, defied and transgressive propriety of subject matter and conventional notions regarding women and other minorities, most notably African Americans. In this blog, address the transgressive or unconventional nature of antebellum southern humor, focusing briefly on several of the assigned works. Limit your response to 200-250 words and post your response NO LATER THAN THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 4, AT 9 AM.

Writerly Restraints in Depicting the Old South

Many southern writers, white as well as black, free as well as slave, male as well as female, regardless of what their personal convictions who wrote about the social world of the Old South frequently had to do so in a guarded or cautious manner . Sometimes the meaning of their words is subdued or obscured by conflicting views and subtleties, thus creating ambivalence and ambiguity for the reader. Carefully focusing on one writer and one of the texts we have read from the African American Perspectives of the Old South Unit (Jan. 26 and 28), point out some of the specific limitations of the work that result from the writer’s efforts to circumvent controversy. Or , as another option, evaluate the work in terms of the effectiveness with which the writer presents subversive material to his white readers. Blog should not exceed 250 words and your response must be posted no later than Thursday, January 28, at 9 am.

Classism in the Early South

One of the recurring intersections in early southern writing involves class, race, ethnicity, (and sometimes even gender). Rather than formulating distinctions among these elements based on a verifiable construct, early South watchers and commentators drew on traditional notions, ideologies , (perhaps even myths) to justify class and racial superiority of their particular social group or ethnicity and correspondingly the inferiority of persons of color or other marginalized characters (Native Americans, African Americans, persons of low socio-economic class and circumstances, and women). The purpose of this blog is to have you address some of these ideas and their implications to the formation of the ideological construct known as the “South.” Include in your response at least 2 different texts from the assigned readings in the course through Thursday, January 21. Your blog, which must identify you as the author, should not exceed 250 words and must be posted NO LATER THAN SATURDAY, JANUARY 23, AT 9 AM.

Ed Piacentino