Southern History Across the Color Line
2nd Edition
Published on 1. April 2021
Book
Hardback
262 pages
978-1-4696-6375-3 (ISBN)
Description
The color line, once all too solid in southern public life, still exists in the study of southern history. As distinguished historian Nell Irvin Painter notes, we often still write about the South as though people of different races occupied entirely different spheres. In truth, although blacks and whites were expected to remain in their assigned places in the southern social hierarchy throughout the nineteenth century and much of the twentieth century, their lives were thoroughly entangled.
In this powerful collection of pathbreaking essays, Painter reaches across the color line to examine how race, gender, class, and individual subjectivity shaped the lives of black and white women and men in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century South. She explores such themes as interracial sex, white supremacy, and the physical and psychological violence of slavery, using insights gleaned from psychology and feminist social science as well as social, cultural, and intellectual history. The book illustrates both the breadth of Painter's interests and the originality of her intellectual contributions. This edition features refreshed essays and a new preface that sheds light on the development of Painter's thought and our continued struggles with racism in the twenty-first century.
In this powerful collection of pathbreaking essays, Painter reaches across the color line to examine how race, gender, class, and individual subjectivity shaped the lives of black and white women and men in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century South. She explores such themes as interracial sex, white supremacy, and the physical and psychological violence of slavery, using insights gleaned from psychology and feminist social science as well as social, cultural, and intellectual history. The book illustrates both the breadth of Painter's interests and the originality of her intellectual contributions. This edition features refreshed essays and a new preface that sheds light on the development of Painter's thought and our continued struggles with racism in the twenty-first century.
Reviews / Votes
Painter's thoughtful collection is the result of a career spent in close examination of southern history. She demonstrates how that text can still reveal much, but only if we sharpen and enlarge our intellectual armamentarium." - Florida Historical Quarterly"The theories, ideas, and analysis investigated in this text advance our understanding of nineteenth- and twentieth-century southern culture--both black and white--in unexpected, provocative, and compelling ways. . . . A highly original and radically ambitious book. This immensely important and insightful study underscores the need for new thinking about the scholarship of southern historiography that reaches beyond race. . . . A groundbreaking contribution and a rewarding addition to the field of American history, particularly southern historiography." - North Carolina Historical Review
"Demonstrate[s] excellence marked by the transgressive verve of [an] innovative and progressive scholar. . . . An extremely successful attempt to move with intellectual rigor and consistency toward a meaningful interpretation of a world mapped in blood by cruelty and violence." - Southern Literary Journal
"Painter wields both a scalpel and an ax as she dissects multiple generations of southern-focused literature. . . . Compelling. . . . [Southern History across the Color Line] provides an insightful exploration into the historical factors that have led to an incomplete literature on the mutual impact of the color line in the American South. It deserves careful study by a wide range of scholars and students of southern history and race relations." - Gulf South Historical Review
"Bold and innovative." - Canadian Journal of History
"One cannot help but applaud the appearance of this collection, which provides a fine introduction to the ideas of an important scholar." - Journal of Southern History
More details
Series
Edition
Second Edition
Language
English
Place of publication
Chapel Hill
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Edition type
New edition
Product notice
Cloth
Illustrations
3 halftones
Dimensions
Height: 240 mm
Width: 161 mm
Thickness: 20 mm
Weight
609 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4696-6375-3 (9781469663753)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Nell Irvin Painter
Southern History across the Color Line, Second Edition
E-Book
02/2021
2nd Edition
The University of North Carolina Press
€19.49
Available for download
Person
Nell Irvin Painter is the Edwards Professor of American History Emerita at Princeton University. She is author or editor of ten books, including Old in Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over, The History of White People, Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol, and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.