The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture
Volume 3: History
Edited byCharles Reagan Wilson
408 pp., 6.125 x 9.25, 43 illus., 1 map, bibl., index
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Paperback ISBN: 978-0-8078-5691-8
Published: September 2006 -
E-book EPUB ISBN: 978-1-4696-1655-1
Published: September 2006 -
E-book PDF ISBN: 979-8-8908-7759-8
Published: September 2006
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Request exam/desk copyAuthor Q&A
Copyright (c) 2006 by the University of North Carolina Press. All rights reserved.A conversation with Charles Reagan Wilson, series editor of The NewEncyclopedia of Southern Culture and editor of Volume 3: History andVolume 4: Myth, Manners, and Memory, on the South's changing nature andhow the region has developed important local, national, andinternational roles.
Q: The Encyclopedia of Southern Culture waspublished as a single volume in 1989 and to great acclaim. Why did theCenter for the Study of Southern Culture decide to publish The NewEncyclopedia of Southern Culture as a series of 24 separate volumesinstead of one big hardback?
A: In planning The NewEncyclopedia, it became clear that many new topics needed to be added tothe original material, but there were too many new articles to fitcomfortably in a onevolume hardback. Publishing a series of paperbacksenables us to cover our broad topics well, target some books forindividuals and special groups especially interested in the topics ofindividual volumes, and address the opportunity for easily accessiblevolumes for classroom use.
Q: Have you expanded the coverage of individual topics? If so, how?
A: We have kept the original 24thematic categories, but we have re-conceptualized some of them. Women'sLife will be Gender, and Black Life will be Race. These new titlesreflect the new scholarship on these topics and how they areconceptualized now by most scholars. When the Encyclopedia of SouthernCulture came out, it was important to recognize the achievements ofwomen and African Americans in the South at a time when they had beenstudied too little. We will continue to do that in The New Encyclopedia.The new category titles, though, will also enable us to deal with thefluidity and multiplicity of gender and race as contested categories. Wehave two new volumes that were not originally thematic sections:Foodways and Folklife.
In virtually every volume we are expanding thematic articles thataddress new scholarly concerns. In addition, the original volume hadlimited room for biographical entries, and we tried to only cover thetruly iconic figures. The New Encyclopedia will dramatically expandentries on individuals; the Literature volume will probably triple thenumber of entries, with the goal of being more comprehensive andcovering not just the literary importance of writers but their culturalsignificance as well.
Q: What kinds of changes in the South do the new volumes reflect?
A: There have been dramaticchanges in the South since the publication of the Encyclopedia ofSouthern Culture in 1989. The South has become a center for newimmigration, with the growth of Hispanic population especially dramatic.The late 1990s saw a large increase in the African American returnmigration to the South, extending the region's role as the hearth ofmuch African American culture. The region experienced unprecedentedprosperity and continued growth of the middle class, while socialproblems for the underclass worsened. New industries have appearedwithin the South; for example, becoming a new center for automobileproduction. Politically, southerners from both major parties have playedcrucial leadership roles in national politics. Fundamentalists haveexpanded their political and social roles, working especially throughthe Republican party and the New Christian Right. Meanwhile, new formsof cultural expression have appeared, such as hip hop music, which hasemerged with distinctive southern variants that have even produced agenre called The Dirty South. The New Encyclopedia has added topics inmany volumes that will analyze the meanings of these developments.
Q: These volumes place more emphasis on the South's international role. Why?
A: One of the importantdevelopments in the recent South has been recognition of its globalrole. One could argue that globalization goes back to the early South, aplace that developed as part of the Atlantic World that included Europeand Africa and came to base much of its economy on cottona crop ofinternational significance. More recently, the transnational migrationof populations that have settled in the South, the international role ofregionally based businesses like Federal Express and CocaCola, and thegrowth of international investments in the South and the southernrecruitment of global businesses have all made clear that the South is aglobal player. Any understanding of the contemporary South needs tograpple with the historical meanings of these developments, and The NewEncyclopedia has added much coverage of these topics.
Q: The Religion and Geography volumes werethe first to be published in the spring of 2006, followed by History andMyth, Manners, and Memory in the fall of 2006. Whey did you choose topublish these topics in this order?
A: We knew that History andGeography needed to be among the earliest volumes because they provide atime and space foundation for later topics. The overviews in those twovolumes provide a spine, giving a historical narrative based in culturalhistory and a geographical assessment of the regions that make up thebroader South. Religion has long been recognized as one of the keyfactors that made the South an identifiable place, and the field ofsouthern religious history has experienced a renaissance recently ofscholarship that provided a foundation of contributors for preparingthis volume expeditiously. The Myth, Manners, and Memory volume reflectsthe importance of images and representations in understanding the South.The region was constructed by both southerners themselves and outsideobservers, creating a rich imaginative structure of social types,stories, behavioral expectations, and memories, and this volume offersfresh insight on this topic.
Q: The original encyclopedia was a pioneeringwork, serving as a model for other regional and state reference works.What effect(s) do you think The New Encyclopedia might have on otherregional reference works?
A: The scale of The NewEncyclopedia is vast. By the time all the volumes are published, theentire set will demonstrate how dynamic regional studies are, which wehope will suggest the continued need throughout the nation for referenceworks that provide information on regions reflecting the bestscholarship in ways that are accessible to broad audiences. We alsobelieve The New Encyclopedia will show the need to keep reference workscurrent in order to make them of continued usefulness to readers.
Q: In what ways are the scope, organization, and style of the original volume reflected in the new ones?
A: We have kept the originalqualities of the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture that made itdistinctive. We divided subject material into 24 sections, instead ofarranging information in an A to Z format, and we have kept thatdivision, reflected now in an entire volume being devoted to a subject.We arranged material originally in three categories: long overviewessays, substantial thematic articles, and short topics entries, all ofwhich remain. We think this way of organizing knowledge is useful insuggesting the significance of different kinds of articles and inproviding a breadth and depth of coverage. We worked to make the writingof the encyclopedia clear and accessible to many audiences, and weremain committed to that goal. I don't want to forget the importance ofillustrations here, either. The South has a distinguished photographichistory, and we have always tried to provide interesting and, whenpossible, artful illustrations for our entries.
Q: The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture is more than a revision of the original. How much of the material is new?
A: When we began, we aimed for atleast 20% new material, but we find that it varies by volume. We areadding many more illustrations and entries everywhere. Some sectionshave been virtually redone with totally new entries, and we have two newsubject areas (foodways and folk art) that are entirely new. And we arelooking at every entry to see if it needs to be updated, either becauseof new factual information, new interpretations that have appeared, ornew bibliography. We will have far more than the 20% that seemednecessary for a new edition.
Q: The unpredictability of the South, itsrapid changes, its evolving identity, seems to generate originalthinking by original thinkers. How do the various editors of The NewEncyclopedia reflect the changing South?
A: Dick Pillsbury was consultingeditor for the Geography section of the original encyclopedia. When wetold him of The New Encyclopedia he was quite excited to work with usagain. As a geographer he was quite aware of the changes in the region,and his own scholarship had been charting those changes, positioning himperfectly to supervise a thorough revision of that subject.
When our original contributing editor for the Women's Life section wasunable to continue work on The New Encyclopedia, we paired two youngscholars of gender, Ted Ownby and Nancy Bercaw, who redrew the frameworkof the original section to include issues of masculinity as well aswomen's life and to utilize the interdisciplinary work on that topic.
John T. Edge has become a key figure in the study of southern foodwaysthrough his work as director of the Southern Foodways Alliance. Theauthor of seven books in the area and coordinator of conferences,publications, and research projects on southern foodways, he was theideal person to oversee our volume on foodways, studying those culinarycustoms as one would other features of the culture of the American South.
Q: What kind of response have you received to the revised and updated volumes?
A: The first volumes have onlyrecently appeared so the word is just getting out. Because we will bepublishing The New Encyclopedia over four years, we believe theattention to it will grow as people begin to see the scale of what weare doingcharting the cultural landscape of the American South at atime of dramatic and compelling transformation.
The South has experienced such deep transformations in the last twodecades that it has created a new context for The New Encyclopedia ofSouthern Culture.