The Routledge Companion to Literature of the U.S. South

eds. Katharine A. Burnett, Todd A. Hagstette, and Monica C. Miller

The Routledge Companion to the Literature of the U.S. South offers short articles by scholars from a wide range of backgrounds who are working in or tangential to the field of U.S. southern literary studies. Southern studies and southern literary studies are a vibrant and multidisciplinary areas of scholarly study, the impact of which extends into fields that range from American studies, African American studies, transatlantic or global studies, multiethnic studies, immigration studies, and gender studies, to name a few. The goal of the Companion is to create a multi-faceted conversation around a series of topics in U.S. southern studies, and to bring in the widest variety of perspectives possible to a general audience of both students and scholars. 

This Companion incorporates the trends in the past twenty years, but opens them up even further by highlighting the perspectives of a wide number of scholars, a mix of junior and senior scholars, and those directly in the field as well as those whose work is indirectly related. Recent academic conversations have called for radical reconceptions of the field. Building on this momentum, the Companion offers a comprehensive overview of southern literary studies, including a chronological history from the U.S. colonial era to the present day as well as theoretical touchstones, while also introducing new methods of reconceiving region and the U.S. South as inherently interdisciplinary and multi-dimensional. The volume will be an invaluable tool for instructors, scholars, students, and members of the general public who are interested in exploring the field further, but also suggests new methods of engaging with regional studies, American Studies, American literary studies, and cultural studies.

Reviews

"One echo above all came to mind when I read the introduction and contents of the new Routledge Companion to Southern Literature: "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants." Jefferson has been placed in both categories over the long haul of southern studies. The editors and contributors to this new volume should be looked at as significant "refreshers." How far we have come from Jay Hubbell's The South in American Literature."

-Michael Kreyling, author of Inventing Southern Literature (1998) and The South That Wasn't There (2010)