For at least two centuries, the South's economy, politics, religion, race relations, fiction, music, foodways and more have figured prominently in nearly all facets of American life. In A New History of the American South, W. Fitzhugh Brundage joins a stellar group of accomplished historians in gracefully weaving a new narrative of southern history from its ancient past to the present. This groundbreaking work draws on both well-established and new currents in scholarship, among them global and Atlantic world history, histories of African diaspora, and environmental history. The volume also considers the experiences of all people of the South: Black, white, Indigenous, female, male, poor, and elite. Together, the essays compose a seamless, cogent, and engaging work that can be read cover to cover or sampled at leisure.
Contributors are Peter A. Coclanis, Gregory P. Downs, Laura F. Edwards, Robbie Ethridge, Kari Frederickson, Paul Harvey, Kenneth R. Janken, Martha S. Jones, Blair L. M. Kelley, Kate Masur, Michael A. McDonnell, Scott Reynolds Nelson, James D. Rice, Natalie J. Ring, and Jon F. Sensbach.
About the Panelists
W. Fitzhugh Brundage is William B. Umstead Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is editor of several books, including Beyond Blackface: African Americans and the Creation of American Popular Culture, 1890-1930; Where These Memories Grow: History, Memory, and Southern Identity; and the prize-winning Lynching in the New South.
Jon Sensbach teaches early American history at the University of Florida. He is the author of Rebecca’s Revival: Creating Black Christianity in the Atlantic World (Harvard, 2005), and A Separate Canaan: The Making of an Afro-Moravian World in North Carolina, 1763-1840 (North Carolina, 1998). He is at work on several projects: a study of slavery and religion in the revolutionary-era South; a book about the formerly-enslaved Caribbean author Mary Prince; and a study of Black Atlantic influences on the artist Camille Pissarro, West Indian native and “father of Impressionism.”
Scott Nelson is the Georgia Athletic Association Professor of History at UGA. His 2006 book Steel Drivin’ Man, about the legend of John Henry won four national awards including the Curti Prize for best book in US history. His latest book, Oceans of Grain compares conflicts over westward expansion in the United States to conflicts over Russian expansion into the Black Sea. Completed in 2021, it predicted continued Russian violence in Ukraine. It was published two days before Putin’s invasion. It has been featured on BBC News, CBC News, NPR, and received rave reviews in the Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, and the New York Review of Books. It has already been translated into Chinese, Portuguese, and Turkish. Japanese and Russian translations are in the works.
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