Southern Masculinity

Perspectives on Manhood in the South since Reconstruction

Craig Friend

• Publisher: University of Georgia Press
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780820332321, 9780820329505
• eBook ISBN: 9780820336749
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

The follow-up to the critically acclaimed collection Southern Manhood: Perspectives on Masculinity in the Old South (Georgia, 2004), Southern Masculinity explores the contours of southern male identity from Reconstruction to the present. Twelve case studies document the changing definitions of southern masculine identity as understood in conjunction with identities based on race, gender, age, sexuality, and geography.

After the Civil War, southern men crafted notions of manhood in opposition to northern ideals of masculinity and as counterpoint to southern womanhood. At the same time, manliness in the South—as understood by individuals and within communities—retained and transformed antebellum conceptions of honor and mastery. This collection examines masculinity with respect to Reconstruction, the New South, racism, southern womanhood, the Sunbelt, gay rights, and the rise of the Christian Right. Familiar figures such as Arthur Ashe are investigated from fresh angles, while other essays plumb new areas such as the womanless wedding and Cherokee masculinity.

Table of contents

• Contents
• From Southern Manhood to Southern Masculinities: An Introduction
• Reconstructing Men in Savannah, Georgia, 1865 –1876
• The Price of Eternal Honor: Independent White Christian Manhood in the Late Nineteenth-Century South
• Violent Masculinity: Learning Ritual and Performance in Southern Lynchings
• In Defense of “This Great Family Government and Estate”: Cherokee Masculinity and the Opposition to Allotment
• William Raoul’s Alternative Honor: Socialism and Masculinity in the New South
• Privilege’s Mausoleum: The Ruination of White Southern Manhood in The Sound and the Fury
• The Cosmopolitanism of William Alexander Percy
• A Subversive Savior: Manhood and African American Images of Christ in the Early Twentieth-Century South
• Memory and Masculinity: Arthur Ashe in Word, Deed, and Monument
• Southern Sodomy; or, What the Coppers Saw
• The Womanless Wedding: Masculinity, Cross-Dressing, and Gender Inversions in the Modern South
• A New Kind of Patriarchy: Inerrancy and Masculinity in the Southern Baptist Convention, 1979–2000
• Contributors