Gender and the Southern Body Politic

In recent years an exciting new branch of scholarship has contributed to revising our understanding of politics and history. Expanding our definition of southern politics, a new generation of historians is challenging us to reconsider the most hallowed subjects in southern history--the origins of slavery, Bacons Rebellion, the Nullification crisis, the origins of the Civil War, Reconstruction, the Lost Cause, Populism, and Jim Crow. Taking gender as a lens of analysis, these subjects are envisioned in a new light.

As Gender and the Southern Body Politic examines literature and art, labor and law, manhood and womanhood, the historians contributing to this volume argue that politics is not limited to the machinations of parties, candidates, and voters. Instead, they suggest that private matters--family, home, and sexuality--are integral to the construction of public power. Focusing on gender and ranging from the colonial period to the present, these essays explore the politics of