White Masculinity in the Recent South (Making the Modern South)

"In White Masculinity in the Recent South, thirteen scholars of history, literature, film, and environmental studies examine modern white masculinity, including such stereotypes as the good old boy, the redneck, and the southern gentleman. With topics ranging from southern Protestant churches to the music of Lynyrd Skynyrd, this volume seeks to do what no other single work has done: to explore the ways in which white southern manhood has been experienced and represented since World War II. Using a variety of approachescultural and social history, close readings of literature and music, interviews, and personal stories - the contributors explore some of the ways in which white men have acted in response to their own and their culture's conceptions of white manhood. Subjects include neo-Confederates, the novels of William Faulkner, gay southern men, football coaching, deer hunting, church camps, college fraternities, and white men's responses to the civil rights movement." "Taken together, these pieces show how white southern men are shaped by regional as well as broader American ideas of what they ought to do and be. White men themselves, the contributors explain, view the idea of southern manhood in two seemingly contradictory ways - as something natural and as something learned through rites of initiation and passage - and believe it must be lived and displayed to one's peers and others in order to be fully realized."--BOOK JACKET.