On July 5, 2023, W. Fitzhugh Brundage discussed his book A New History of the American South with historian Charles Reagan Wilson as part of the History Is Lunch series.
For at least two hundred years the South's economy, politics, religion, race relations, fiction, music, foodways and more have figured prominently in nearly all facets of American. In A New History of the American South, Brundage joins a group of historians to craft a new narrative of southern history from its ancient past to the present.
“The book draws on well-established as well as new currents in scholarship, including global and Atlantic world history, histories of African diaspora, and environmental history,” said Brundage. “We also knew it was vital to consider the experiences of all people of the South: Black, white, Indigenous, female, male, poor, and elite.”
South to America author Imani Perry wrote that A New History of the American South brims with “brilliant insights” and “is an essential collection of writings from leading historians of the American South. Their attentiveness to historic period, local and national politics, the politics of race, and the political economy are exceptional and make for an extremely compelling portrait of the region.”
W. Fitzhugh Brundage is William B. Umstead Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He earned his BA in history from the University of Chicago and his MA and PhD, both in history, from Harvard University. 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. His most recent book is Civilizing Torture: An American Tradition.
Charles Reagan Wilson is professor emeritus of history and Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi, where he taught from 1981 to 2014. He earned his BA and MA degrees from the University of Texas at El Paso and his PhD in history from the University of Texas at Austin. Wilson’s books include Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause, 1865-1920; Judgment and Grace in Dixie: Southern Faiths from Faulkner to Elvis; and most recently The Southern Way of Life: Meanings of Culture and Civilization in the American South. He is co-editor of the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, and The Mississippi Encyclopedia.
History Is Lunch is sponsored by the John and Lucy Shackelford Charitable Fund of the Community Foundation for Mississippi. The weekly lecture series of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History explores different aspects of the state's past. The hour-long programs are held in the Craig H. Neilsen Auditorium of the Museum of Mississippi History and Mississippi Civil Rights Museum building at 222 North Street in Jackson and livestreamed on YouTube and Facebook.
