Becoming Southern Writers: Essays in Honor of Charles Joyner

Edited by southern historians Orville Vernon Burton and Eldred E. Prince, Jr., Becoming Southern Writers pays tribute to South Carolinian Charles Joyner's fifty year career as a southern historian, folklorist, and social activist. Exceptional writers of fact, fiction, and poetry, the contributors to the volume are among Joyner's many friends, admirers, and colleagues as well as those to whom Joyner has served as a mentor. The contributors describe how they came to write about the South and how they came to write about it in the way they do while reflecting on the humanistic tradition of scholarship as lived experience.
The contributors constitute a Who's Who of southern writers--from award-winning literary artists to historians. Freed from constraints of their disciplines by Joyner's example, they enthusiastically describe family reunions, involvement in the civil rights movement, research projects, and mentors. While not all contributors are native to the South or the United States and a few write about the South only occasionally, all the essayists root their work in southern history, and all have made distinguished contributions to southern writing. Diverse in theme and style, these writings represent each author's personal reflections on experiences living in and writing about the South while touching on topics that surfaced in Joyner's own works, such as race, family, culture, and place. Whether based on personal or historical events, each one speaks to Joyner's theme that "all history is local history, somewhere."
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Becoming Southern Writers: Essays in Honor of Charles Joyner

Edited by southern historians Orville Vernon Burton and Eldred E. Prince, Jr., Becoming Southern Writers pays tribute to South Carolinian Charles Joyner's fifty year career as a southern historian, folklorist, and social activist. Exceptional writers of fact, fiction, and poetry, the contributors to the volume are among Joyner's many friends, admirers, and colleagues as well as those to whom Joyner has served as a mentor. The contributors describe how they came to write about the South and how they came to write about it in the way they do while reflecting on the humanistic tradition of scholarship as lived experience.
The contributors constitute a Who's Who of southern writers--from award-winning literary artists to historians. Freed from constraints of their disciplines by Joyner's example, they enthusiastically describe family reunions, involvement in the civil rights movement, research projects, and mentors. While not all contributors are native to the South or the United States and a few write about the South only occasionally, all the essayists root their work in southern history, and all have made distinguished contributions to southern writing. Diverse in theme and style, these writings represent each author's personal reflections on experiences living in and writing about the South while touching on topics that surfaced in Joyner's own works, such as race, family, culture, and place. Whether based on personal or historical events, each one speaks to Joyner's theme that "all history is local history, somewhere."
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Becoming Southern Writers: Essays in Honor of Charles Joyner

Becoming Southern Writers: Essays in Honor of Charles Joyner

Becoming Southern Writers: Essays in Honor of Charles Joyner

Becoming Southern Writers: Essays in Honor of Charles Joyner

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Overview


Edited by southern historians Orville Vernon Burton and Eldred E. Prince, Jr., Becoming Southern Writers pays tribute to South Carolinian Charles Joyner's fifty year career as a southern historian, folklorist, and social activist. Exceptional writers of fact, fiction, and poetry, the contributors to the volume are among Joyner's many friends, admirers, and colleagues as well as those to whom Joyner has served as a mentor. The contributors describe how they came to write about the South and how they came to write about it in the way they do while reflecting on the humanistic tradition of scholarship as lived experience.
The contributors constitute a Who's Who of southern writers--from award-winning literary artists to historians. Freed from constraints of their disciplines by Joyner's example, they enthusiastically describe family reunions, involvement in the civil rights movement, research projects, and mentors. While not all contributors are native to the South or the United States and a few write about the South only occasionally, all the essayists root their work in southern history, and all have made distinguished contributions to southern writing. Diverse in theme and style, these writings represent each author's personal reflections on experiences living in and writing about the South while touching on topics that surfaced in Joyner's own works, such as race, family, culture, and place. Whether based on personal or historical events, each one speaks to Joyner's theme that "all history is local history, somewhere."

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781611176520
Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
Publication date: 06/02/2016
Pages: 288
Product dimensions: 5.90(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.10(d)
Age Range: 18 Years

About the Author


Orville Vernon Burton, is Creativity Professor of Humanities, professor of history, sociology, and computer science at Clemson University, and the director of the Clemson CyberInstitute. From 2008-2010, he was the Burroughs Distinguished Professor of Southern History and Culture at Coastal Carolina University. He is Emeritus University Distinguished Teacher/Scholar, University Scholar, and professor of history, African American studies, and sociology at the University of Illinois. The author of more than two hundred articles and author or editor of more than twenty books, including The Age of Lincoln, In My Father's House are Many Mansions: Family and Community in Edgefield, South Carolina; his latest book is Penn Center: A History Preserved.

Eldred E. Prince, Jr. , a native of Loris, South Carolina, is a professor of American history and director of the Waccamaw Center for Cultural and Historical Studies at Coastal Carolina University. His research interest is southern economic history, and his publications include Long Green: The Rise and Fall of Tobacco in South Carolina and The Great Harvest: Remembering Tobacco in the Pee Dee. Prince and his wife, Sallye, reside in Conway and Surfside, South Carolina.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1

Down by the Waterside; Family, Identity, and Maritime History Raymond Arsenault 20

How Charles Joyner Changed My Life Jack Bass 26

Stranger Redux Orville Vernon Burton 38

Becoming a Southern Historian Dan Carter 50

About the South Richard Carwardine 59

It Wasn't in the Plan Walter B. Edgar 65

The Maryland Design: Toward the Cultural History of a Border State David Hackett Fischer 78

Balance, Schlesinger, and Chaz Joyner William W. Freehling 102

Southern History as Family History Rod Gragg 105

Fiction, History, Murder, and the Book of Truth Josephine Humphreys 109

Feeling Awful Southern… or Not? John C. Inscoe 115

Writing the South in Fact Hank Klibanoff 128

Curing My Historical Schizophrenia Robert Korstad 135

Down Home Daniel C. Littlefield 139

Researching and Writing Southern History from Close Encounters Valinda Littlefield 154

Memories Hayes Mizell 160

When Does a Microscope Become a Telescope or a Telescope a Microscope? David Moltke-Hansen 166

Shared Traditions Maggi M. Morehouse 178

A New England Yankee Discovers Southern History John J. Navin 184

Recollections James Peacock 192

A Personal Odyssey: Discovering Local History Eldred E. Prince Jr. 197

The Philosophy Shop, Part I Theodore Rosengarten 203

The Philosophy Shop, Part II Dale Rosengarten 210

A New Zealander Becomes a Southern Historian John A. Salmond 215

Chaz Joyner at Coastal: Bargain or Burden? Roy Talbert 227

The Soul Sings for Justice: Why I Write about the South Natasha Trethewey 233

An Accidental Scholar Anne M. Wyatt-Brown 240

C. Vann Woodward and Me Bertram Wyatt-Brown 247

Charles Joyner: A Photographic Homage William Ferris 253

Publications Charles Joyner 263

Index 271

What People are Saying About This

Tony Badger

This remarkable collection of essays constitutes a unique collective intellectual autobiography of this generation's leading scholars of the American South. But the essays' interdisciplinary richness also testifies to Chaz Joyner's path-breaking scholarship and his unequalled capacity for collegial friendship and support, both personal and academic.

Cokie Roberts

What a treasure trove! It's not enough that Charles Joyner has made his own significant contribution to Southern history and literature; here a collection of renowned writers honoring him as their friend, and in many cases mentor, adds to his legacy through essays and mini-histories sure to grab any reader with even a touch of southern blood or experience. Josephine Humphrey's musing that the South is a little like her mother, 'full of secrets I would never know and truths I would not hear in full,' sums up what so many of us children of Dixie feel. Many of those secrets and truths can be found in these pages.

David W. Blight

This array of essays and artistic creations by historians, folklorists, poets, writers all, is a special constellation in the Southern sky, all shining and especially singing to the brightest star among them—Charles Joyner. It is as if someone held a huge lowcountry fish fry and picnic full of storytelling, inspiring and tragic ideas, poetry, music, psalm-readings, laughs, and tears. And everybody learned something new, felt something special, and said 'Amen.' Joyner deserves this intellectual and affectionate tribute for his unparalleled scholarship and imagination in telling us about the South, our cultures, our nation and ourselves.

Shane White

Charles Joyner has long been an exemplary southern man of letters and these fascinating accounts of how some two dozen writers became southern writers do him great, and deserved, honor.

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