Undead Souths: The Gothic and Beyond in Southern Literature and Culture (Southern Literary Studies) - Hardcover

Anderson, Eric Gary; Hagood, Taylor; Turner, Daniel Cross

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0807161071 ISBN 13: 9780807161074

Publisher: LSU Press, 2015

Synopsis

Depictions of the undead in the American South are not limited to our modern versions, such as the vampires in True Blood and the zombies in The Walking Dead. As Undead Souths reveals, physical emanations of southern undeadness are legion, but undeadness also appears in symbolic, psychological, and cultural forms, including the social death endured by enslaved people, the Cult of the Lost Cause that resurrected the fallen heroes of the Confederacy as secular saints, and mourning rites revived by Native Americans forcibly removed from the American Southeast.

To capture the manifold forms of southern haunting and horror, Undead Souths explores a variety of media and historical periods, establishes cultural crossings between the South and other regions within and outside of the U.S., and employs diverse theoretical and critical approaches. The result is an engaging and inclusive collection that chronicles the enduring connection between southern culture and the refusal of the dead to stay dead.

About this title

About the Author:

Eric Gary Anderson is associate professor of English at George Mason University and the author of American Indian Literature and the Southwest: Contexts and Dispositions.

Taylor Hagood is associate professor of American literature at Florida Atlantic University and the author of Faulkner’s Imperialism: Space, Place, and the Materiality of Myth and Faulkner, Writer of Disability.

Daniel Cross Turner is associate professor of English at Coastal Carolina University. He is the author of Southern Crossings: Poetry, Memory, and the Transcultural South.

Review:

''A strong selection of essays. . . . This collection is well worth the time of those interested in a close examination of the origins of Southern gothic literature.'' --Publishers Weekly

''Being self-aware and meta without being campy or politically irrelevant is very hard to pull off, but the editors of this volume do it and even make it look easy.'' --American Literary History

About this edition

• Publisher: LSU Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 0807161071
• ISBN 13: 9780807161074
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 320