Reconstructing the World: Southern Fictions and U.S. Imperialisms, 1898-1976

by Harilaos Stecopoulos

Overview

"The unending tragedy of Reconstruction," wrote W. E. B. Du Bois, "is the utter inability of the American mind to grasp its... national and worldwide implications." And yet the long shadow of Reconstruction's failure has loomed large in the American imagination, serving as a parable of race and democracy both at home and abroad. In Reconstructing the World Harilaos Stecopoulos looks at an array of American writers who, over the course of the twentieth century, used the South as a touchstone for thinking about the nation's global ambitions. Focusing on the lives and writings of Charles Chesnutt, Thomas Dixon, James Weldon Johnson, W. E. B. Du Bois, Carson McCullers, William Faulkner, Richard Wright, and Alice Walker, he shows the ways in which these public intellectuals viewed the U.S. South in international terms and questioned the relationship between domestic inequality and a quest for global power.

By examining "big stick" diplomacy, World War II, and the Vietnam War in light of regional domestic concerns, Stecopoulos urges a reassessment of the American Century. Providing new interpretations of literary works both well-known (Johnson's The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, McCullers's The Member of the Wedding) and marginal (Dixon's The Leopard's Spots, Du Bois's Dark Princess), Stecopoulos argues that the South played a crucial role in mediating between the national and imperial concerns of the United States. That intersection of region and empire, he contends, profoundly influenced how Americans understood not only cultural and political geographies but also issues of race and ethnicity.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801475023
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	12/15/2008
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	216
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.60(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Harilaos Stecopoulos is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Iowa. He is the coeditor, with Michael Uebel, of Race and the Subject of Masculinities.

What People are Saying About This

J. W. Hall

Stecopoulos opens the present book with a photo of film director Spike Lee in post-Katrina New Orleans; he cites W. E. B. Du Bois's claim that, in the south, 'the Negro' is 'everything.' Thus, the majority of the eight 'public intellectuals' at the heart of Stecopoulos's discussion are African Americans: Du Bois, Charles Chestnutt, James Weldon Johnson, Richard Wright, and Alice Walker.... Stecopoulos presents a dazzling variety of perspectives on U.S. 'imperialisms.' Recommended.

John T. Matthews

Reconstructing the World establishes Harilaos Stecopoulos as one of the most original voices in a new cohort of literary scholars writing at the intersection of modernist studies, new Southern studies (with a global dimension), and U.S. literary studies of empire. His book explores the centrality of questions of empire to matters of racial and regional relations through key episodes in the history of U.S. literary culture following Southern Reconstruction. Stecopoulos brilliantly illuminates multiple facets of the writers he considers, probing with remarkable acuity and subtlety the tensions between their imaginative work and their efforts as public intellectuals.

Donald E. Pease

In this well-documented and beautifully written book, Harilaos Stecopoulos convincingly demonstrates how the post-Reconstruction South supplied the U.S. imperial state with a sociocultural template with which it practiced colonialism abroad while disavowing it at home. Reconstructing the World will position Stecopoulos's project at the forefront of New South Studies.

Editorial Reviews

This short but rich book explores the ways that southern authors, including Thomas Dixon, Charles Chestnutt, W. E. B. Du Bois, James Weldon Johnson, Carson McCullers, William Faulkner, and Richard Wright grappled with the issues of region, race, gender, and social order that were produced between the 1898 inauguration of American empire and the Cold War. Deftly straddling history and literary criticism, Harilaos Stecopoulos roots his interpretation in well-entrenched cultural studies and in the newer approaches of transnational American studies.... Adopting a 'transnational notion of region' for his case studies, Stecopoulos offers a new exploration of these works' spatial, gendered, and racial implications in response to American empire. Reconstructing the World presents an important connection between southern literature, culture, issues of racial ad regional identities, and related (but often ignored) global systems of ideology, economy, and power.

-- "Journal of American History"

From the Publisher

"Stecopoulos opens the present book with a photo of film director Spike Lee in post-Katrina New Orleans; he cites W. E. B. Du Bois's claim that, in the south, 'the Negro' is 'everything.' Thus, the majority of the eight 'public intellectuals' at the heart of Stecopoulos's discussion are African Americans: Du Bois, Charles Chestnutt, James Weldon Johnson, Richard Wright, and Alice Walker.... Stecopoulos presents a dazzling variety of perspectives on U.S. 'imperialisms.' Recommended."

J. W. Hall

"Reconstructing the World establishes Harilaos Stecopoulos as one of the most original voices in a new cohort of literary scholars writing at the intersection of modernist studies, new Southern studies (with a global dimension), and U.S. literary studies of empire. His book explores the centrality of questions of empire to matters of racial and regional relations through key episodes in the history of U.S. literary culture following Southern Reconstruction. Stecopoulos brilliantly illuminates multiple facets of the writers he considers, probing with remarkable acuity and subtlety the tensions between their imaginative work and their efforts as public intellectuals."

John T. Matthews

"In this well-documented and beautifully written book, Harilaos Stecopoulos convincingly demonstrates how the post-Reconstruction South supplied the U.S. imperial state with a sociocultural template with which it practiced colonialism abroad while disavowing it at home. Reconstructing the World will position Stecopoulos's project at the forefront of New South Studies."

Donald E. Pease

This short but rich book explores the ways that southern authors, including Thomas Dixon, Charles Chestnutt, W. E. B. Du Bois, James Weldon Johnson, Carson McCullers, William Faulkner, and Richard Wright grappled with the issues of region, race, gender, and social order that were produced between the 1898 inauguration of American empire and the Cold War. Deftly straddling history and literary criticism, Harilaos Stecopoulos roots his interpretation in well-entrenched cultural studies and in the newer approaches of transnational American studies.... Adopting a 'transnational notion of region' for his case studies, Stecopoulos offers a new exploration of these works' spatial, gendered, and racial implications in response to American empire. Reconstructing the World presents an important connection between southern literature, culture, issues of racial ad regional identities, and related (but often ignored) global systems of ideology, economy, and power.

Journal of American History