White Masculinity in the Recent South

Making the Modern South

by Trent Watts (Editor)

From antebellum readers avidly consuming stories featuring white southern men as benevolent patriarchs, hell-raising frontiersmen, and callous plantation owners to post--Civil War southern writers seeking to advance a model of southern manhood and male authority as honorable, dignified, and admirable, the idea of a distinctly southern masculinity has reflected the broad regional differences between North and South. In the latter half of the twentieth century and beyond, the media have helped to shape modern models of white manhood, not only for southerners but for the rest of the nation and the world.
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 cutting-edge volume seeks to do what no other single work has to explore the ways in which white southern manhood has been experienced and represented since World War II. Using a variety of approaches -- cultural 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. Topics 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 engaging 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.
While economic and social conditions of the South changed dramatically in the twentieth century, white manhood as it is expressed in the contemporary South is still a complex, contingent, historicized matter, and broadly shared -- or at least broadly recognized -- notions of white southern manhood continue to be central to southern culture. Representing some of the best recent scholarship in southern gender studies, this bold collection invites further explorations into twenty-first-century white southern masculinity.

280 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 2008

Reviews

[Bobby · Rating 4 out of 5]

LSU Press has a long tradition of publishing important books on race and gender in the American south. Books like The Civilian War: Confederate Women and Union Soldiers during Sherman’s March (Lisa Tendrich Frank), Radical Spiritual Motherhood: Autobiography and Empowerment in Nineteenth-Century African American Women (Rosetta R. Haynes), and We Have Raised All of You: Motherhood in the South, 1750–1835 (Katy Simpson Smith) have explored different aspects of the female experience—be that of white women or their African American counterparts—in the context of the old South. These books offer an invaluable resource for people like me who wish to understand the struggles and triumphs of women and people of color who have helped to shape today’s social environment.

While the aforementioned books offer insight into an experience that I cannot innately relate to, White Masculinity in the Recent South, edited by Trent Watts, offers perspectives on the experience that I am currently living. I read this book with great pleasure as I recognized in its pages not only myself but also family members, friends, and colleagues.

Ask someone who has never lived in the South to describe white southern males. There is a good chance that you will hear some of the following: they are good ol’ boys; they are racist; they are gun nuts; they wave Rebel flags; they are Bible-thumpers; their political views are extremely conservative; they are blissfully ignorant rednecks who talk funny.

Why does this stereotype exist? White Masculinity in the Recent South explores some of these misconceptions and traces their origins through essays on subjects like football in the South, southern wedge-issue politics, deer camps, religious camps, college fraternities, the novels of William Faulkner, and the music of Lynyrd Skynyrd. Most important, however, the essays in this book challenge the idea that all southern white men share the same beliefs and values. As Watts states in his introduction, “Beyond the stereotypes of patriarchs and bubbas, there are still many untold stories about white manhood and masculinity.” As a white southern male who doesn’t fit the good ol’ boy archetype, this is a welcome affirmation.

This book is perfect for those who wish to have a deeper understanding of the modern white southern male experience. The appeal of White Masculinity in the Recent South should not be limited to outsiders though. White southern males will also find this a valuable resource to explore the complexity of who we are now and how our recent history has shaped us.

[Heidi · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fantastic book of essays what explain the the Southern male psyche.