This thesis discusses the Reconstruction period in the southern United States, including the events leading up to Reconstruction, the socioeconomic factors of Reconstruction itself, and the effect it had on both black and white societies.

“Beasts of the Southern screen: race, gender, and the global South in American cinema since 1963,” explores the role that the Southern imaginary has played at the crux of national, media, and personal mythmaking. This dissertation argues that the Southern imaginary—here defined as filmic images of Southernness—has helped Americans manage a series of crises from the late Cold War period to the current moment. Repudiating an allegedly recalcitrant South allowed the United States to see itself as a democratic, progressive place (via downward comparison) even as events like the Civil Rights movement, feminism, and the Vietnam War imperiled the coherence of national identity. Imagined sojourns through the South have also helped filmmakers glimpse the alternative, unauthorized fantasies and fears that swirl just underneath “official narratives” of national and personal identity. Films set in the Southern imaginary are thus crucially important to processing the traumas that connect nation and subject. As a fantasy space, the Southern imaginary allows subjects to confront overwhelming events that can only be endured when “staring over the fence” into a region at once a part of and distinct from the nation. The first two chapters argue that filmmakers use images of an antiquated South to process Vietnam War-era traumas. Slavery epics like The Beguiled and Southern horror films including Deliverance allegorize white anxieties over the political influence of minority populations. Later chapters contend that Southern-set films continue to appropriate stories of marginalized peoples, but now under the mantle of tolerance. The third chapter argues that Hollywood films starring Southern, queer cowboys demonstrate the ascendancy of American progressivism even in the once-repressive South. However, these films often exclude minority subjects from their purportedly tolerant landscapes. The final chapter of this dissertation therefore turns to films made within Southern communities like Moonlight, analyzing how the filmmakers use silence and visual obscurity to resist the objectifying gaze of the camera. In the films analyzed, the Southern imaginary emerges as fertile site for trenchant social critique and fantasies that connect the personal to the political.

This essay investigates how Southern society functions during the latter part of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century in America. This is done by looking for signs of patriarchy, religion and its influence, and also at the expectations on women in the story “A Rose For Emily”, which takes place in Jefferson, Mississippi. Patriarchy, religion and expectations on women are visible through the analysis of the protagonist Miss Emily’s relationship to her father, her relationship to her lover Homer Barron and when she is on her own at the end of her life. Furthermore, the townspeople are the narrators in this story and how they treat and view Miss Emily in the three examined parts of her life represents how the American South functions. Also, the analysis is done with a feminist theoretical perspective. Through the analysis, the conclusion is made that the South is a very patriarchal and sexist society. Men are considered to be the superior sex and rule over women. Because of the Puritan religion, women live in an oppressive environment and live very strict lives. For Southern women, marriage is a must if they want to survive both socially and financially.

This dissertation consists of a collection of sixty pages of poetry of various styles and forms, predominately in free verse. Subject matter includes family and relationships, especially between women of different generations; history, both personal/family and public; language; means of handling grief and death; travel and return; and sense of place/home. As a writer, I often find myself taking moments from my own life and transforming them into poems. All language fascinates me, especially words that are closely tied to the culture from which they emerge. Several poems in the collection rely on unusual, untranslatable, or forgotten words. These poems explore the relationships between place, history, culture, and language. All of these are intertwined, and it is often difficult to extract one element and study it discretely from the rest. Additionally, history, both collective and personal, often provides a stimulus for my poems and is useful in bridging the gap between personal memories and associations and those of the reading audience. I often approach the past through photographs, physical objects, or landscapes, or share stories of my own family’s history. Many of these poems are about questioning one’s own ancestry. I create myths about myself and others, often my own family and ancestors, building a story around a particular truth. In these poems, I rewrite my own history and experiences.

Originally published as the author's Thesis (Ph. D.)--Washington University, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [189]-205).

Originally published as the author's Thesis (Ph. D.)--Washington University, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (p. [189]-205).

"Retro" is a novel which attempts to depict the psychological reality of the spiritually isolated individual characterized in traditional gothic novels, in this case the alienated individual in the contemporary American South. The novel follows the doctrine set down by Roland Barthes, Frank Kermode, and other postmodern critics, which holds that, as Kermode puts it, "all closure is in bad faith." Therefore, rather than offering resolution to the problems and events presented in the text, the novel attempts instead to illustrate the psychological effects its main character experiences when confronted with a world that offers only irresolution and uncertainty. The novel's strategy is to depart from conventional, realistic modes of narration and to adopt instead certain characteristics of satire, surrealism, and the type of grotesque often associated with the gothic novel.

In 1952, affluent white suburban citizens of Birmingham, Alabama voted overwhelmingly in support of Dwight D. Eisenhower. This thesis explores and examines why the emergence of a thriving suburban community that voted Republican occurred. This examination used a collection of numerous sources, primary and secondary. Newspapers served as the most important tool for discovering why the new suburbs aligned to Republicanism. The sources describe a suburban area that aligned with the Republican Party due to numerous reasons: race, Eisenhower’s popularity, the Cold War, and economic issues. Due to those reasons, the election of 1952 began to alter their society and political affiliations. The 1952 presidential election results symbolized the political, cultural, and economic acceptance of the Republican Party, which created a Republican political base in the heart of a Democratic state.

Thèse numérisée par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.

Thèse numérisée par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal