Jay Watson – författare

Winner of the 2020 C. Hugh Holman AwardWilliam Faulkner has enjoyed a secure reputation as American modernism''s foremost fiction writer, and as a landmark figure in international literary modernism, for well over half a century. Less secure, however, has been any scholarly consensus about what those modernist credentials actually entail. Over recent decades, there have been lively debates in modernist studies over the who, what, where, when, and how of the surprisingly elusive phenomena of modernism and modernity. This bookbroadens and deepens an understanding of Faulkner''s oeuvre by following some of the guiding questions and insights of new modernism studies scholarship into understudied aspects of Faulkner''s literary modernism and his cultural modernity.William Faulkner and the Faces of Modernity explores Faulkner''s rural Mississippians as modernizing subjects in their own right rather than mere objects of modernization; traces the new speed gradients, media formations, and intensifications of sensory and affective experience that the twentieth century brought to the cities and countryside of the US South; maps the fault lines in whiteness as a racial modernity under construction and contestation during the Jim Crow period;resituates Faulkner''s fictional Yoknapatawpha County within the transnational counter-modernities of the Black Atlantic; and follows the author''s imaginative engagement with modern biopolitics through his late work A Fable, a novel Faulkner hoped to make his ''magnum o.'' By returning to the utterly uncontroversial factof Faulkner''s modernism with a critical sensibility sharpened by new modernism studies, William Faulkner and the Faces of Modernity aims to spark further reappraisal of a distinguished and quite dazzling body of fiction. Perhaps even make it new.

Winner of the 2020 C. Hugh Holman AwardWilliam Faulkner has enjoyed a secure reputation as American modernism''s foremost fiction writer, and as a landmark figure in international literary modernism, for well over half a century. Less secure, however, has been any scholarly consensus about what those modernist credentials actually entail. Over recent decades, there have been lively debates in modernist studies over the who, what, where, when, and how of the surprisingly elusive phenomena of modernism and modernity. This bookbroadens and deepens an understanding of Faulkner''s oeuvre by following some of the guiding questions and insights of new modernism studies scholarship into understudied aspects of Faulkner''s literary modernism and his cultural modernity.William Faulkner and the Faces of Modernity explores Faulkner''s rural Mississippians as modernizing subjects in their own right rather than mere objects of modernization; traces the new speed gradients, media formations, and intensifications of sensory and affective experience that the twentieth century brought to the cities and countryside of the US South; maps the fault lines in whiteness as a racial modernity under construction and contestation during the Jim Crow period;resituates Faulkner''s fictional Yoknapatawpha County within the transnational counter-modernities of the Black Atlantic; and follows the author''s imaginative engagement with modern biopolitics through his late work A Fable, a novel Faulkner hoped to make his ''magnum o.'' By returning to the utterly uncontroversial factof Faulkner''s modernism with a critical sensibility sharpened by new modernism studies, William Faulkner and the Faces of Modernity aims to spark further reappraisal of a distinguished and quite dazzling body of fiction. Perhaps even make it new.

Fossil-Fuel Faulkner is the first book-length study of a single writer in the emerging field of the energy humanities. As we try to imagine our way beyond a deeply problematic fossil energy regime that depletes and degrades the planet and sharpens the gap between Global North and Global South and move toward as more just and sustainable energy future, there is much to learn from how previous generations imagined the modern transition into a hydrocarbon-fueled world from the solar- and muscle-powered order that preceded it, and from how they imagined the consequences of that transition, including the new cultural forms it elicited and the new social problems it created. Jay Watson turns to the life and writings of William Faulkner, creator of one of the richest imaginative landscapes in American literary history, for new insights into the deep-reaching connections linking the extraction, production, and use of energy resources in his native US South to its histories of slavery and Jim Crow, its ecologies of disruption and despoilation, the logic of its cultural practices, and the nuances of literary form. Surveying the author''s personal and imaginative engagements with coal and oil, with modern automobility and the road narrative, and with the profligate energies of the sun and the human animal, Fossil-Fuel Faulkner explores nearly all of Faulkner''s novels and over a dozen of his short stories, and reveals the author to be one of petromodernity''s keenest chroniclers and critics.

Fossil-Fuel Faulkner is the first book-length study of a single writer in the emerging field of the energy humanities. As we try to imagine our way beyond a deeply problematic fossil energy regime that depletes and degrades the planet and sharpens the gap between Global North and Global South and move toward as more just and sustainable energy future, there is much to learn from how previous generations imagined the modern transition into a hydrocarbon-fueled world from the solar- and muscle-powered order that preceded it, and from how they imagined the consequences of that transition, including the new cultural forms it elicited and the new social problems it created. Jay Watson turns to the life and writings of William Faulkner, creator of one of the richest imaginative landscapes in American literary history, for new insights into the deep-reaching connections linking the extraction, production, and use of energy resources in his native US South to its histories of slavery and Jim Crow, its ecologies of disruption and despoilation, the logic of its cultural practices, and the nuances of literary form. Surveying the author''s personal and imaginative engagements with coal and oil, with modern automobility and the road narrative, and with the profligate energies of the sun and the human animal, Fossil-Fuel Faulkner explores nearly all of Faulkner''s novels and over a dozen of his short stories, and reveals the author to be one of petromodernity''s keenest chroniclers and critics.

Fossil-Fuel Faulkner is the first book-length study of a single writer in the emerging field of the energy humanities. As we try to imagine our way beyond a deeply problematic fossil energy regime that depletes and degrades the planet and sharpens the gap between Global North and Global South and move toward as more just and sustainable energy future, there is much to learn from how previous generations imagined the modern transition into a hydrocarbon-fueled world from the solar- and muscle-powered order that preceded it, and from how they imagined the consequences of that transition, including the new cultural forms it elicited and the new social problems it created. Jay Watson turns to the life and writings of William Faulkner, creator of one of the richest imaginative landscapes in American literary history, for new insights into the deep-reaching connections linking the extraction, production, and use of energy resources in his native US South to its histories of slavery and Jim Crow, its ecologies of disruption and despoilation, the logic of its cultural practices, and the nuances of literary form. Surveying the author's personal and imaginative engagements with coal and oil, with modern automobility and the road narrative, and with the profligate energies of the sun and the human animal, Fossil-Fuel Faulkner explores nearly all of Faulkner's novels and over a dozen of his short stories, and reveals the author to be one of petromodernity's keenest chroniclers and critics.

Winner of the 2020 C. Hugh Holman Award William Faulkner has enjoyed a secure reputation as American modernism's foremost fiction writer, and as a landmark figure in international literary modernism, for well over half a century. Less secure, however, has been any scholarly consensus about what those modernist credentials actually entail. Over recent decades, there have been lively debates in modernist studies over the who, what, where, when, and how of the surprisingly elusive phenomena of modernism and modernity. This book broadens and deepens an understanding of Faulkner's oeuvre by following some of the guiding questions and insights of new modernism studies scholarship into understudied aspects of Faulkner's literary modernism and his cultural modernity. William Faulkner and the Faces of Modernity explores Faulkner's rural Mississippians as modernizing subjects in their own right rather than mere objects of modernization; traces the new speed gradients, media formations, and intensifications of sensory and affective experience that the twentieth century brought to the cities and countryside of the US South; maps the fault lines in whiteness as a racial modernity under construction and contestation during the Jim Crow period; resituates Faulkner's fictional Yoknapatawpha County within the transnational counter-modernities of the Black Atlantic; and follows the author's imaginative engagement with modern biopolitics through his late work A Fable, a novel Faulkner hoped to make his 'magnum o.' By returning to the utterly uncontroversial fact of Faulkner's modernism with a critical sensibility sharpened by new modernism studies, William Faulkner and the Faces of Modernity aims to spark further reappraisal of a distinguished and quite dazzling body of fiction. Perhaps even make it new.

Forensic Fictions is the first book-length critical study of William Faulkner's fictional depictions of the legal vocation and the practice of law. Examining Faulkner's lawyer characters in light of the southern storytelling tradition, Jay Watson argues that the forensic competence of the Faulknerian lawyer is a direct function of his skill as a raconteur.To trace the biographical and historical roots of Faulkner's lifelong preoccupation with the legal profession, Watson draws on contemporary scholarship in narrative, rhetoric, jurisprudence, legal and intellectual history, literary theory, and Lacanian psychoanalysis. His approach yields insightful readings of forensic characters and scenes from such works as "An Odor of Verbena," The Hamlet, "Wild Palms," Absalom, Absalom! and The Reivers.Watson shows the links between storytelling and the competence of Faulkner's legal characters by examining the intertextual logic that connects the two most important lawyers in the Yoknapatawpha fiction: the incompetent Horace Benbow and the more capable Gavin Stevens, whose entrance into Faulkner's oeuvre coincides with Benbow's untimely departure from it. Focusing on the nine novels in which these two characters appear, Watson traces the evolutionary process by which Stevens supplants Benbow. Three of the Stevens novels--Intruder in the Dust, Knight's Gambit, and Requiem for a Nun--from what Watson calls Faulkner's "forensic trilogy" and, when read together, constitute the writer's most sustained investigation of the rhetorical and ethical responsibilities of the lawyer-citizen.Faulkner, Watson argues, saw the forensic figure as a potential hybrid of homo loquens and homo politicus, capable of combing the roles of storyteller, rhetorician, and theatrical performer with those of critic, citizen, and ethical man. As such, this figure served as a provocative authorial surrogate through whom Faulkner could explore diverse and often contradictory aspects of his personal experience, his family background, his cultural heritage, and, most of all, his own artistic use of language.

Jay Watson argues that southern literary studies has been overidealized and dominated by intellectual history for too long. In Reading for the Body, he calls for the field to be rematerialized and grounded in an awareness of the human body as the site where ideas, including ideas about the U.S. South itself, ultimately happen.Employing theoretical approaches to the body developed by thinkers such as Karl Marx, Colette Guillaumin, Elaine Scarry, and Friedrich Kittler, Watson also draws on histories of bodily representation to mine a century of southern fiction for its insights into problems that have preoccupied the region and nation alike: slavery, Jim Crow, and white supremacy; the marginalization of women; the impact of modernization; the issue of cultural authority and leadership; and the legacy of the Vietnam War. He focuses on the specific bodily attributes of hand, voice, and blood and the deeply embodied experiences of pain, illness, pregnancy, and war to offer new readings of a distinguished group of literary artists who turned their attention to the South: Mark Twain, Jean Toomer, Zora Neale Hurston, William Faulkner, Richard Wright, Katherine Anne Porter, Bobbie Ann Mason, and Walker Percy.In producing an intensely embodied U.S. literature these writers, Watson argues, were by turns extending and interrogating a centuries-old tradition in U.S. print culture, in which the recalcitrant materiality of the body serves as a trope for the regional alterity of the South. Reading for the Body makes a powerful case for the body as an important methodological resource for a new southern studies.

Jay Watson argues that southern literary studies has been overidealized and dominated by intellectual history for too long. In Reading for the Body, he calls for the field to be rematerialized and grounded in an awareness of the human body as the site where ideas, including ideas about the U.S. South itself, ultimately happen.Employing theoretical approaches to the body developed by thinkers such as Karl Marx, Colette Guillaumin, Elaine Scarry, and Friedrich Kittler, Watson also draws on histories of bodily representation to mine a century of southern fiction for its insights into problems that have preoccupied the region and nation alike: slavery, Jim Crow, and white supremacy; the marginalization of women; the impact of modernization; the issue of cultural authority and leadership; and the legacy of the Vietnam War. He focuses on the specific bodily attributes of hand, voice, and blood and the deeply embodied experiences of pain, illness, pregnancy, and war to offer new readings of a distinguished group of literary artists who turned their attention to the South: Mark Twain, Jean Toomer, Zora Neale Hurston, William Faulkner, Richard Wright, Katherine Anne Porter, Bobbie Ann Mason, and Walker Percy.In producing an intensely embodied U.S. literature these writers, Watson argues, were by turns extending and interrogating a centuries-old tradition in U.S. print culture, in which the recalcitrant materiality of the body serves as a trope for the regional alterity of the South. Reading for the Body makes a powerful case for the body as an important methodological resource for a new southern studies.

The recent spatial turn in social theory and cultural studies opens up exciting new possibilities for the study of William Faulkner's literature. The fictional domains of Yoknapatawpha County and Jefferson, Mississippi, are not simply imagined communities but imaginative geographies of remarkable complexity and detail, as evidenced by the maps Faulkner created of his ""apocryphal"" county. Exploring the diverse functions of space in Faulkner's artistic vision, the eleven essays in Faulkner's Geographies delve deep into Yoknapatawpha but also reach beyond it, to uncover unsuspected connections and flows linking local, regional, national, hemispheric, and global geographies in Faulkner's writings. Individual contributions examine the influence of the plantation as a land-use regime on Faulkner's imagination of north Mississippi's geography; the emergence of ""micro-Souths"" as a product of modern migratory patterns in the urban North of Faulkner's fiction; the enlistment of the author's work in the geopolitics of the cultural Cold War during the 1950s; the historical and literary affiliations between Faulkner's Deep South and Greater Mexico; the local and idiosyncratic as alternatives to region and nation; the unique intersection of regional and metropolitan geographies that Faulkner encountered as a novice writer immersed in the literary culture of New Orleans; the uses of feminist geography to trace the interplay of gender, space, and movement; and the circulation of Caribbean and ""Black South"" spaces and itineraries through Faulkner's masterpiece, Absalom, Absalom!By bringing new attention to the function of space, place, mapping, and movement in his literature, Faulkner's Geographies seeks to redraw the very boundaries of Faulkner studies.

The recent spatial turn in social theory and cultural studies opens up exciting new possibilities for the study of William Faulkner''s literature. The fictional domains of Yoknapatawpha County and Jefferson, Mississippi, are not simply imagined communities but imaginative geographies of remarkable complexity and detail, as evidenced by the maps Faulkner created of his “apocryphal” county. Exploring the diverse functions of space in Faulkner''s artistic vision, the eleven essays in Faulkner''s Geographies delve deep into Yoknapatawpha but also reach beyond it to uncover unsuspected connections and flows linking local, regional, national, hemispheric, and global geographies in Faulkner''s writings. Individual contributions examine the influence of the plantation as a land-use regime on Faulkner''s imagination of north Mississippi''s geography; the emergence of “micro-Souths” as a product of modern migratory patterns in the urban North of Faulkner''s fiction; the enlistment of the author''s work in the geopolitics of the cultural Cold War during the 1950s; the historical and literary affiliations between Faulkner''s Deep South and Greater Mexico; the local and idiosyncratic as alternatives to region and nation; the unique intersection of regional and metropolitan geographies that Faulkner encountered as a novice writer immersed in the literary culture of New Orleans; the uses of feminist geography to trace the interplay of gender, space, and movement; and the circulation of Caribbean and “Black South” spaces and itineraries through Faulkner''s masterpiece, Absalom, Absalom! By bringing new attention to the function of space, place, mapping, and movement in his literature, Faulkner''s Geographies seeks to redraw the very boundaries of Faulkner studies.

The recent spatial turn in social theory and cultural studies opens up exciting new possibilities for the study of William Faulkner''s literature. The fictional domains of Yoknapatawpha County and Jefferson, Mississippi, are not simply imagined communities but imaginative geographies of remarkable complexity and detail, as evidenced by the maps Faulkner created of his “apocryphal” county. Exploring the diverse functions of space in Faulkner''s artistic vision, the eleven essays in Faulkner''s Geographies delve deep into Yoknapatawpha but also reach beyond it to uncover unsuspected connections and flows linking local, regional, national, hemispheric, and global geographies in Faulkner''s writings. Individual contributions examine the influence of the plantation as a land-use regime on Faulkner''s imagination of north Mississippi''s geography; the emergence of “micro-Souths” as a product of modern migratory patterns in the urban North of Faulkner''s fiction; the enlistment of the author''s work in the geopolitics of the cultural Cold War during the 1950s; the historical and literary affiliations between Faulkner''s Deep South and Greater Mexico; the local and idiosyncratic as alternatives to region and nation; the unique intersection of regional and metropolitan geographies that Faulkner encountered as a novice writer immersed in the literary culture of New Orleans; the uses of feminist geography to trace the interplay of gender, space, and movement; and the circulation of Caribbean and “Black South” spaces and itineraries through Faulkner''s masterpiece, Absalom, Absalom! By bringing new attention to the function of space, place, mapping, and movement in his literature, Faulkner''s Geographies seeks to redraw the very boundaries of Faulkner studies.

These essays examine issues across the wide arc of Faulkner's extraordinary career, from his aesthetic apprenticeship in the visual arts, to late-career engagements with the Cold War, the civil rights movement, and beyond, to the place of death in his artistic vision and the long, varied afterlives he and his writings have enjoyed in literature and popular culture. Contributors deliver stimulating reassessments of Faulkner's first novel, Soldiers' Pay; his final novel, The Reivers; and much of the important work between. Scholars explore how a broad range of elite and lowbrow cultural forms--plantation diaries, phonograph records, pulp magazines--shaped Faulkner's capacious imagination and how his works were translated into such media as film and modern dance. Essays place Faulkner's writings in dialogue with those of such fellow twentieth-century authors as W. E. B. Du Bois, Ernest Hemingway, Richard Hall, and Jayne Anne Phillips; locate his work in relation to African American intellectual currents and Global South artistic traditions; and weigh the rewards as well as the risks of dislodging Faulkner from the canonical position he currently occupies.While Faulkner studies has cultivated an image of the novelist as a neglected genius who toiled in obscurity, a look back fifty years to the final months of the author's life reveals a widely traveled and celebrated artist whose significance was framed in national and international as well as regional terms. Fifty Years after Faulkner bears out that expansive view, reintroducing us to a writer whose work retains its ability to provoke, intrigue, and surprise a variety of readerships.

Contributions by Ted Atkinson, Michael P. Bibler, Deborah Clarke, David A. Davis, David M. Earle, Jason D. Fichtel, Elizabeth Fielder, Joseph Fruscione, Matthew Pratt Guterl, Patrick E. Horn, Cheryl Lester, Jessica Martell, Sharon Monteith, Richard C. Moreland, Alan Nadel, Julie Beth Napolin, François Pitavy, Ramón Saldívar, Hortense J. Spillers, Terrell L. Tebbetts, Zackary Vernon, Randall Wilhelm, and Charles Reagan Wilson These essays examine issues across the wide arc of Faulkner''s extraordinary career, from his aesthetic apprenticeship in the visual arts, to late-career engagements with the Cold War, the civil rights movement, and beyond, to the place of death in his artistic vision and the long, varied afterlives he and his writings have enjoyed in literature and popular culture. Contributors deliver stimulating reassessments of Faulkner''s first novel, Soldiers'' Pay; his final novel, The Reivers; and much of the important work between. Scholars explore how a broad range of elite and lowbrow cultural forms—plantation diaries, phonograph records, pulp magazines—shaped Faulkner''s capacious imagination and how his works were translated into such media as film and modern dance. Essays place Faulkner''s writings in dialogue with those of fellow twentieth-century authors including W. E. B. Du Bois, Ernest Hemingway, Richard Hall, and Jayne Anne Phillips; locate his work in relation to African American intellectual currents and Global South artistic traditions; and weigh the rewards as well as the risks of dislodging Faulkner from the canonical position he currently occupies. While Faulkner studies has cultivated an image of the novelist as a neglected genius who toiled in obscurity, a look back fifty years to the final months of the author''s life reveals a widely traveled and celebrated artist whose significance was framed in national and international as well as regional terms. Fifty Years after Faulkner bears out that expansive view, reintroducing us to a writer whose work retains its ability to provoke, intrigue, and surprise a variety of readerships.

Contributions by Ted Atkinson, Michael P. Bibler, Deborah Clarke, David A. Davis, David M. Earle, Jason D. Fichtel, Elizabeth Fielder, Joseph Fruscione, Matthew Pratt Guterl, Patrick E. Horn, Cheryl Lester, Jessica Martell, Sharon Monteith, Richard C. Moreland, Alan Nadel, Julie Beth Napolin, François Pitavy, Ramón Saldívar, Hortense J. Spillers, Terrell L. Tebbetts, Zackary Vernon, Randall Wilhelm, and Charles Reagan Wilson These essays examine issues across the wide arc of Faulkner''s extraordinary career, from his aesthetic apprenticeship in the visual arts, to late-career engagements with the Cold War, the civil rights movement, and beyond, to the place of death in his artistic vision and the long, varied afterlives he and his writings have enjoyed in literature and popular culture. Contributors deliver stimulating reassessments of Faulkner''s first novel, Soldiers'' Pay; his final novel, The Reivers; and much of the important work between. Scholars explore how a broad range of elite and lowbrow cultural forms—plantation diaries, phonograph records, pulp magazines—shaped Faulkner''s capacious imagination and how his works were translated into such media as film and modern dance. Essays place Faulkner''s writings in dialogue with those of fellow twentieth-century authors including W. E. B. Du Bois, Ernest Hemingway, Richard Hall, and Jayne Anne Phillips; locate his work in relation to African American intellectual currents and Global South artistic traditions; and weigh the rewards as well as the risks of dislodging Faulkner from the canonical position he currently occupies. While Faulkner studies has cultivated an image of the novelist as a neglected genius who toiled in obscurity, a look back fifty years to the final months of the author''s life reveals a widely traveled and celebrated artist whose significance was framed in national and international as well as regional terms. Fifty Years after Faulkner bears out that expansive view, reintroducing us to a writer whose work retains its ability to provoke, intrigue, and surprise a variety of readerships.

At the turn of the millennium, the Martinican novelist Édouard Glissant offered the bold prediction that ""Faulkner's oeuvre will be made complete when it is revisited and made vital by African Americans,"" a goal that ""will be achieved by a radically 'other' reading."" In the spirit of Glissant's prediction, this collection places William Faulkner's literary oeuvre in dialogue with a hemispheric canon of black writing from the United States and the Caribbean. The volume's seventeen essays and poetry selections chart lines of engagement, dialogue, and reciprocal resonance between Faulkner and his black precursors, contemporaries, and successors in the Americas.Contributors place Faulkner's work in illuminating conversation with writings by Paul Laurence Dunbar, W. E. B. Du Bois, James Weldon Johnson, Jean Toomer, Nella Larsen, Claude McKay, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Ernest J. Gaines, Marie Vieux-Chauvet, Toni Morrison, Edwidge Danticat, Randall Kenan, Edward P. Jones, and Natasha Trethewey, along with the musical artistry of Mississippi bluesman Charley Patton.In addition, five contemporary African American poets offer their own creative responses to Faulkner's writings, characters, verbal art, and historical example. In these ways, the volume develops a comparative approach to the Faulkner oeuvre that goes beyond the compelling but limiting question of influence - who read whom, whose works draw from whose - to explore the confluences between Faulkner and black writing in the hemisphere.

Contributions by Ted Atkinson, Thadious M. Davis, Matthew Dischinger, Dotty Dye, Chiyuma Elliott, Doreen Fowler, Joseph Fruscione, T. Austin Graham, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Derrick Harriell, Lisa Hinrichsen, Randall Horton, George Hutchinson, Andrew B. Leiter, John Wharton Lowe, Jamaal May, Ben Robbins, Tim A. Ryan, Sharon Eve Sarthou, Jenna Sciuto, James Smethurst, and Jay WatsonAt the turn of the millennium, the Martinican novelist Édouard Glissant offered the bold prediction that “Faulkner’s oeuvre will be made complete when it is revisited and made vital by African Americans,” a goal that “will be achieved by a radically ‘other’ reading.” In the spirit of Glissant’s prediction, this collection places William Faulkner’s literary oeuvre in dialogue with a hemispheric canon of black writing from the United States and the Caribbean. The volume’s seventeen essays and poetry selections chart lines of engagement, dialogue, and reciprocal resonance between Faulkner and his black precursors, contemporaries, and successors in the Americas.Contributors place Faulkner’s work in illuminating conversation with writings by Paul Laurence Dunbar, W. E. B. Du Bois, James Weldon Johnson, Jean Toomer, Nella Larsen, Claude McKay, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Ernest J. Gaines, Marie Vieux-Chauvet, Toni Morrison, Edwidge Danticat, Randall Kenan, Edward P. Jones, and Natasha Trethewey, along with the musical artistry of Mississippi bluesman Charley Patton.In addition, five contemporary African American poets offer their own creative responses to Faulkner’s writings, characters, verbal art, and historical example. In these ways, the volume develops a comparative approach to the Faulkner oeuvre that goes beyond the compelling but limiting question of influence—who read whom, whose works draw from whose—to explore the confluences between Faulkner and black writing in the hemisphere.

Contributions by Ted Atkinson, Thadious M. Davis, Matthew Dischinger, Dotty Dye, Chiyuma Elliott, Doreen Fowler, Joseph Fruscione, T. Austin Graham, Rachel Eliza Griffiths, Derrick Harriell, Lisa Hinrichsen, Randall Horton, George Hutchinson, Andrew B. Leiter, John Wharton Lowe, Jamaal May, Ben Robbins, Tim A. Ryan, Sharon Eve Sarthou, Jenna Sciuto, James Smethurst, and Jay WatsonAt the turn of the millennium, the Martinican novelist Édouard Glissant offered the bold prediction that “Faulkner’s oeuvre will be made complete when it is revisited and made vital by African Americans,” a goal that “will be achieved by a radically ‘other’ reading.” In the spirit of Glissant’s prediction, this collection places William Faulkner’s literary oeuvre in dialogue with a hemispheric canon of black writing from the United States and the Caribbean. The volume’s seventeen essays and poetry selections chart lines of engagement, dialogue, and reciprocal resonance between Faulkner and his black precursors, contemporaries, and successors in the Americas.Contributors place Faulkner’s work in illuminating conversation with writings by Paul Laurence Dunbar, W. E. B. Du Bois, James Weldon Johnson, Jean Toomer, Nella Larsen, Claude McKay, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Ernest J. Gaines, Marie Vieux-Chauvet, Toni Morrison, Edwidge Danticat, Randall Kenan, Edward P. Jones, and Natasha Trethewey, along with the musical artistry of Mississippi bluesman Charley Patton.In addition, five contemporary African American poets offer their own creative responses to Faulkner’s writings, characters, verbal art, and historical example. In these ways, the volume develops a comparative approach to the Faulkner oeuvre that goes beyond the compelling but limiting question of influence—who read whom, whose works draw from whose—to explore the confluences between Faulkner and black writing in the hemisphere.

William Faulkner remains a historian's writer. A distinguished roster of historians have referenced Faulkner in their published work. They are drawn to him as a fellow historian, a shaper of narrative reflections on the meaning of the past; as a historiographer, a theorist, and dramatist of the fraught enterprise of doing history; and as a historical figure himself, especially following his mid-century emergence as a public intellectual after winning the Nobel Prize for Literature.This volume brings together historians and literary scholars to explore the many facets of Faulkner's relationship to history: the historical contexts of his novels and stories; his explorations of the historiographic imagination; his engagement with historical figures from both the regional and national past; his influence on professional historians; his pursuit of alternate modes of temporal awareness; and the histories of print culture that shaped the production, reception, and criticism of Faulkner's work.Contributors draw on the history of development in the Mississippi Valley, the construction of Confederate memory, the history and curriculum of Harvard University, twentieth-century debates over police brutality and temperance reform, the history of modern childhood, and the literary histories of anti-slavery writing and pulp fiction to illuminate Faulkner's work. Others in the collection explore the meaning of Faulkner's fiction for such professional historians as C. Vann Woodward and Albert Bushnell Hart. In these ways and more, Faulkner and History offers fresh insights into one of the most persistent and long-recognized elements of the Mississippian's artistic vision.

Contributions by W. Fitzhugh Brundage, Jordan Burke, Rebecca Bennett Clark, James C. Cobb, Anna Creadick, Colin Dayan, Wai Chee Dimock, Sarah E. Gardner, Hannah Godwin, Brooks E. Hefner, Andrew B. Leiter, Sean McCann, Conor Picken, Natalie J. Ring, Calvin Schermerhorn, and Jay Watson William Faulkner remains a historian’s writer. A distinguished roster of historians are drawn to him as a fellow historian, a shaper of narrative reflections on the meaning of the past; as a historiographer, a theorist and dramatist of the fraught enterprise of doing history; and as a historical figure himself, especially following his mid-century emergence as a public intellectual after winning the Nobel Prize for Literature. This volume brings together historians and literary scholars to explore the many facets of Faulkner’s relationship to history: the historical contexts of his novels and stories; his explorations of the historiographic imagination; his engagement with historical figures from both the regional and national past; his influence on professional historians; his pursuit of alternate modes of temporal awareness; and the histories of print culture that shaped the production, reception, and criticism of Faulkner’s work. Contributors draw on the history of development in the Mississippi Valley, the construction of Confederate memory, the history and curriculum of Harvard University, twentieth-century debates over police brutality and temperance reform, the history of modern childhood, and the literary histories of antislavery writing and pulp fiction to illuminate Faulkner’s work. Others in the collection explore the meaning of Faulkner’s fiction for such professional historians as C. Vann Woodward and Albert Bushnell Hart. In these ways and more, Faulkner and History offers fresh insights into one of the most persistent and long-recognized elements of the Mississippian’s artistic vision.

William Faulkner’s first ventures into print culture began far from the world of highbrow New York publishing houses such as Boni & Liveright or Random House and little magazines such as the Double-Dealer. With that diverse publishing history in mind, this collection explores Faulkner’s multifaceted engagements, as writer and reader, with the United States and international print cultures of his era, along with how these cultures have mediated his relationship with various twentieth- and twenty-first-century audiences.These essays address the place of Faulkner and his writings in the creation, design, publishing, marketing, reception, and collecting of books, in the culture of twentieth-century magazines, journals, newspapers, and other periodicals (from pulp to avantgarde), in the history of modern readers and readerships, and in the construction and cultural politics of literary authorship.Several contributors focus on Faulkner’s sensational 1931 novel Sanctuary to illustrate the author’s multifaceted relationship to the print ecology of his time, tracing the novel’s path from the wellsprings of Faulkner’s artistic vision to the novel’s reception among reviewers, tastemakers, intellectuals, and other readers of the early 1930s. Other essayists discuss Faulkner’s early notices, the Saturday Review of Literature, Saturday Evening Post, men’s magazines of the 1950s, and Cold War modernism.With contributions by: Greg Barnhisel, John N. Duvall, Kristin Fujie, Sarah E. Gardner, Jaime Harker, Kristi Rowan Humphreys, Robert Jackson, Mary A. Knighton, Jennifer Nolan, Carl Rollyson, Tim A. Ryan, Jay Satterfield, Erin A. Smith, and Yung-Hsing Wu.

With contributions by Greg Barnhisel, John N. Duvall, Kristin Fujie, Sarah E. Gardner, Jaime Harker, Kristi Rowan Humphreys, Robert Jackson, Mary A. Knighton, Jennifer Nolan, Carl Rollyson, Tim A. Ryan, Jay Satterfield, Erin A. Smith, Jay Watson, and Yung-Hsing WuWilliam Faulkner''s first ventures into print culture began far from the world of highbrow New York publishing houses such as Boni & Liveright or Random House and little magazines such as the Double Dealer. With that diverse publishing history in mind, this collection explores Faulkner''s multifaceted engagements, as writer and reader, with the US and international print cultures of his era, along with how these cultures have mediated his relationship with various twentieth- and twenty-first-century audiences.These essays address the place of Faulkner and his writings in the creation, design, publishing, marketing, reception, and collecting of books; in the culture of twentieth-century magazines, journals, newspapers, and other periodicals (from pulp to avant-garde); in the history of modern readers and readerships; and in the construction and cultural politics of literary authorship.Several contributors focus on Faulkner''s sensational 1931 novel Sanctuary to illustrate the author''s multifaceted relationship to the print ecology of his time, tracing the novel''s path from the wellsprings of Faulkner''s artistic vision to the novel''s reception among reviewers, tastemakers, intellectuals, and other readers of the early 1930s. Other essayists discuss Faulkner''s early notices, the Saturday Review of Literature, Saturday Evening Post, men''s magazines of the 1950s, and Cold War modernism.

With contributions by Greg Barnhisel, John N. Duvall, Kristin Fujie, Sarah E. Gardner, Jaime Harker, Kristi Rowan Humphreys, Robert Jackson, Mary A. Knighton, Jennifer Nolan, Carl Rollyson, Tim A. Ryan, Jay Satterfield, Erin A. Smith, Jay Watson, and Yung-Hsing WuWilliam Faulkner''s first ventures into print culture began far from the world of highbrow New York publishing houses such as Boni & Liveright or Random House and little magazines such as the Double Dealer. With that diverse publishing history in mind, this collection explores Faulkner''s multifaceted engagements, as writer and reader, with the US and international print cultures of his era, along with how these cultures have mediated his relationship with various twentieth- and twenty-first-century audiences.These essays address the place of Faulkner and his writings in the creation, design, publishing, marketing, reception, and collecting of books; in the culture of twentieth-century magazines, journals, newspapers, and other periodicals (from pulp to avant-garde); in the history of modern readers and readerships; and in the construction and cultural politics of literary authorship.Several contributors focus on Faulkner''s sensational 1931 novel Sanctuary to illustrate the author''s multifaceted relationship to the print ecology of his time, tracing the novel''s path from the wellsprings of Faulkner''s artistic vision to the novel''s reception among reviewers, tastemakers, intellectuals, and other readers of the early 1930s. Other essayists discuss Faulkner''s early notices, the Saturday Review of Literature, Saturday Evening Post, men''s magazines of the 1950s, and Cold War modernism.

The recent spatial turn in social theory and cultural studies opens up exciting new possibilities for the study of William Faulkner’s literature. The fictional domains of Yoknapatawpha County and Jefferson, Mississippi, are not simply imagined communities but imaginative geographies of remarkable complexity and detail, as evidenced by the maps Faulkner created of his “apocryphal” county. Exploring the diverse functions of space in Faulkner’s artistic vision, the eleven essays in Faulkner’s Geographies delve deep into Yoknapatawpha but also reach beyond it, to uncover unsuspected connections and flows linking local, regional, national, hemispheric, and global geographies in Faulkner’s writings. Individual contributions examine the influence of the plantation as a land-use regime on Faulkner’s imagination of north Mississippi’s geography; the emergence of “micro-Souths” as a product of modern migratory patterns in the urban North of Faulkner’s fiction; the enlistment of the author’s work in the geopolitics of the cultural Cold War during the 1950s; the historical and literary affiliations between Faulkner’s Deep South and Greater Mexico; the local and idiosyncratic as alternatives to region and nation; the unique intersection of regional and metropolitan geographies that Faulkner encountered as a novice writer immersed in the literary culture of New Orleans; the uses of feminist geography to trace the interplay of gender, space, and movement; and the circulation of Caribbean and “Black South” spaces and itineraries through Faulkner’s masterpiece, Absalom, Absalom!By bringing new attention to the function of space, place, mapping, and movement in his literature, Faulkner’s Geographies seeks to redraw the very boundaries of Faulkner studies.

Contributions by Eric Gary Anderson, Melanie R. Anderson, Jodi A. Byrd, Gina Caison, Robbie Ethridge, Patricia Galloway, LeAnne Howe, John Wharton Lowe, Katherine M. B. Osburn, Melanie Benson Taylor, Annette Trefzer, and Jay Watson From new insights into the Chickasaw sources and far-reaching implications of Faulkner's fictional place-name ""Yoknapatawpha,"" to discussions that reveal the potential for indigenous land-, family-, and story-based methodologies to deepen understanding of Faulkner's fiction (including but not limited to the novels and stories he devoted explicitly to Native American topics), the eleven essays of this volume advance the critical analysis of Faulkner's Native South and the Native South's Faulkner. Critics push beyond assessments of the historical accuracy of his Native representations and the colonial hybridity of his Indian characters. Essayists turn instead to indigenous intellectual culture for new models, problems, and questions to bring to Faulkner studies. Along the way, readers are treated to illuminating comparisons between Faulkner's writings and the work of a number of Native American authors, filmmakers, tribal leaders, and historical figures. Faulkner and the Native South brings together Native and non-Native scholars in a stimulating and often surprising critical dialogue about the indigenous wellsprings of Faulkner's creative energies and about Faulkner's own complicated presence in Native American literary history.

Contributions by Eric Gary Anderson, Melanie R. Anderson, Jodi A. Byrd, Gina Caison, Robbie Ethridge, Patricia Galloway, LeAnne Howe, John Wharton Lowe, Katherine M. B. Osburn, Melanie Benson Taylor, Annette Trefzer, and Jay Watson From new insights into the Chickasaw sources and far-reaching implications of Faulkner’s fictional place-name “Yoknapatawpha,” to discussions that reveal the potential for indigenous land-, family-, and story-based methodologies to deepen understanding of Faulkner’s fiction (including but not limited to the novels and stories he devoted explicitly to Native American topics), the eleven essays of this volume advance the critical analysis of Faulkner’s Native South and the Native South’s Faulkner. Critics push beyond assessments of the historical accuracy of his Native representations and the colonial hybridity of his Indian characters. Essayists turn instead to indigenous intellectual culture for new models, problems, and questions to bring to Faulkner studies. Along the way, readers are treated to illuminating comparisons between Faulkner’s writings and the work of a number of Native American authors, filmmakers, tribal leaders, and historical figures. Faulkner and the Native South brings together Native and non-Native scholars in a stimulating and often surprising critical dialogue about the indigenous wellsprings of Faulkner’s creative energies and about Faulkner’s own complicated presence in Native American literary history.

Contributions by Eric Gary Anderson, Melanie R. Anderson, Jodi A. Byrd, Gina Caison, Robbie Ethridge, Patricia Galloway, LeAnne Howe, John Wharton Lowe, Katherine M. B. Osburn, Melanie Benson Taylor, Annette Trefzer, and Jay Watson From new insights into the Chickasaw sources and far-reaching implications of Faulkner’s fictional place-name “Yoknapatawpha,” to discussions that reveal the potential for indigenous land-, family-, and story-based methodologies to deepen understanding of Faulkner’s fiction (including but not limited to the novels and stories he devoted explicitly to Native American topics), the eleven essays of this volume advance the critical analysis of Faulkner’s Native South and the Native South’s Faulkner. Critics push beyond assessments of the historical accuracy of his Native representations and the colonial hybridity of his Indian characters. Essayists turn instead to indigenous intellectual culture for new models, problems, and questions to bring to Faulkner studies. Along the way, readers are treated to illuminating comparisons between Faulkner’s writings and the work of a number of Native American authors, filmmakers, tribal leaders, and historical figures. Faulkner and the Native South brings together Native and non-Native scholars in a stimulating and often surprising critical dialogue about the indigenous wellsprings of Faulkner’s creative energies and about Faulkner’s own complicated presence in Native American literary history.