Date of Award
1-1-2024
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
M.A. in Southern Studies
First Advisor
Kathryn McKee
Second Advisor
W. Ralph Eubanks
Third Advisor
Andrew Donnelly
Relational Format
dissertation/thesis
Abstract
This project examines three texts each from three Mississippi authors working today: Kiese Laymon, Jesmyn Ward, and Mary Miller. These authors’ literary constructions of their home state and the South as a whole serve as critical, political frames for the United States. As a result, their work is well-served by the questions and methodology of New Southern Studies, a field actively invested in conceptions of the U.S. South as nonexceptional and lodged within greater geopolitical contexts. Indeed, the original call for New Southern Studies from Houston A. Baker, Jr. and Dana Nelson speaks to a problem of a false national wholeness, one that depends on places like Mississippi being cast as an Other. The nine texts studied here often flip that original conceptual project. While America may see and otherize Mississippi, these Mississippians see and know America with its history of violence and its reliance on false ideals. In many ways, they depict a South of American failures at their most distilled or intensely felt. All nine texts studied here have been published since 2010 and house worlds very much in and of the 21st century. Engaging with these Southern, American narratives offers vital insight into the precarity of our current national moment.
Recommended Citation
Fennell, Jacob, "Mississippi's America: Late Southern Writing on National Themes" (2024). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 2807.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd/2807