Far from the myths about the slow constancy of the antebellum South, this is a course about a region in the throes of momentous transformation. Somewhere between the Revolution and the Confederacy, a geographic determination became a cultural and political construct and the southeastern states became “the South.” Yet “the South” was never as stable, uniform, or old as the mythmakers would have it, then or now. 

This semester we will explore histories of Southern space, place, and identity by focusing mainly on issues of race, class, and gender in the decades before the Civil War. We will work together to try to identify and understand some of the extremes that defined varieties of existence across the antebellum South. We will then consider whether it was because of those extremes, or despite them, that Southerners were able to find coherence enough to forge forward through secession and attempt to create their own nation.