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ETD Abstract Container

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Dark And Bloody Ground: Southern Literature After the Bomb

Osborne, Virginia
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1276528644

Abstract Details

2010, PhD, University of Cincinnati, Arts and Sciences: English and Comparative Literature.
My dissertation, “Dark and Bloody Ground: Southern Literature After the Bomb,” considers the generation of postwar Southern authors and the effect of the Cold War on their work. Focusing on texts by William Styron, Lillian Smith, Walker Percy, James Dickey, and Ellen Douglas, I demonstrate the presence of nuclear anxiety and other cultural trends specific to the atomic age in a region typically viewed as too intellectually and culturally insular to look abroad. Characters in the novels I consider live in suburban neighborhoods, watch television, go to movies, and buy cars and houses typical of postwar American society, yet they also remain preoccupied with Southern history. The key players in my dissertation simultaneously grapple with the uncertain national future and the objectionable regional past and are unsure of how to reconcile these two seemingly disparate perspectives. Yet the Southern and the American experience are not as dissimilar as has been previously believed, and this is the crux of my argument. Drawing from recent historical and sociocultural studies which connect idiosyncratically Southern social conventions such as segregation with Cold War attitudes such as anticommunism, I claim that national and global concerns affect Southern authors more than has been previously believed and suggest that the regional experience of cultural conservatism and racial strife in the decades after World War II may be attributed to the American Cold War experience.
Alison Rieke, PhD (Committee Chair)
James Schiff, PhD (Committee Member)
Beth Ash, PhD (Committee Member)
197 p.
American Literature

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Osborne, V. (2010). Dark And Bloody Ground: Southern Literature After the Bomb [Doctoral dissertation, University of Cincinnati]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1276528644

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Osborne, Virginia. Dark And Bloody Ground: Southern Literature After the Bomb. 2010. University of Cincinnati, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1276528644.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Osborne, Virginia. "Dark And Bloody Ground: Southern Literature After the Bomb." Doctoral dissertation, University of Cincinnati, 2010. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=ucin1276528644

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

ucin1276528644
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© 2010, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by University of Cincinnati and OhioLINK.