Deconstructing whiteness, redefining southern literature: bringing back african american voices into southern literature

Deconstructing whiteness, redefining southern literature: bringing back african american voices into southern literature. (2014). Deconstructing whiteness, redefining southern literature: bringing back african american voices into southern literature.

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Title	Deconstructing whiteness, redefining southern literature: bringing back african american voices into southern literature
Abstract	In this study I argued the necessity of including African American writers into Southern literature to enhance our understanding of white identity in 20th-century literature. Though my project is the expansion of the prevalent trend in Southern literary studies, it shows important, new reasons for the necessity. By examining whiteness in twentieth-century Southern literature, using critical whiteness theories, and insisting on the inclusion of white-life fiction, I demonstrate the imperative of including African American literature to gain a clearer understanding of whiteness. In addition, my project sheds light on four thematic areas that are important in exploring white identity: Southern womanhood, space, biracial identity, and class. By comparing black writers' works with those of white writers' in terms of four thematic aspects, I demonstrate that African American writers offer keen insights into whiteness that white writers fail to show. To this end, I compare the portrayal of biracial identity in William Faulkner's Light in August with that in Charles Chesnutt's The House behind the Cedars in Chapter 2; I also compare the portrayal of white womanhood's interrelation with race and class in Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire with that in Zora Neale Hurston's Seraph on the Suwanee in Chapter 3. For the framework of my study, I employ a few critical whiteness theories such as Toni Morrison; Owen J. Dwyer and John Paul Jones; David Roediger; and Tim Cresswell.
Date	2014

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Title: Deconstructing whiteness, redefining southern literature: bringing back african american voices into southern literature
Personal Name(s): Sa, Mi Ok
Watson, Veronica
Corporate Name(s): Indiana University of Pennsylvania
English.
Note: Publisher info.: Dissertation/Thesis.
Advisors: Watson, Veronica Committee members: Mike Sell; Todd Thompson.
Topical Subject(s): Literature
American literature
African American studies