The Oxford Handbook of the Literature of the U.S. South

by Fred Hobson (Editor), Barbara Ladd (Editor)

The Oxford Handbook of the Literature of the U.S. South brings together contemporary views of the literature of the region in a series of chapters employing critical tools not traditionally used in approaching Southern literature. It assumes ideas of the South--global, multicultural, plural: more Souths than South--that would not have been embraced two or three decades ago, and it similarly expands the idea of literature itself. Representative of the current range of activity in the field of Southern literary studies, it challenges earlier views of antebellum Southern literature, as well as, in its discussions of twentieth-century writing, questions the assumption that the Southern Renaissance of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s was the supreme epoch of Southern expression, that writing to which all that had come before had led and by which all that came afterward was judged. As well as canonical Southern writers, it examines Native American literature, Latina/o literature, Asian American as well as African American literatures, Caribbean studies, sexuality studies, the relationship of literature to film, and a number of other topics which are relatively new to the field.

584 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2016

About the author

Dr. Fred Colby Hobson Jr. is an English scholar whose wor focused on the U.S. South. He is a retired Professor of English, most recently at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.

Hobson received his A.B. in English from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, his M.A. in History from Duke University, and his Ph.D. English from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill in 1972. Before joining UNC in 1989, Hobson taught at the University of Alabama and Louisiana State University.

Hobson's work has appeared in the New York Times Book Review, the Atlantic, the Times Literary Supplement, and the Los Angeles Times Book Review. He has written numerous books on American literature and intellectual history.