• Login
    View Item 
    •   Home
    • Theses and Dissertations
    • Theses and Dissertations
    • View Item
    •   Home
    • Theses and Dissertations
    • Theses and Dissertations
    • View Item
    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

    Browse

    All of TUScholarShareCommunitiesDateAuthorsTitlesSubjectsGenresThis CollectionDateAuthorsTitlesSubjectsGenres

    My Account

    LoginRegister

    Help

    AboutPeoplePoliciesHelp for DepositorsData DepositFAQs

    Statistics

    Most Popular ItemsStatistics by CountryMost Popular Authors

    The South of the Mind: American Imaginings of Rural White Southernness, 1960-1980

    • CSV
    • RefMan
    • EndNote
    • BibTex
    • RefWorks
    Thumbnail
    Name:
    Lechner_temple_0225E_11144.pdf
    Size:
    968.9Kb
    Format:
    PDF
    Download
    Genre
    Thesis/Dissertation
    Date
    2012
    Author
    Lechner, Zachary James
    Advisor
    Simon, Bryant
    Committee member
    Bailey, Beth L., 1957-
    Farber, David R.
    Ward, Brian, 1961-
    Department
    History
    Subject
    American History
    History, Modern
    History
    Culture
    Imagined South
    Politics
    Race
    Rural
    White Southerners
    Permanent link to this record
    http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.12613/1700
    
    Metadata
    Show full item record
    DOI
    http://dx.doi.org/10.34944/dspace/1682
    Abstract
    This dissertation argues that in the 1960s and 1970s, a variety of Americans, including television and film producers, journalists, rock `n' roll fans, novelists, counterculturists, presidential candidates, and George Wallace supporters, looked to an imagined rural white South as a repository of supposedly discarded values. In the shadow of the civil rights movement and the South's increasing modernization, these individuals often perceived such "southern" traits as family-centeredness, closeness to the land, common-sense thinking, manliness, pre-modernity, and authenticity as both a welcome refuge from and an antidote to concerns about "rootlessness" in U.S. society. This sense of rootlessness was grounded in the vague belief that Americans had lost touch with cultural traditionalism. It combined contemporary anxieties about social unrest and government deceit with longer standing worries about suburban blandness, the shift from producerism to consumerism, social anomie, and the increasingly technocratic nature of modern America. My work traces the allure of the rural white South by detailing the region during the 1960s civil rights movement; country-rock music and the South in the countercultural consciousness; the Masculine South(s) of George Wallace, the novel and film Deliverance (1970, 1972), and the film Walking Tall (1973); the contrasting southernness of Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Allman Brothers Band; and the appeal of Jimmy Carter's "healing" southernness during the 1976 presidential campaign. This study expands the scope of historians' recent investigations into the South's burgeoning influence in national politics and culture. It directs a much-needed focus to Americans' perceptions of rural white southernness, and more specifically, to how they formed and utilized these understandings, and what this information reveals about U.S. society and culture. In addition to emphasizing the malleability of race and the southland's image in national discussions, this dissertation underscores the imagined South's role as a safe area of contemplation in which Americans could address their conflicted thinking about a variety of national trends, from changing gender roles to evolving family structures to consumer culture, without ever having to resolve any incongruities. Finally, this work employs a new angle for integrating southern history into the national narrative while paying attention to the ways in which post-World War II Americans continued to cling to the idea of southern distinctiveness.
    ADA compliance
    For Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) accommodation, including help with reading this content, please contact scholarshare@temple.edu
    Collections
    Theses and Dissertations

    entitlement

     
    DSpace software (copyright © 2002 - 2023)  DuraSpace
    Temple University Libraries | 1900 N. 13th Street | Philadelphia, PA 19122
    (215) 204-8212 | scholarshare@temple.edu
    Open Repository is a service operated by 
    Atmire NV
     

    Export search results

    The export option will allow you to export the current search results of the entered query to a file. Different formats are available for download. To export the items, click on the button corresponding with the preferred download format.

    By default, clicking on the export buttons will result in a download of the allowed maximum amount of items.

    To select a subset of the search results, click "Selective Export" button and make a selection of the items you want to export. The amount of items that can be exported at once is similarly restricted as the full export.

    After making a selection, click one of the export format buttons. The amount of items that will be exported is indicated in the bubble next to export format.