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This volume showcases, but also interrogates, the value of Atlantic World approaches to the histories and cultures of the American South. Challenging the traditional chronological focus of most Atlantic history on the Early Modern period, the volume ranges from colonial times to the modern era, while thematically it embraces a variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches to topics such as economics, migration, religion, revolution, law, slavery, race relations, emancipation, gender, literature, performance, visual culture, memoir, ethnography, empires, nations, and historiography. Geographically, the chapters focus mainly on the southern region of the North American continent and the lands in and around the Atlantic Ocean-although the physical location of a putative “Atlantic World” and, for that matter, of something we can call an “American South” are among the definitional issues with which the volume wrestles. Ultimately, the value of any grand concept such as Atlantic History, or Atlantic Studies, or the Black Atlantic depends on its capacity to explain past or present social realities. The cumulative effect of the mix of case studies and state-of-the-field essays gathered in this volume is to affirm that there is much to be learned about both the American South and the Atlantic World by considering them together and from diverse disciplinary perspectives. In so doing, the volume makes a valuable contribution to the fields of American, southern, and Atlantic Studies.

Black Art in Brazil explores the work of five artists from different regions of Brazil—Abdias do Nascimento, Ronaldo Rego, Eustáquio Neves, Ayrson Heráclito, and Rosana Paulino—against the wider backdrop of socio—historical and political developments taking place at the national and popular levels in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The book traces the history of national and international interest in black art in Brazil, changes in the related terminology, and development of the discourse. Excerpts from interviews with artists and curators illustrate how different individuals understand and relate to the increasingly popular label “Afro—Brazilian art.” The publication also expands upon current scholarship by introducing its readers to a variety of paintings, prints, photographs, installations, sculptures, and performance pieces produced outside the Afro—Brazilian religious communities for secular audiences. The book’s in-depth analysis of different works demonstrates how some Brazilian art conveys “blackness” through visual vocabulary and how the markers of black art and culture have continued to diversify. In comparing modern (post-1920) and contemporary (post-1985) production, the book reveals that as the discourse on race, ethnicity, and black art began to change in the 1970s, so too did artists shift the creative focus from exploring their African cultural heritage to producing work that confronts current race—related social challenges in Brazil.

This book explores how an eclectic range of narratives and images of the American South have been created and consumed—indeed, often created for consumption. The thirteen essays orient our attention to the ways in which ideas and stories about “the South” and “southernness” have social and material effects that register on various local, regional, national, and transnational scales. Like the two previously published volumes in this series, Creating Citizenship in the Nineteenth-Century South and The American South and the Atlantic World (both 2013), Creating and Consuming the American South brings southern historians into dialogue with literary and cultural studies colleagues associated with the New Southern Studies. However, this collection also includes scholars who do not identify as “southernists,” and who approach the subject from a variety of other disciplinary perspectives, including American studies, performance studies, jazz studies, and queer studies. The book is organized into three parts. Part one showcases three wide-ranging conceptual essays by leading scholars in southern history and the New Southern Studies. Part two of the book features five innovative case studies of the South’s creation and consumption, from blues festivals and jazz venues to sites of sexuality and the creative economy of post-New Orleans. The five essays in Part three consider the transnational routes through which the South has been circulated, (re)created, and consumed, including Vietnamese immigration, William Faulkner’s State Department travels, and British cinematic and musical productions.

From battlegrounds to birthplaces and sites in between, heritage tourism has always been part of how the South attracts visitors—and defines itself—yet such sites are often understudied in the scholarly literature. The contributors to this volume explore the narrative of southern history and how it is often complicated by race, influenced by local politics, and shaped by competing memories. Destination Dixie reveals that heritage tourism in the South is about more than just marketing destinations and filling hotel rooms; it cuts to the heart of how southerners seek to shape their identity and image for a broader touring public—now often made up of northerners and southerners alike.

This book positions the Dirty Harry film series as a key agent and index of the American conservative backlash against 1960s liberalism. The San Francisco–based series cemented Clint Eastwood and his character, Harry Callahan, as central figures in 1970s and 1980s Hollywood cinema. This is the first study to identify the series as an important source for understanding the culture and politics of the post-1960s era. Through close readings of the films and the contemporary political climate, it demonstrates how the series interacts with, critiques, and refracts the legacy of postwar liberalism. It reveals that the films locate San Francisco as the symbolic battleground for the era’s political struggles and maintains that through referencing real events, ideas, and political arguments, the films themselves became participants in these struggles. Particular attention is paid to the films’ representation of crime, family and community, sexuality, and race. The book evaluates Callahan’s long afterlife in American political discourse, cinema, pop culture, and Eastwood’s later political and cinematic career. This lively, thought-provoking and rigorous book will encourage readers to reconsider the conservative backlash in new light and return to the Dirty Harry films with a new appreciation of their political, historical, and cultural significance.

Excavating Memory explores memory as contested social practice in the present rather than as a passive recollection of the past. Through a diverse set of material and discursive strategies, memory is seen as a complex process that involves remembering and forgetting, erasure and inscription, absence and presence. It is from the folds between remembering and forgetting that sites of memory emerge. Taking a cue from archaeology, the collection of essays in this volume parses the multiple layers of meaning and tenuous lines of power that memory work produces. Offering a variety of approaches to the study of memory—from anthropology and archaeology to sociology, history, philosophy, literature, and archival studies—the authors explore such diverse arenas as public protests, memorials and art installations, archaeological objects, human remains, colonial landscapes, testimonies, and digital space as sites of memory.

Film noir, which flourished in the 1940s and 50s, reflected the struggles and sentiments of post-war America. This book contends that the genre, with its emphasis on dark subject matter, paralleled the class conflict in labor and union movements that dominated the period. By following the evolution of film noir during the years following World War II, the author illustrates how the noir figure represents labor as a whole. In the 1940s, both radicalized union members and protagonists of noir films were hunted and pursued by the law. Later, as labor unions achieved broad acceptance and respectability, the central noir figure shifted from fugitive criminal to law-abiding cop. Expanding his investigation into the Cold War and post 9/11 America, the author extends his analysis of the ways film noir is intimately connected to labor history.

Youngtown, Arizona, opened in 1954 and was the first development community to have a minimum age requirement (then 65) and to ban underage children as permanent residents. Developer Del Webb unveiled Sun City six years later. Adjacent to Youngtown, it offered modest homes abutting a golf course. In the ensuing decades, active adult communities have proliferated, including Harold Schwartz's “The Villages” in central Florida, today the nation's single largest retirement community. For nearly 60 years, the success of these and similar communities have changed the image of retirees from frail, impoverished old people to energetic, well-off adults enjoying a resort-like lifestyle. While some experts predicted these communities would fail or undermine the obligations between generations, they are now firmly embedded as one possible extension of the American dream. This is a book-length history of the “active adult” lifestyle. Examining the origins, development, failures, and challenges facing these communities as the baby boomer population continues to age, the book offers a truly original defense of a sometimes controversial aspect of American life.

La Florida: Five Hundred Years of Hispanic Presence aims to facilitate an interdisciplinary understanding of the complex Trans-Atlantic connections between Spain, Africa and the Americas that influenced Florida’s past; the demands that Florida faces in its present as a crossroad of cultures and peoples; and the ensuing challenges that will continue to shape its future as one of the most diverse states in the nation. Prefaced by an anchor piece and structured in two parts framing Florida as a Spanish territory and as a state of the Union, the thirteen essays of the volume engage in significant episodes in Florida’s history that evince its global imprint since Ponce de León’s landfall, to the current influence of Hispanic politics in the peninsula and onto the national scene. Each piece in the book is fully independent from the others. But by virtue of the chronological order in which they are all presented, their interdisciplinary topics, perspectives and contexts produce a web of connections that give temporal consistency, balance and continuity to the volume. The book plan offers the reader both a panoramic view and unique focal interdisciplinary perspectives on the ways Florida’s Spanish legacies took root and how they keep running deep.

La Meri (Russell Meriwether Hughes, 1899–1988) was a performing artist, choreographer, teacher, and writer who built her career on ethnologic dance from many parts of the world. In the 1920s and 1930s, under the management of her agent-husband Guido Carreras, she toured in Latin America, Europe, Asia, the Pacific, and the United States. Despite the heavy schedule of travel and performances, she was able to obtain instruction in local dance genres, purchase costumes, and obtain recordings of the music in many of the countries. The new material would then be added to her concert programs. In late 1939, touring was no longer possible because of World War II, so La Meri and Carreras settled in New York City. There, she established a school, the Ethnologic Dance Center, and dance companies. She continued performing in New York and on tour in the United States, and, in addition to teaching and concert work, created original choreographies using techniques such as those of India and Spain. In 1960, she moved to Cape Cod, Massachusetts, where she continued her work until 1984, when she returned to San Antonio. In addition to her practical work in dance, La Meri also published writings that set forth her conceptions, understandings, goals and methodologies. This book is both a biography of La Meri and an analysis of the significance of her theory and practice, with attention to her own performance, choreography, writings, and teaching.

In the Dominican Republic, the period from the ascendancy of dictator Rafael Trujillo in the late 1920s through the twelve-year rule of his successor Joaquín Balaguer in 1978 has been understood through a highly masculine and paternalist lens. This book argues, however, that Dominican women throughout this period engaged in local and national politics, operated within complex inter-American relations, and employed the most current global political discourse to further their diverse personal and political agendas. Through various political circles and the maternalist discourse they engendered, women created viable avenues to formal and informal political participation at national and international levels. Concurrently, they also contributed to the continuity of dictatorial regimes and helped precipitate their downfalls. The Paradox of Paternalismdemonstrates that in working through both dictatorial regimes and transnational networks Dominican women built the foundations of a solid and practical women's movement. In addition to contributing to both the longevity of authoritarian leadership and its eventual demise, their efforts situate squarely the rise of late twentieth century women's liberation throughout the global south in both the complex networks of inter-American engagement and the maternalist politics of conservative rule.

This book focuses upon Disney World in Florida as the project in which Walt became most invested, personally and financially, before his death. It examines primary themes in the history of the built environment and human creativity that persist at Disney World. These themes include: the need for community, the desire to intensify experiences, and the impulse to enhance existence beyond the everyday. These themes are extended through traditional historical forms to, perhaps the least expected one, a theme park. The book’s structure adopts that of Disney World’s Magic Kingdom park, with the preface and conclusion serving as an entry gate and an exit respectively. The first chapter operates much like the Magic Kingdom’s “lands” by offering a series of thematic investigations. Disney World is considered as a pilgrimage center, a utopia, a fantasy city, and a technological and global microcosm. Several readings of Disney World are interrelated in the book’s studies of its reach of power and function as a sort of paradise. Through this approach, Disney World emerges as a nuanced and even contradictory place that heightens the frictions of social life between the public and private spheres, consumption and contemplation, enthusiastic celebrations, and nagging doubts.

Seams of Empire tells the story of journalists, writers, and activists who challenged and re-imagined colonial and racial arrangements in Puerto Rico and the United States from 1940 to 1972. In particular, the book argues for a move beyond comparison as a methodological lens for understanding race in Puerto Rico and the United States. In its place, the book proposes racial imbrication, or the structured and relational ideas about race that also highlight hidden relations of power, as an alternative analytic lens. Using racial imbrication, Alamo Pastrana argues that responses to institutionalized racism and colonialism produced an oft-overlooked archive of texts created by African American and Puerto Rican writers and activists that complicate traditional readings of race in both national spaces. Analyses of this overlooked archive demonstrate the deep symbolic and material connections between marginalized subjects, social movements, and racial arrangements in Puerto Rico and the United States.

This book is about British Caribbean immigrants in Cuba between 1900 and 1960. It is also about how British Caribbean immigrants became, or did not become, Cuban. It discusses how and why British Caribbean workers went to Cuba, the working conditions they labored under, and how they adapted—or failed to adapt—to life in Cuba. Particular attention is placed on how British Caribbean immigrants in Cuba used their status as British subjects to claim rights and representation from “their” empire. The book also shows how the Cuban government responded to the presence of so many British Caribbean workers in the country by “nationalizing” the Cuban working class. The final chapter discusses how British Caribbean immigrants and their descendants adapted to life in Cuba and became Cuban. The book should be of interest to historians of Cuba and the British Caribbean and to scholars who work on diaspora studies and the politics of nationalism, race, and empire.

This volume is the first to focus on teaching about Haiti’s complex history and culture from a multidisciplinary perspective. Making broad connections between Haiti and the rest of the Caribbean, contributors provide pedagogical guidance on how to approach the country from different lenses in course curricula. They offer practical suggestions, theories on a wide variety of texts, examples of syllabi, and classroom experiences. Teaching Haiti dispels stereotypes associating Haiti with disaster, poverty, and negative ideas of Vodou, going beyond the simplistic neocolonial, imperialist, and racist descriptions often found in literary and historical accounts. Instructors in diverse subject areas discuss ways of reshaping old narratives through women’s and gender studies, poetry, theater, art, religion, language, politics, history, and popular culture, and they advocate for including Haiti in American studies and Latin American studies courses. Portraying Haiti not as “the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere” but as a nation with a multifaceted culture that plays an important part on the world’s stage, this volume offers valuable lessons about Haiti’s past and present related to immigration, migration, locality, and globality. The essays remind us that these themes are increasingly relevant in an era in which teachers are often called to address neoliberalist views and practices and isolationist politics.

Innovation causes change. Indeed, modern Western societies see it as a crucial asset to advance. But can it also explain change in ancient societies? This book approaches material change as a crucial component of innovation; that is, the materialization of ideas that become widely adopted. Individuals exercise their agency not only to maintain society but also to cause change through inventions. Here, a symbolic approach is developed to conceptualize their creativity. Metonyms and metaphors link knowledge domains in novel but incomplete ways that imply a meta-discourse on knowledge. Their awareness allows individuals to imagine alternative worlds and trace a coherent path of action through this Garden of Forking Paths. The material nature of inventions exhibits interaction and adoption publicly. Individual decision-making interweaves and the resulting interferences map structural changes in society. The often-long course of existence of ancient societies allows us to trace where and when inventions emerged and how individuals adopted them. Nonetheless, evolutionary approaches to innovation often privilege Western technology and streamline past material diversity into a discourse on modernity. They ignore how inventions serve culture-specific needs and follow cultural logic. Therefore, this book focuses on Central America’s Classic Maya (A.D. 250–900). It discusses innovation for a diverse society—ranging from divine rulers to farmers—that continually changed over centuries.

This collection of first-hand accounts from Native people from across the southeast offers a rare glimpse into the powerful and diverse experiences of a population who have been historically overlooked or misrepresented in spite of the significant roles they played in the political, economic, and cultural development of the region. Comprised of personal reflections, oral histories, and speech transcripts, this volume contributes to larger conversations around issues of both southern and Indian identity, racialized politics (at the federal, state and inter-tribal levels), tribal nation-building, cultural preservation and restoration, education, health, and economic development. The collection contains over 40 entries that represent a diverse range of Indian communities from Virginia to Louisiana and are divided into four thematic chapters that are each introduced and connected to broader regional and national contexts. The contributors represent varying generations, professions, and tribal political statuses that—collectively—generate a better understanding of southeastern Indian leadership, resilience and perseverance in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

This book explores the history of tobacco agriculture in the Piedmont region of Virginia and North Carolina since Emancipation in 1865. Focusing on the transformations in labor—the tasks of growing tobacco; the arrangement of workers; and the cultural meaning of labor—the book argues that the predominance of family labor in tobacco agriculture in the Piedmont in the twentieth century was an accident of the arrangement of labor following emancipation that was then reified in federal policy. This reification, however, was not accidental, but a product of farm families’ advocacy of that particular model of tobacco agriculture. Their advocacy, in turn, was driven by a culture that esteemed small-scale, artisanal production over large-scale, industrial capitalist production. It concludes with the dissolution of this labor-centered culture and the growing prestige of large-scale, industrial agriculture as a result of political changes, technological modernization, and neoliberal market and labor ideologies.

This book is an academic biography of Willy Ley (1906-1969), an influential American science writer and rocket expert. During the 1940s and 1950s, Ley became a scientific celebrity in the United States. He wrote dozens of books and hundreds of articles popularizing a future of interplanetary travel and Americans in space. Additionally, Ley appeared on radio and television programs, such as Face the Nation and Disney’s “Man in Space.” He gave countless interviews to journalists, who turned to him as America’s recognized authority on rockets and space travel. Through his books, articles, and consulting work for television and film, Ley inspired Americans of all ages to imagine a trip to the Moon or Mars via rocket ship. More than any other writer, he campaigned to make the dream become a reality. He served as the publicist of the early Space Age, before engineers and astronauts took center stage in the limelight. This biography explores his legacy as a science writer, public figure, and spaceflight advocate. It also situates that legacy within a network of other science writers, public intellectuals, and historians of science. By exploring the broader scene of writers, journalists, and the publishing world of New York City, this book reveals the nexus of popular science, Cold War politics, and anti-totalitarian rhetoric throughout public discourse and popular culture.