Over the course of her 57-year career, Augusta Jane Evans Wilson published nine best-selling novels, but her significant contributions to American literature have until recently gone largely unrecognized. Brenda Ayres, in her long overdue critical biography of the novelist once referred to as the 'first Southern woman to enter the field of American letters,' credits the importance of Wilson's novels for their portrait of nineteenth-century America. As Ayres reminds us, the nineteenth-century American book market was dominated by women writers and women readers, a fact still to some extent obscured by the make-up of the literary canon. In placing Wilson's novels firmly within their historical context, Ayres commemorates Wilson as both a storyteller and maker of American history. Proceeding chronologically, Ayres devotes a chapter to each of Wilson's novels, showing how her views on Catholicism, the South, the Civil War, male authority, domesticity, Reconstruction, and race were both informed by and resistant to the turbulent times in which she lived. This comprehensive and meticulously researched biography contributes not only to our appreciation of Wilson's work, but also to her importance as a figure for understanding women's roles in history and their art, evolving gender roles, and the complicated status of women writers.

This book's primary task is to test the contemporary value of performance and performativity. Performative Identities in Culture: From Literature to Social Media undertakes this task via a host of chapters on a vast spectrum of performativity-related topics such as: literature (British, American, Welsh), film, art, social media, and sports. Within these contexts, the book raises a number of questions relevant today. How is minority culture constructed and performed in literature? How can one manifest identity in multicultural contexts? How has performativity been transformed in audiovisual media, like film, video games and social media? And, can the digital itself be performative?

Covering everything from the arts to food and drink, religion, social customs, and technology, this two-volume set provides an in-depth, accessible look at the social, cultural, economic, and political aspects of the American Civil War. The American Civil War caused dramatic changes in every aspect of life and society, affecting combatants and noncombatants at all levels of the socioeconomic scale. The World of the Civil War: A Daily Life Encyclopedia offers an accessible and reliable reference for the major topics that defined American life during the nation's most tumultuous era. Taking a blended approach to history, this book covers the military and political history of the era and examines the social and human experiences of the war, thereby offering a comprehensive look at the Civil War era's most significant events, people, places, and experiences. The thematic organization of this encyclopedia helps readers to more readily explore related topics. The subject matter explored in some 250 entries includes religious beliefs and practices; rites of passage; soldiers' lives and experiences; rural and urban life; social structure of the Civil War era—aristocrats, landowners, and slaves; men's and women's roles and responsibilities; holidays, festivals, and other celebrations; tools, machinery, and inventions; and justice and punishment. Readers will come away with an understanding of many aspects of daily life during the Civil War era and gain appreciation for the vast differences between life today and 150 years ago.

This new edition of Southern Writers assumes its distinguished predecessor's place as the essential reference on literary artists of the American South. Broadly expanded and thoroughly revised, it boasts 604 entries-nearly double the earlier edition's-written by 264 scholars. For every figure major and minor, from the venerable and canonical to the fresh and innovative, a biographical sketch and chronological list of published works provide comprehensive, concise, up-to-date information. Here in one convenient source are the South's novelists and short story writers, poets and dramatists, memoirists and essayists, journalists, scholars, and biographers from the colonial period to the twenty-first century. What constitutes a "southern writer" is always a matter for debate. Editors Joseph M. Flora and Amber Vogel have used a generous definition that turns on having a significant connection to the region, in either a personal or literary sense. New to this volume are younger writers who have emerged in the quarter century since the dictionary's original publication, as well as older talents previously unknown or unacknowledged. For almost every writer found in the previous edition, a new biography has been commissioned. Drawn from the very best minds on southern literature and covering the full spectrum of its practitioners, Southern Writers is an indispensable reference book for anyone intrigued by the subject.

Betwixt and Between identifies the biases, errors and ambiguities that have run rampant in the biographies on Mary Wollstonecraft, many of them left unchecked and perpetuated from publication to publication. Brenda Ayres investigates the agenda, problems and strengths of eighteen critical biographies, beginning with William Godwin’s Memoirs (1798), ending with Charlotte Gordon’s Romantic Outlaws (2015) and including ten lesser-known biographies. Betwixt and Between synthesizes the biographies, exposes gaps and contradictions, and attempts to fill and reconcile them, supplying in the process considerable information on Wollstonecraft that has never before been published.

Many books about Alabama's role in the Civil War have focused serious attention on the military and political history of the war. The Yellowhammer War likewise examines the military and political history of Alabama's Civil War contributions, but it also covers areas of study usually neglected by centennial scholars, such as race, women, the home front, and Reconstruction. From Patricia A. Hoskins's look at Jews in Alabama during the Civil War and Jennifer Ann Newman Treviño's examination of white women's attitudes during secession to Harriet E. Amos Doss's study of the reaction of Alabamians to Lincoln's Assassination and Jason J. Battles's essay on the Freedman's Bureau, readers are treated to a broader canvas of topics on the Civil War and the state. CONTRIBUTORS Jason J. Battles / Lonnie A. Burnett / Harriet E. Amos Doss / Bertis English / Michael W. Fitzgerald / Jennifer Lynn Gross / Patricia A. Hoskins / Kenneth W. Noe / Victoria E. Ott / Terry L. Seip / Ben H.

Amazing Alabama: A Potpourri of Fascinating Facts, Tall Tales and Storied Stories chronicles a brief history of the state, famous personages associated with Alabama, a discussion of state firsts, unique occurrences, antiquated laws and other fascinating topics.

This entry in the Perspectives in Social History series examines the course and consequences of Reconstruction on the former Confederate states by focusing on the everyday people who lived through it. Reconstruction: People and Perspectives is a fascinating collection of essays and documents that illuminates the experiences of ordinary Americans across all levels of society in the southern United States during Reconstruction. Reconstruction: People and Perspectives describes in vivid detail the experiences of a diverse group of people caught up in the Civil War's aftermath in the South. Chapters focus on Civil War veterans, former slaveholders, farmers and city residents, Northerners in the South, and African American men and women (both those who stayed in the South and those who migrated). It also reports on groups similar studies often overlook, such as Native Americans and white women. Looking at Reconstruction from a social historian's point of view, this revealing work adds a much needed new voice to studies of the era.

This fascinating work tells the untold story of the role of women in the Civil War, from battlefield to home front. Most Americans can name famous generals and notable battles from the Civil War. With rare exception, they know neither the women of that war nor their part in it. Yet, as this encyclopedia demonstrates, women played a critical role. The book's 400 A–Z entries focus on specific people, organizations, issues, and battles, and a dozen contextual essays provide detailed information about the social, political, and family issues that shaped women's lives during the Civil War era. Women in the American Civil War satisfies a growing interest in this topic. Readers will learn how the Civil War became a vehicle for expanding the role of women in society. Representing the work of more than 100 scholars, this book treats in depth all aspects of the previously untold story of women in the Civil War.