Creating Citizenship in the Nineteenth-Century South - Tapa blanda

"A diverse and stimulating collection of essays that suggests how much the nineteenth-century South can teach us about one of the defining concepts of modern history."--Journal of American History "As soon as we consider citizenship to be a matter of belonging and identity and not just of political participation, it becomes a much more expansive and interesting lens through which to view the South."--Journal of American Studies "Provide[s] an expansive conceptual framework of citizenship that combines historical and cultural perspectives to address the economic, political, and cultural dynamics of race and belonging in the nineteenth-century South."--Reviews in American History "A useful addition to the field, especially in its framing of citizenship as not merely a matter of legal enactments or electoral politics, but also as a process of social and cultural negotiations and exclusions."--H-Net "Focusing on the diverse experiences of marginalized southerners, the contributing scholars make it clear that the evolution of citizenship in the nineteenth-century South was crucial in shaping not only the region's social, economic, and political culture, but also that of the United States and the wider world."--History: Reviews of New Books "Speaks to and develops much of the most recent scholarship on southern society, on the development of the market economy in the South, and on the shifting parameters of citizenship within the matrix of modernity, as well as touching on broader discussions of nationalism and its construction(s) within the United States as a whole."--American Nineteenth Century History "Provocative essays that expand the study of an important topic. They raise interesting questions, point to new avenues of inquiry, and challenge scholars to think about the South's relationship to the nation and the world."--Journal of Southern History "Contributes a great deal to further understanding the complexities of the meaning of citizenship in such a complicated society."--North Carolina Historical Review

More than merely legal status, citizenship is also a form of belonging, shaping individual and group rights, duties, and identities. The pioneering essays in this volume are the first to address the evolution and significance of citizenship in the American South during the long nineteenth century. They explore the politics and contested meanings of citizenry from a variety of disciplinary perspectives in a tumultuous period when slavery, Civil War, Reconstruction, and segregation redefined relationships between different groups of southern men and women, both black and white.