The Real South: Southern Narrative in the Age of Cultural Reproduction by Scott Romine

In this book Scott Romine investigates the question of what constitutes the "real" South in the context of so many competing stories and narratives. He concludes that both "real" and "South" are terms that have little meaning without quotation marks--that is, spending a lot of time on figuring out what is "authentic" or "traditional" is less valuable than assessing how these cultural productions function. There are good readings of a variety of texts, ranging from Gone with the Wind to Roots to Daughters of the Dust to Dip's (a restaurant in Chapel Hill) to Confederates in the Attic to A Turn in the South. Finally Romine concludes that "my South" is always tenuous and dependent on who's talking, but that these overlapping Souths are more realistic and accurate than any single solid South could be.

Line in the Sand: A History of the Western U.S.-Mexican Border by Rachel C. St. John

This book gives a concise, yet informative history of the border between the U.S. and Mexico, especially between El Paso and the Pacific Ocean. In so doing, it shows how different people and governments use the border--not just to control immigration, but also to, at times, challenge state sovereignty, collect revenue, avoid customs duties, gain a military advantage, and police morality. Indeed, the idea of fencing the border came late. In the conclusion, St. John lays out her cards: she believes that the border fence is not the best solution to the challenges of illegal immigration, and that the U.S. and Mexico should work together, along with the transnational community, to come up with a more flexible method of policing the border. I also learned more than I ever knew about the Mexican Revolution. A well-written and thought-provoking book.

Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History by Michel-Rolph Trouillot

This book is interested in the way we produce and understand history--a word that ambiguously stands both for what happened and how we talk about it. Trouillot contends that while history is not just constructed, it is also more complicated than a set of facts that can be revealed. He uses three case studies (the execution of Sans Souci, the disappearance of the Haitian Revolution in the historical record, and Columbus's voyage to the Americas) to make his points. His history is both interesting and provocative, and his larger argument is very compelling. Altogether his book is a very worthwhile read.

The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson

I enjoyed this book, which is part memoir and part cultural history of the 1950s, immensely. There's a lot of Bryson's trademark humor, and while he doesn't shy away from the things we might critique about that decade today, his attitude is generally upbeat--you really feel his nostalgia for the era and his belief that he was growing up in the best time ever. The book gave me a new appreciation for Des Moines Iowa.

American Gothic: New Interventions in a National Narrative by Robert K. Martin and Eric Savoy

This collection of essays reflects on American forms of Gothic literature. After a few introductory essays (which insist that the American Gothic in general is played out but that we should focus on specific criticism and delve into its particularities), the collection does just that. I found the reading of The House of Seven Gables and Absalom, Absalom! particularly useful. I don't necessarily buy the book's main contention that overarching Gothic narratives are played out, but I did appreciate the specific readings. I don't practice the type of criticism used to read Poe's story "The Black Cat," but that essay was well-researched (lots about animals and child-rearing in the nineteenth century). I also enjoyed the essay on The Wide, Wide World and punishment and desire. Overall a solid collection.

Multiethnic Literature and Canon Debates edited by Mary Jo Bona and Irma Maini

This collection of essays contends that the culture wars of the 1980s are not yet over, and that we need to continue studying and acknowledging the importance of multiethnic literature, especially in an American context. The quality of the essays varies. Some merely rehash the debates over the canon (sometimes with a particular perspective). Others give readings; I found the reading of The Great Gatsby as an ethnic work particularly helpful. The third section (which has more of a cultural studies bent and examines the canon from the perspective of popular culture) was perhaps the most useful section and the most innovative.

Cultures of Letters: Scenes of Reading and Writing in Nineteenth-Century America by Richard H. Brodhead

I found this book to be disappointing: Brodhead's argument, writ large, is that to understand nineteenth century American writing, we need to understand the conditions surrounding the writers. This idea sounds right to me, but somehow the connection between the theory and the readings just doesn't work for me. Which is not to say that the readings are bad, exactly, just that in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't all hang together for me.

Empire for Liberty: Melville and the Poetics of Individualism by Wai-chee Dimock

This monograph links a formal reading of Melville's novels (except Typee and Omoo) to an historical reading of Jacksonian individualism and national expansion. As Dimock explains in her first chapter, "indeed, it is through Melville, through his authorial exercises in freedom and dominion, that we are able to see Manifest Destiny--not as most of us see it now, as a quaint idea, but as innumerable antebellum Americans saw it, as a powerful account of national and individual destiny, an account that conferred on both the nation and the self a sense of corporeal autonomy in space, and teleological ascendancy in time" (10-11). Her account of Jacksonian individualism and Jacksonian imperialism in the first chapter gives her work a solid grounding in history, and her readings of the novels themselves are quite persuasive. This monograph is a great example of criticism at its best: a reading of cultural texts that provides larger contexts while offering a theoretical structure.

John Brown's Body: Slavery, Violence, and the Culture of War by Franny Nudelman

This monograph looks at the ways that Civil War-era practices of portraying the body, starting with the song "John Brown's Body" incorporate people into the nationalistic labor of supporting the war effort. Nudelman reads a wide variety of cultural texts, from "Benito Cereno" and Melville and Whitman's war poems, to battlefield photographs, to practices of dissection. The book's arguments were convincing--and Nudelman sold me on her work's relevance to modern instances of violence.