Flashes of a Southern Spirit: Meanings of the Spirit in the U.S. South

Abstract

This is not just a book about southern religion, although Charles Reagan Wilson is one of the most thoughtful interpreters of that central factor in the formation of southern history, and there is much to intrigue students of religion in the South in these pages. The book is also a core sample of the intellectual development of a supple observer—someone who has wrestled with and contributed to the growing interdisciplinarity of southern historiography—presented through essays he has written over a fifteen-year period. Wilson notes that these essays cover the period fairly immediately before the appearance of calls for a “new Southern studies” and half a decade or so thereafter, giving a fascinating opportunity to plumb the development of Wilson’s own thinking as historians and scholars in other fields sought to break into new paradigms (p. ix). They were not simply departing from the old trinity of race, class, and gender—though no one contended those things had completely ceased to be important. They were seeking to explore and spur broader developments in U.S. historiography, especially concentrating on its global contexts and the uses of postmodern literary theory and critical methodologies. These moves were especially important for historians of the South, given the field’s reputation for provincialism, which Wilson explores and evaluates.