New South

William Harris, the editor of Routledge’s The Old South: New Studies of Society and Culture, aims in The New South to introduce students to the historiography of this later volatile period of southern history, which starts from the racial segregation prevalent after the end of the Civil War and continues through the Civil Rights Movements of the 1950s and 1960s. For many years, this historiography centered on the writing of C. Vann Woodward. Woodward remains an important touchstone in the field, but in The New South, Harris gathers the most significant scholarship illustrating the range of challenges to Woodward’s interpretation of the South, including the importance of place, the role of women, the significance of memory, and the story of the "long Civil Rights Movement." The collection also features an introduction to the historiography of the New South, and a Guide to Further Reading.

'This collection convincingly shows the diverse effects of Reconstruction on the southern states of America ... One of the key strengths of this collection is the willingness of the authors to use very specific examples to illustrate their points, allowing us to appreciate the nuances that existed across time and space.' – History Teaching Review

J. William Harris is a Carpenter Professor of History at the University of New Hampshire. He teaches and writes on the history of the U.S. South, the Civil War era, and African American History. He advises graduate students in these areas as well as other areas of U.S. social history, and teaches an advanced course in Quantitative Methods for Historians. He studied at M.I.T. and Johns Hopkins University, where he received his Ph.D. in 1982.