it is my show. you are getting a lot of shows on capitol hill today. the system is working with ragged edges. give it time. and try not to be so partisan yourself. show a little empathy for the other side. try to put yourself in their shoes which is a pretty good guide for life. if you can put yourself in someone's shoes, it is hard to do in this political haymaker now. i call it a haymaker because everyone is so mad at one another. be patient and try to let the system work. in the end it will work. announcer: our staff travel to north carolina to learn about the rich history. s is ith more hit c-span.org/cities tour. you are watching american history tv.

all weekend, every weekend on c-span3. historians who edited or wrote essays for the book reinterpreting seven histories talk about new avenues for understanding the history of the south. topics discussed include native americans, the civil war, slavery, the environment, and the great depression. this panel was part of the 2019 southern historical association annual conference. >> good afternoon and thank you for joining us on this panel about southern history. i am lori glover and work at st. louis university my cochair is craig thompson from north carolina state university. decades since two the publication of " interpreting southern history."

survey of theark scholarship that historians produced since 1965. the publication date of writing southern history . it marked a critical moment in southern historiography. the 1965 volume has surveyed the scholarly landscape. in 1987, the authors in interpreting history raised difficult questions about the direction of the discipline including challenging graham narratives created -- perpetuated by historians. interpreting southern history also signet -- also signaled returning to american politics and culture. as woodward said, the time is coming if it has not already arrived when the southerner will ask himself whether there was a

point and calling himself a southerner. that was during the american century. the united states had proven victorious in a crusade against fascism with military, diplomatic, political success unparalleled in the country's history. asidealism seem to sweep regional loyalty and identity and as woodward put it, the regional historian is likely to be oppressed by a sense of his unimportantance. woodward announced the resurgence of southern history. the united states fractured over the vietnam war and the civil rights movement. in his final revision to his classic study in 1993, woodward concluded that, americans might still have something to learn if they would from the un-american

and ironic experience of the south. by the 1980's, the power of the southern bible belt gave rise to a conservative revolution. from the dukes of hazard to the many series north and south they portrayed southern is different but delightfully still american nonetheless. in 1992, william jefferson clinton was elected president in the following year is when woodward reiterated the americans could indeed learn something from the south. >> since the publication" of interpreting southern history" is geography -- historiography has been disrupted. cacophony creating that it is difficult to draw coherence from the diversity of voices, perspectives, and memories. we undertook a survey of the historiography to determine

whether there was such a thing as southern history. the contributors to the collection experienced the challenge of discerning themes for familiar topics. a difficulty arising partially from the postmodern resistance to overarching sympathies. technology,new incorporate viewpoints and voices, and ask fresh questions to expand southern history they contest the idea of a coherent, southern past. today, we live in another era of intense nationalism. particularly southern regional some, seems to be fading under the forces of consumerism, popular culture, and social media. the central geographic divide in america today is not regional but urban versus rural. to echo woodward, some scholars

question if the time has arrived when the southern historian must ask if there is any point to identifying as a historian of the south. essayisttively, the point out a myriad of ways in which the south was distinctive across more than 400 years of history. just as significant are the interconnections and immersions with the atlantic world, the western hemisphere, the nation, and global markets ideology and human experiences. one thing is clear -- it is no longer viable to reflectively portray the south, at any time, as separate from the nation or the world. the literature on the histories of the south is far richer for the questions asked in recent decades about the parameters, the essence, and existence of southern history. the narrative of social history

race, gender, class remain but are energized by postmodern scholars interrogating the premises of this narratives, voices, expanded archives, and enlarged geographical context. so we gathered 40 scholars in teams of two to cowrite temporal and thematic essays on the scholarship of the south over the past two decades. the result is reinterpreting southern history. the table of contents for which you may find on the nearby seat. we invited five of the authors to join us today to offer thoughts on the process and conclusions and engage your questions about what they learned about southern his geography -- historiography in collecting this. >> there were 40 people who participated in this collection. we have five with this which i'm good to introduce in a moment.

the other contributors to the volume if they would stand, so the people could see who they are? >> thank you. >> thank you. [applause] starting from my right is christina snyder, the history professor at penn state. she co-authored the chapter on the native south. leslie gordon is the charles g summer saw chair at the university of alabama and she and steve berry of the university of georgia with the chapter on the south and the civil war. vanessa holden, assistant professor of history and african american studies at the

university of kentucky. she wrote the chapter on 19th-century enslavement. catherine new font, associate professor at the university of kentucky. she and william thomas oakie partnered on the chapter on southern environmental history. at the end of the table is jason morgan ward, professor of history at emory university and he and jennifer ritterhouse wrote the chapter on from the great depression to the end of southern history. we challenge the authors to write as teams. cried and i partnered on many -- craig and i have partnered on many things and we thought this would lead to richer and more balanced essays. some teams were quite successful

and some teams struggled. we want to do by asking the panelists about what opportunities and challenges they found in the co-authoring process. >> i will start. i had the opportunity to work with my former advisor at purdue. we know each other well. regularly over the past 12 years since i graduated. the fun thing was that we as historians work in isolation. somethingto work on that is truly collaborative. meetings where we talked about the essay, we sent back and forth elaborate outlines, and we did most of the writing over a two day period when she came to penn state. collaborators,as the process was smooth but the assignment was difficult.

onre had been no essay native americans in the south in either of the previous two volumes. there was no comprehensive essay ever written about native peoples in the south. complicating that was the fact there has been a fluorescence in that field since the 1990's. i can talk about that later but i would say what i found challenging was the assignment rather than the partnership which was a lot of fun. >> i had the opposite problem. as far as having terrell -- can you hear me? it was an honor with me to work with steve berry. he is a delight. as many of you know. we worked very well together. i would do anything with him again in this capacity. i felt like we complemented each other in our strengths. i had prior opportunities to

address this question. presentation back in 2008, and i took those old papers that i had not in anything with and rethought the questions. emailred that to steve to and he is the one who wrote the introduction. i think you will tell if you read it, the tone sounds a lot energyrought some great to the essay. the other thing about the process as we met in person, talked on the phone, but a lot we just swapped essays. just edited him there. it worked very well as far as i could tell. a good,d i had collaborative relationship. we started with phone

conversations and used google docs to start parsing out what themes we thought would be the most important. then divided up the themes. each of us forged ahead and wrote out different sections. smack dab in the wheelhouse and some that were not. they required or work on each of our part. then we started the difficult work of sewing those sections together. we had similar politics and a similar direction we wanted to go on slavery in the 19th century. the writing voices are very different. sounded very different. most of the work came in the process of sending documents back and forth and finding ways to shape the essay so that it had a coherent voice. -- we work in

isolation and are used to having our own flourishes, that was difficult. the partnership and working together was really lovely and wonderful. it made me wish i had opportunities to work in this way more frequently. i had the pleasure of working with william thomas oakie and we had only met briefly years before he was a graduate student. we really did not know each other and that was a brief meeting. the whole thing was an absolute delight. he is wonderful to work with. we are both -- he is in spirit with me. we talked about what we collectively wanted to say at the session. although i am speaking for both, i am speaking with both voices which is an indicator of our answer to the question. we had a wonderful experience.

the whole piece was collaborative. our peace is on southern environmental history. there was no predecessor peace in the earlier volumes. one of the challenges was there has been a industry of writing historiographical pieces on environment of history. the challenge was how to make something new. we benefited from our different areas of expertise and we hit it off really well from the beginning. we confessed in our first phone call -- i don't know who did it first -- we admitted we do not love doing historiography. that set a nicetown. -- that set a nicetown. todid not want our piece read like a history peace and that was collaborative as well. openingested the mechanism which i love.

we open with several quotes from leading works of southern history that have to do with environment and several of those quotes become subsections. we decided early on we wanted to defied up the subsections -- wanted to divide up the subsections. position the fortunate is that it is robust but did not exist as such a few decades ago. decided we would settle on fields,mes, waters, towns. we would get as much history as we could. we divided the sections, we drafted, exchange, we had bad luck with google docs because of the citations. to use the having

process of doing documents, or documents, and sending them back and forth. making sure we did not work on them on the same time because we wanted the most recent. that was the logistical challenge but it was a wonderful experience. >> working with jennifer was great. the originalessay, assignment was from the great depression to the present. i will speak a little bit later about the challenge talking about the historiography of any field that goes to the president, how close to the present,- goes to the how close you get to the present. the end of southern history is in quotation marks and has a question mark on the end. that is important for how we approach this question. not so much a conclusion as an open ended question we will

address later. the process was great. i would speak briefly to the genre of the writing and what i learned about it or reflected on. there is the collaborative piece that this is something we were supposedly trained to do in graduate school. everyone thinks they know what it means. there are two things that i would say about historiographical writing. it has rules, practices, a format, it is a learned school -- learned thing. everyone does it differently and it has no rules. [laughter] whokarmic aspect as someone taught grad students for a decade was that i had assigned to so many and claimed to know what they were, and teach people how to do them, but never had to write one again. this is a professional task you will do over and over and any

moment you could be called upon to do it. in my experience, that was not true. [laughter] getting to do that again and reflect on the practice in the process and what that genre doesn't mean for this enterprise -- does mean for this enterprise was part of the process as well. what lori and i discovered as we entered did the essays was significant differences in ization ofnceptual the territory of the south. some expanded the geography while others relied on the old confederate model. others retracted the geography. panelist, how did your co-authoring team determine the jager fee to be covered and how did that from your -- determine the geography to be covered and how did that frame your essay

? >> it gives us a shallow and flawed sense of the region. the home state of mississippi, it was in the hands of the chickasaw's until the 1830's. southern planters dominated that space for over 20 years before the civil war. at in mywhat i looked own work was what charles hudson called the older south. geography, webout considered it in two ways. what regional definitions what has made sense to our historical actors and how would historical actors have thought about it? history,k at native

there is a really coherent --ional identity as early as most places we think of the south today but not virginia and maryland. but the mississippi valley. quite far up north. region shared an economy and had a lot of of commonalities in politics, religion. they travel. the most important trades, which proved to be enduring were agriculture and matrilineal people traced dissent through the maternal line and that had an influence on politics and property ownership. this was a well integrated region.

united by roads and river travel. when it comes later, i have thought of this question -- when do southern indians call themselves "southern"? the first historical reference actually comes from the 1740's. group was distinguishing themselves from northern indians called the iroquois. before the british call them southern indians, they called themselves southern's, but in opposition to iroquois, who were there enemies in warfare at that time. about a decade later the british north americans indian department into a northern and southern division, which reinforced the idea of the

south and the continue to call themselves southern nations in diplomacy. if you look at treaties with federal governments, they used to this rhetoric a lot and southern nations, especially what is often called the five make a they actually .eries of intertribal treaties this was among themselves -- among themselves, not to be bland. most often scholars have looked at the southeast culture area and this is because originally our field developed out of anthropology. beginning in the late 19

century, use em curators who had native american materials would split them into their cultural areas and a lot of museums retain this, by the way. still a concept that is used and critique in anthropology. inis still useful for them much the way the south is useful for us as historians, even if we critique it. i will stop there. in our essay on the civil war, steve and i had this issue right away because so much history does talk about the north and south, understanding the sense of place and regionalism that is essential to the conflict. so, in our essay, we looked at the traditional confederate

states. the change -- the trends and historiography bringing them north. but also the research being done right now on expanding those boundaries. and so, we do address that. and we talk about this complaint that is very old that too much attention is paid to the eastern theater. as someone who was first affected that -- by that when i was going through grad school, it has not changed, the idea that we do not know enough about the western theater, but then going beyond that, what we would consider western history, bringing native american aspects and personalities and being more holistic. it's so important, historiography, the way things have gone.

the other aspect is internationalizing the conflict and thinking broadly not just werepeople at the time .ware it did have repercussions. it did call out to some of that important work right now. this does not mean that nobody should never write another book about virginia. that's not happening. but just acknowledging the hasmism of our skilled challenged orders and also the new and attention to guerrilla warfare, which has challenged assumptions and notions of boundaries and borders. we were able to, in the space we had, to talk about

it. i wanted to mention this point. it is hard to do and to keep up in our field where there is so much coming out and titles and approaches. to focus on for big names and one of those was the question of geography. us.- that helped of jug of the is similar and different. we explicitly deal with human geography and the ways in which, particularly emancipated people bring the south with them wherever they go, and the ways in which communities of color outside of more traditional definitions of the south, along the lines of the old confederacy

don't apply when you have the --ellite communities evenees of enslavement, across the border to the south and mexico. on the other hand, the geography that comes up more frequently, the geography of forced migration, deeper and deeper south, the ways in which virginia has the ds for a in the deep south -- has the ds for a aspora in the deep south. and then finally, because one of the key themes to us was historytion in gender

in the field, we care a lot about to met -- domestic geography, the geography of labor and the way that those are explicitly southern geography. thanok different turns just trying to map out the orders of the south. we see particularly in the antebellum. there waslum period, a way in which the south could be anywhere for anyone depending on context. tom and i had a similarly challenging time deciding what we would cover. there was precedence within the university of georgia press. there is also a self defined community of environmental

historians who think of themselves as environmental historians and southern historians while they eagerly trouble those labels. there are physical realities of jog review that inform environmental history -- rivers, mountains, trees, that we must deal with. they shape everything. in that sense, there is a regional emphasis that speaks to regional histories. on the other hand, many of our subjects are big disrespect as .f boundaries water moves where it wishes. rivers don't care what the political boundaries are of the land on which they run.

we talked a lot about the mississippi river. are they only southern? of course not. the mississippi river drains most of the continent and the gulf of mexico borders far more than the u.s. south. and that's only if you're counting the land. water, migrating birds, migrating fish. livestock. and then, if you get into these , asnisms, they move freely well as toxins. they do not care about the boundary between the oil and you. they go right through your skin and so on.

movement and complexity within environmental history that do ground us in the region and there are aspects that absolutely demand we not be grounded in the region. you look at any one species -- , let's say, or deerskin. the moment you look at peaches. at peaches.ou look historyry to trace the of that, you will move well .eyond the south those are three of literally countless organisms that exist in what we call the u.s. south.

>> so, some of the team dealt with fields and seven history that flourished after interpreting southern history, environmental history and native american history in particular, enslavement and reconstruction have been so , wefined in recent years wanted you all to reflect on the challenges and opportunities that imposed in righting the the essays.iting model fors really no us to follow. there was no overarching history graphical essay on the peoples of the south. we hope that this will be useful

. in previous volumes, writing southern history, interpreting southern history, these people were barely mentioned, certainly did not have their own essay. we wanted to do something broad. we took a topical approach. so our topics we chose were colonialism. economics. gender, religion, race, politics, and sovereignty. and one of the questions we thought about in the essay was native southe engage with the mainstream of southern history and where does it departs. some of the interesting sections were on race and slavery.

these are really key themes to southern history and are the exclusive robbins of southern history, but recent historiography has really disrupted our view of this field . of slavery, we know between 3 million and 5 million indigenous americans were we are forced to reconsider some of our most basic assumptions. so to just take those three arets of departure there pre-colonial that feed into the development of slave taking in the colonial period. we really, the way that

encourage thinking about slavery, there are many that converge in america, are practices, but also different empires that have slightly different approaches.

we broke down rsa into four parts. rsa intobroke down four parts. the first part is to think anew about the experience of the common soldier. the second what's the home front. even the construction or the perception of the homefront and what does that mean and how that overlaps with the battlefront and many ways you cannot separate that. that again is due to the impact of cultural and social historians very much. then we did the prior topic i mentioned about region and place beingundaries and that essential to how we conceive of the war. finally, in some ways, significant he has been the

impact of memory studies on civil war history. that is something that has blown up our field in a good way. and made us more relevant. it is also where a lot of the public interest is anyway about the civil war and what does it really mean so those of the things we ended up breaking down. these were challenges nonetheless. i think they helped us think in an expansive way about field. i also want to mention when we first started talking about this and steve and i got together we had conversations with laurie and craig were we introduced civil war and reconstruction. and you will see we ended up just doing the civil war. this was a hard decision. decision, andult steve and i talked about the idea. one of the other developments in the field of civil war history has been acknowledging that you cannot separate reconstruction from the war, especially when you're talking about the south.

increasingly, we felt we would give short shrift to the important work that has been done on reconstruction if we tried to lump it in together. in the end i think it worked out but it was hard to do that you will see overlap anyway. we still say some things that push us and rightfully so on into reconstruction. but generally, we decided to keep it separate. so, yes, this was a great challenge, as i mentioned -we arguehere was not that southern history has much deeper roots than self identifying southern environmental history has much deeper roots than self i venture -- self identifying southern environment so history does. in other words southern historians have been writing environmentally inflected history for really long time. things that was

challenging for us was to try in a single essay to trace the entire historiography of a vibrant, diverse and explosively growing field. southern environmental history is one of the most exposed the fields there is now. environmental history, the american historical association study in 2015 noted that environmental history was the fastest growing specialty in the past 40 years. it's growth has been exponential and there's no end in sight for obvious reasons. we need to understand our history with environments. crises weven the many face in the present day and that ways our lives are shaped by environmental factors. in the 1980's there was very little self conscious bar mental history. since then it has -- environmental history. and since then it is taken off. it did exist but the heartland was the west and for long time

it was a very western u.s. , with the northeast coming in a little bit. but not a whole lot of work being done on the south. i remember when the university of georgia press began its series on southern environmental history and how does yes to guy was that was happening. it seemed groundbreaking at the time. we were writing this essay as a vastly different time. bean exciting time to writing the historiography of u.s. southern environmental history. for one thing, two things that happened while we were doing the essay, jack davis on the pulitzer prize for the golf, a self identified southern environmental history one the first pulitzer prize price self identified by middle history - the gulf. graveyardcky's atomic , environmental and equity

enroll america garnered the 2018 alice hamilton prize by the american society for environmental history. there is not been a lot of attention to southern environmental historians. prize thetion won a american siding for by middle history and jack kirby -- for environmental history the mockid song. that was the big, prize-winning piece. after only really two major prizes coming from environmental history to southern environmental history, we had two in the same year. that's indicative of where the field is. it's exciting to be riding about that. at the same time, the journal of , mississippi state, that

was exciting because it heartland,he way the at least the literal hearts, in terms of the journal in terms of the enterprise has been elsewhere and now has come south. i really felt that a lot of southern historiography was not only pushing southern environmental historiography, but also more generally environmental history. to get to just one quick example, water history. southern environmental historians are radically on waterthe narrative and the emphasis has been on a very arid region. that southerning

historians, environmental historians are helping us think about. an essay thate was really grounded in political economy and politics, which was not ignored. i think that there is an understatement, but what we dealt with was the chronological subfield that has no definitive in. -- definitive end. there is the scholarship that occurred during -- since the last major historiographical incident, but the history that the 30-plusace in years and how we deal with the historiography of history that had not occurred.

we really embraced being as inclusive as possible in playing that historiographical game of chicken and no matter how you ize recent history, the bulk of that time also than the publication of "interpreting southern history's." so we tried to conceptualize to the present ambitiously and speak to the real trends and breakthroughs we have seen in the scholarship, you know, in the lived experience, not only of many younger historians in the field, at also keeping in mind population that was not living for the clinton impeachment, among other things. we embrace that aspect as well, ,tarting in the new deal era but also pushing it as far to the present as we possibly could.

that puts us as in june the scholarship as it could possibly be. -- in team with the scholarship as it could possibly be. ok. possibly the most important question we can ask is does southern history still exist? is there still a need to study the south as a distinct geography or culture? we are posing that to the panel -- [phone rings] >> oh, my god. pardon me. them, we are it to posing it to you. should you have something to say, please stepped to the microphone to do so. yes and no.ay i will take the easy way out. thatet me first say southern history of the native a modern category

in the lives of southern indigenous people. much in indians shared the way of experiences and culture and scholars recognize this. wes forces us to expand what think of as these southern past and present and future. research has been at the forefront of one of the most powerful historiographical trends. it speaks to the global past. native american history encourages us to expand our , butsis in another way the temporally by placing european invasion of the

americans in the context of a complex indigenous i will just close with a quote 2011my co-author, from her historical association presidential address. indians provide us with an opportunity to examine different experiences and perspectives in the history of the south. ones that do not follow the standard narrative but challenge and enrich it. i think it depends on how we are defining the south and southern history. i think obviously some of the traditional ways and assumptions about southern history are gone and good riddance. evidenced by this collection, the topic of southern history is incredibly vibrant. we are at the historical

association meeting. i have been trained in southern history. i'm not going to say that there is no point studying southern history, because i am self interested in it continuing. i think it is changing, it is evolving, and we are asking these questions of it and about it and i think that is significant. cutting back to this point about public history and public memory , just understanding what is the south, what was the south, and how it is affecting us today in our political conversations, social, racial conversations. me, southern history is right in the center of all of that. i say yes. >> my answer is also yes. history for our section of the historiography,

what the work is reflecting is that southern history is defined in the ways that our actors are defining southern us and defining themselves. in my own work, i work on virginia and the virginians i know identify themselves as virginians before anything else. moreudents in kentucky readily identify with particular counties in the bluegrass state. 120 audit counties, so knowing where they all are is becoming increasingly important for me. paying attention to what our actors have to say about how they identify the south, but also their own southern us and the pieces of the south they bring with them as they are forced to move or as they flee the region and they are the types of southern histories that

are the important southern histories to tell. tom and i also answered with a qualified yes. it is kind of a yes but. certainly, do we need southern history and do we need southern environmental history? the field right now is answering a robust yes. we use a site to keep track of drugmastic -- massive his graffiti that has developed. tom did a screenshot. i can't show you, but it shows -- it has everything organized by the date of publication, and you can watch the growth curve go up exponentially and the present moment is discontinuing that growth curve. in terms of the way a

scholarship speaks to the importance of a topic, absolutely, southern environmental history has only recently come into its own and it is on fire right now. i don't see an end to that. and, as i mentioned, environmental history asks us to attend to regions. that is a yes. those are the parts that are yes. fromes but, the but comes the fact that many of these points of scholarship are fueling that upward trajectory are not only about the south. they are transnational history, histories of capitalism, histories of organisms. are taking us beyond the south, and as i said before, so many of our subjects

do not attend to political boundaries at all. they in fact actively transgress those boundaries at will, and ignore them and don't know they exist. so, the physical realities of trees, watersheds and so on ground us in regions and demand regional approaches. on the other hand, even those systems have never been static. they are all intertwined with human endeavor. they are dynamic and layered often in boundary defying ways. even the physicality of the region is dynamic and changing. there are all these other ways that boundaries are defied, by organisms, by corporations, by commodities and so on. environmental history works to anchor southern history but at the same time illuminate the

dense webs of connection far beyond the region. southern history continues to exist, but more is one set of nodes in a wider net. movement to environmental history that we think behooves southern history generally. he is a beautiful writer, so i want to end with a quote that he wrote and i edited a little bit, but it is largely his work. the end of our essay, where we essentially make a call to erase boundaries between southern and environmental history. the people who populate our histories are organisms, interacting visibly and organisms,ith other both inside and outside their bodies, and yes, wind and rain and proximity to the sun and composition of the particular patches of earth on which they

stood, built, gathered and formed, resisted and oppressed. if all historians remember and attend to the matter of the past, then we southern historians might be out of a job our understanding would much richer. didn't pass earlier because i am shy. i passed because i was saving up for this. we start our essay with franklin roosevelt declaring the south the nation's number one economic problem. we certainly start, and in our title, we take the question head-on and starting the way we do, i would say it certainly matters if people believe there is a south, whether it is the president or everyday folks. but ie that seriously would also say about the broader

roote, which you could among other things in a conference that was held every diversity in 2006 called the end of southern history which resulted in an edited volume called the myth of southern exceptionalism. i have taught that at a public university in the deep south. i've seen students get their hackles up before cracking the cover. raised questions and debates. edited volumes are taking it head on. been lumped in with the killers. it is an interesting thing to ponder. what it does make me think about and one thing that i think would be useful to end on his thinking about the pendulum swing of southern historiography. i won't say that it moves in cycles, but there is certainly a

swing i have seen in terms of how the present moment forces us to reflect on scholarship that perhaps has been shoved to the side. in the case of southern history, one thing they were taking on was challenging dan carter's arguments about the southern is asian of american politics, challenging the trajectory that he traces from newt gingrich -- from george wallace to newt gingrich and the whole george wallace centric story of the rise of modern conservatism. for a while, that was out. that was challenged by the goldwater renaissance, the focus on sun belt politics. how innteresting to see the past few years, some of those same folks are interested in george wallace. george wallace is back in a big

way and suddenly we are nourished -- we are interested in understanding him again. even when we have seeming dramatic, provocative, collective statements of a shift in the historiography, we also have within those collections themselves the seeds of the next swing, or the next big thing. if you go back to myth of southern exceptionalism, the last essay is nancy mclean and it is called the neo-confederacy versus the new deal. that isa volume supposedly collectively challenging the notion of southern history and telling a story of post-world war ii modernization, there are still the seeds of what comes next. what comes next is not simply a swing back to the other side. that argument looks different based on the historiographical developments and the scholarship we have come through.

aboute think about books the groundbreaking books in the last couple decades about walmart or the fire in north those aren 1991, southern stories. they are southern histories, but they look different and in some ways they resound more broadly and they make the impact they do because of how we are framing those southern stories. we don't definitively answer the question that we address in our title, is there an end to southern history, and that is because the go to answer is the one that every southern history progress or is ever asked, it is complicated. your questions and comments now. we want to underscore that you can go to the booth during the southern historical association conference and see the page proof. the book will be out in march

and it is available for preorder on amazon, which we strongly encourage. that's thank the panelists and open up for questions. [applause] >> what anyone like to say anything? yes sir. hoping that one of the panelists would talk about fisticuffs they had with a co-author or some sort of argument. we are apt -- we are academics. maybe this is more a question for lori. where there authors who maybe had different perspectives in terms of the historiography, and how did they work through those perspectives. i am not asking for names or details, but i am wondering, how do you find ways to get over those obstacles that may seem insurmountable when you start. >> the first thing i think about

is when we approached leslie and steve about doing the civil war and reconstruction, he said we think that needs to be two separate essays and we had circulated the table of contents with many contributors and there were other scholars who were on the team who agreed with that. job as lettingur the experts in the various fields make those kinds of crucial decisions. with on doyle, who is one of the contributors just before this started, and i think craig and i were so admiring of the professionalism .f everyone we worked with i would like to tell you a juicy story, but i don't really have one. people met deadlines, they were thoughtful, collaborative, and maybe it is a self-selected cohort. the people who are willing to

reflect on the field and have a writing partner are people who are team oriented. there is nothing juicy. i would say lori and i were amazed that academics would actually meet a deadline. theere surprised at all of teams, save one, because of a medical emergency came in on time, and if they had any squabbles between them, we were unaware of it. it was very clean and easy process as the editors of the entire collection to deal with them. undertakingstrous for us, because including the introduction, there are 20 essays in the book. some are quite lengthy. editors of an overarching

volume, it is our responsibility to try to root out any replication. i can tell you i learned more about southern history in this process and i learned in the previous 25 years of doing southern history. say tom and io had a wonderful collaborative relationship but that's not because we saw eye to eye on everything. the case of in southern environmental history, it is such a vast arena. he was nervous about diving into woods and waters and i love that stuff. i was nervous about agricultural history, which he knows well and he took on urban history, which we both have some knowledge of but was something he spearheaded. for us, i think he would agree with me in saying that we both learned a lot from the other one

in this process. having anyer forthright debates about the relative importance of this or that. places, butss those in the process of sharing data -- sharing drafts, we each nudged the other one in places where he thought something needed to be expanded or something had been misconstrued. i think that our debate did not stories,form of juicy but they took the form of collaborative writing, where we took responsibility for drafting different sections but then we each read those sections and changed things and sot counsel from the other and made critical comments and all that. a lot of that difference in our

case got ironed out through the writing. i am probably the closest to a juicy story. i worked with justin roberts. not anything to do with justin but there was a previous collaborator who dropped out and it wasn't really that juicy, but we both said this is great. we never talked, we never met, and he wrote in the first email, why don't you go ahead and write and i said, i am a grown woman and you gentlemen are writing half. that was the closest. i will crack 15 pages out and you will crack 15 pages out. i wrote mine and said here's what i will do if i do this, then of course together it will be collaborative.

roughly 15 and he dropped out. and then justin came in and that was great. that was the closest he will probably get. i'm just not going to have that. say in terms of the comments i just made about recent historiography, i think it didn't matter in our case in terms of the perspective we took and how much we had in common in terms of the way we viewed our assignment. it was that the place where we overlapped and intersected in terms of our work was in the so new gates of that, deal and world war ii. it would be interesting to see an essay focused more on the 1960's to the present, or where the collaborators were focused on the 1930's and 1940's and

someone focused on the 1980's and 1990's. particularly with the question of the end of southern history. that question made me think about that. thank you. >> any other questions or comments? mucht, then thank you very for attending the panel. [applause] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2020] the c-span cities tour is exploring the national story in chapel hill, north carolina. coming up, we will visit the morehead