After studying lynching and racial violence in the South, W. Fitzhugh Brundage's interests shifted to the study of historical memory and regional identity. In The Southern Past (2005), he traces the contests over memory that divided southerners, both white and black, during the past century and a half. His particular concern is the role of contests over the past as an obstacle to the emergence and recognition of pluralism in the modern South. He currently is at work on two projects: a collection on African Americans and the creation of American mass culture, 1890-1930; and a book on 1919 in the United States.

Lecture topics:

• From Grits to the Allman Brothers: Why American Looks to the South for Authentic Culture
• Whose Past? Whose Memory? Contests Over the South’s History
• A Duty Peculiarly Fitting to Women: Southern White Women, Public Space, and Collective Memory, 1880-1920
• Arguing about the Civil War: White and Black Southerners and the Civil War
• The Roar on the Other Side of Silence: White Violence and Black Resistance in the American South

Viewed Saturday, November 21, 2009