Scholars to Examine Impact of Woodward's 'The Burden of Southern History'

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – On April 7-9, the Blair Center, in partnership with the Winthrop Rockefeller Institute, will host the third Blair Legacy Series Conference on native Arkansan C. Vann Woodward, to be held on the campus of the University of Arkansas. On the 50-year anniversary of its publication, Woodward’s The Burden of Southern History will be the focus of this retrospective.

Invited scholars will reconsider the key essays that comprise Woodward’s landmark collection, discuss the ongoing relevance of his ideas and reinterpret one of his theses in an analysis of the contemporary South. Woodward tackles questions of equality, white Southern identity, the political legacy of reconstruction, the heritage of populism and the place of the South within the nation.

A public lecture will be offered by James C. Cobb, the B. Phinizy Spalding Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Georgia. He will speak on “C. Vann Woodward for a New Century: Politics and Identity in the Modern South ” at 4 p.m. Thursday, April 8, in Giffels Auditorium, Old Main. A former president of the Southern Historical Association, Cobb has written widely on the interaction among economy, society and culture in the American South. His books include The Selling of The South: The Southern Crusade for Industrial Development, 1936-1990 and The Most Southern Place on Earth: The Mississippi Delta and the Roots of Regional Identity. His most recent book, Away Down South: A History of Southern Identity, was published by Oxford University Press in 2005.

The academic symposium will once again feature a panel of eight to ten interdisciplinary scholars who will offer working papers on their selected subject in two small group sessions. All scholars will also serve on a panel following the keynote address to discuss their thoughts with a larger public audience. Revised chapters will be edited into a complete manuscript by Jeannie M. Whayne, Todd G. Shields and Angie Maxwell and submitted for publication.

Participating scholars include Elsa Barkley Brown, associate professor of history and women’s studies at the University of Maryland; Charles Bullock III, the Richard B. Russell Professor of Political Science at the University of Georgia; Jane Dailey, associate professor of history at the University of Chicago; Leigh Ann Duck, associate professor of English at the University of Memphis; Robert C. McMath, dean of the Honors College at the University of Arkansas; Wayne Parent, the Russell B. Long Professor of Political Science at Louisiana State University; Hanes Walton Jr., professor at the Center for Afroamerican and African Studies at the University of Michigan; and Patrick Williams, associate professor of history at the University of Arkansas.

The Diane D. Blair Center of Southern Politics and Society was established by an act of U. S. Congress in the fall of 2001, making it one of the rare research centers in the country to be created by congressional appropriation. Diane Divers Blair taught in the political science department at the University of Arkansas for 30 years, receiving designation as Master Teacher in 1982 and being named the universitywide Outstanding Faculty Member three times. Her career outside of teaching included extensive public service as chair of both the U.S. Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the Commission on Public Employee Rights. She was also a founding member of the University of Arkansas Press. In 1992 she joined the Clinton presidential campaign as a senior researcher, after which she was appointed a guest scholar at the Brookings Institute. She returned in 1996 as a senior adviser on the Clinton re-election team. Her publications include Silent Hattie Speaks: The Personal Journals of Senator Hattie Carraway (Greenwood Press, 1979), Arkansas Politics and Government: Do the People Rule? (University of Nebraska Press, 1988), as well as 14 book chapters and more than 90 additional articles.

“The Blair Center reflects her academic model and strives to approach the American South from a variety of angles and to reveal the undercurrents of politics, history and culture that have shaped the region over time. The Blair Legacy Series invites senior scholars to assess the regional, national and international impact of Southern politicians, intellectuals and social leaders,” said Todd Shields, center director.

At the inaugural conference, experts considered the legacy of President William Jefferson Clinton, compiling their assessments in the book The Clinton Riddle: Perspectives on the Forty-Second President, edited by Shields, Jeannie M. Whayne and Donald Kelly and published by the University of Arkansas Press. In the spring of 2009, the Blair Legacy Series turned the critical spotlight on eminent political scientist V.O. Key Jr. On the 60^th anniversary of the publication of Key’s seminal work, Southern Politics in State and Nation, a group of interdisciplinary scholars gathered at Petit Jean Mountain, Arkansas, to debate what elements of Key’s work remain valid and to speculate on what the eminent social scientist overlooked in his 1940s research.