University of Arkansas Press Publishes 'Unlocking V.O. Key Jr: Southern Politics for the 21st Century'

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FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – The University of Arkansas Press has published Unlocking V.O. Key Jr: Southern Politics for the Twenty-First Century ($29.95, paper), edited by two University of Arkansas political science professors, Angie Maxwell and Todd Shields. Maxwell is the Diane D. Blair Professor of Southern Studies; Shields is dean of the Graduate School and International Education and director of the Diane D. Blair Center of Southern Politics and Society.

According to Maxwell, “V.O. Key’s landmark book Southern Politics in State and Nation (1949) made the scientific study of the South an accepted field that launched the careers of several generations of political scientists. In this collection, an interdisciplinary group of scholars reflects on Key’s work, pointing out his flaws and omissions, championing his methodological legacy, and reconsidering the predictions that he made about the modern South that confronts us now.”

The work of 14 prominent southern scholars in history, political science, and Southern and American studies is included in the book, as well as an introduction by the editors.

James C. Cobb, the Spalding Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Georgia, said, “It’s a rare book indeed that continues to attract critical attention more than 60 years after it appeared. V.O. Key’s Southern Politics is just such a work, however, and both its strengths and shortcomings get a thorough going over in this lively multidisciplinary volume where contributors not only take on Key but, occasionally, each other.”