 | Becoming Southern Writers Southern writers, historians, and artists celebrate the life and career of a beloved mentor, friend, and colleague Edited by southern historians Orville Vernon Burton and Eldred E. Prince, Jr., Becoming Southern Writers pays tribute to South Carolinian Charles Joyner's fifty year career as a southern historian, folklorist, and social activist. Exceptional writers of fact, fiction, and poetry, the contributors to the volume are among Joyner's many friends, admirers, and colleagues as well as those to whom Joyner has served as a mentor. The contributors describe how they came to write about the South and how they came to write about it in the way they do while reflecting on the humanistic tradition of scholarship as lived experience. The contributors constitute a Who's Who of southern writers--from award-winning literary artists to historians. Freed from constraints of their disciplines by Joyner's example, they enthusiastically describe family reunions, involvement in the civil rights movement, research projects, and mentors. While not all contributors are native to the South or the United States and a few write about the South only occasionally, all the essayists root their work in southern history, and all have made distinguished contributions to southern writing. Diverse in theme and style, these writings represent each author's personal reflections on experiences living in and writing about the South while touching on topics that surfaced in Joyner's own works, such as race, family, culture, and place. Whether based on personal or historical events, each one speaks to Joyner's theme that "all history is local history, somewhere." Orville Vernon Burton is Creativity Professor of Humanities and professor of history, sociology, and computer science at Clemson University and the director of the Clemson CyberInstitute. From 2008 to 2010, he was the Burroughs Distinguished Professor of Southern History and Culture at Coastal Carolina University. He is Emeritus University Distinguished Teacher/Scholar, University Scholar, and professor of history, African American studies, and sociology at the University of Illinois. The author of more than two hundred articles and author or editor of more than twenty books, including T he Age of Lincoln and In My Father's House Are Many Mansions: Family and Community in Edgefield, South Carolina, Burton's latest book is Penn Center: A History Preserved. |
