Panel. Staging Southern Histories

Visions of Southern Nationalism: A Historical Reassessment of Works by William Faulkner / Daniel Ferris, De Anza CollegeThe works of William Faulkner leave us with a compelling historical view of the South, both ante- and post bellum. Yet Carvel Collins, who established Harvard University’s first Faulkner seminar, and Malcolm Cowley, editor of an important selection of Faulkner’s writings in the 1940s, worked to distance Faulkner from the label of “regional historian”. Both were leaders in a movement that succeeded in bringing Faulkner’s works to national and international audiences on the basis of its “universal” appeal, yet this paper demonstrates that viewing Faulkner through such a lens obstructs other possible layers of analysis, especially the writer’s relationship to history. Importantly, Faulkner demonstrated in numerous writings that he viewed the South as a separate political, cultural, and nationalistic entity, which was also imperialized and occupied; this is especially apparent when his works are analyzed vis-à-vis approaches to history by postmodern and postcolonial thinkers. Viewed in such a light, Faulkner emerges as one of the South’s most committed historians. Monuments, Memory, and Faulkner\u27s Nathan Bedford Forrest / Andrew Leiter, Lycoming CollegeFraming Faulkner’s fiction with the contemporary struggle over public space, memory, and southern history, particularly the recent controversy regarding Forrest Park in Memphis, this essay considers Faulkner’s interest in public monuments relative to his depictions of Nathan Bedford Forrest in Go Down, Moses, “Dull Tale,” and “My Grandmother Millard and General Bedford Forrest and the Battle of Harrykin Creek.” These works highlight familiar tensions in Faulkner that extend from his alternately romantic and condemnatory treatments of southern history, as well as his obsession with the troubled contemporary construction of that history. Faulkner’s interest in monuments of distorted southern history can be considered analogous to his thoughts on his literary memorials to the Civil War South, and furthermore, such concerns anticipate subsequent contention over Confederate monuments in the (recently acknowledged) hybrid culture of the post-civil rights South. For the Good of My Soul : Postwar Sentiment and Faulkner\u27s Staged South / Kristi Rowan Humphreys, Texas Tech UniversityIn 1956 in Paris, the play portion of Requiem for a Nun was staged for the first time as a French adaptation by Albert Camus. Considering positive international responses, Requiem was expected to be popular with Americans, but the subsequent Broadway production failed in a month after only forty-five performances. It is the contention of this study that Requiem was popular in France because European audiences found characters whose struggles aligned with the postwar struggles of their own. During a time when French cinemas ran film after film reflecting American high culture, the French appreciation for Faulkner represents a longing to see themselves on an equal footing with the clear victors of the Second World War—the Americans. Through Faulkner’s play, which functioned as a “contact zone” where audience members met honest, less-than-perfect portrayals of Americans, the French were able to realize both of these goals