Reading Readers during the Southern Literary Renaissance

Drawing on my recent work, an examination of the ways in which New York book reviewers shaped ideas about the American South during the second quarter of the twentieth century, I will discuss my indebtedness to the work of literary scholars, especially those engaged in reception studies and reader response theory. I will suggest through two brief case studies, one centered on a canonical work, the other on a lesser-known text, the relevance of this kind of cross-disciplinary engagement for cultural and intellectual historians. Shifting attention away from cultural production and dissemination dislodges the text at the center, replacing it with the reader, allowing us to ask not only what and who was read, but how and why readers read. It also allows us to see the ways in which readers participated in different interpretative communities. A member of New York’s literati might read Erskine Caldwell’s God’s Little Acre (1933) differently than a physician in small-town Georgia, for example. In this case, a turn to mediation, consumption, and reception highlights the degree to which readers, writers, and critics negotiated, rather than pronounced, ideas about the American South during a time when the region came under intense national scrutiny.  Finally, I’ll offer a few words about avenues for fruitful collaborative work.