tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37589721331585843.post371578858272392076..comments2024-03-26T11:33:59.219-06:00Comments on Religion in American History: CD Selections for the Solstice Season -- Separating the Wheat from the TaresPaul Harveyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13881964303772343114noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37589721331585843.post-78798962094781094152007-12-03T11:51:00.000-07:002007-12-03T11:51:00.000-07:00Thanks, Paul.The working title of the dissertation...Thanks, Paul.<BR/>The working title of the dissertation was the rather elusive "Johnny the Revelator." I changed it in the final version to the more descriptive and academic "Hard, Hard Religion: Faith and Class in the New South." A basic premise of the dissertation is that the recurring waves of outsiders looking south with fascination at a strange cultural fusion of poverty, religion, and music, have been on to something--something that remains in the shadows of the historiography. Folkloric engagements with this regional subculture have, it seems to me, contained three notable insights: 1) that the subculture was marked by the "racial interchange" you have sketched in Freedom's Coming, an interchange whose existence challenges what we think we know about the Jim Crow South 2) that the "folk"--primarily poor rural southerners, white and black--forged a complicated sensibility, precisely in their experience of poverty and social marginality, and that that sensibility speaks to modern and perhaps postmodern "blues" 3) that the subculture was almost entirely oral, perpertuated through story, sermon, and most lastingly, song. I've tried to run with those insights, recover that subculture for full display, and firmly contextualize it in the New South era.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-37589721331585843.post-43782965823363692482007-11-26T07:41:00.000-07:002007-11-26T07:41:00.000-07:00John's my good buddy and just down the hall from m...John's my good buddy and just down the hall from me. I'll let him know that you gave him a shout-out, and I'll see if I can get him away from organic farming long enough to post about his work.DEGhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12172696007825023445noreply@blogger.com