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JULIA MAY AND VIRGINIA
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JULIA MAY AND VIRGINIA. THE MAKING OF A MODERN SOUTHERN BELLE. By
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ISBN: 978-1-937030-18-6 2012
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Denise R. Shaw’s book, Julia May and Virginia: The Making of a Modern Southern Belle, is an examination of two women who made a place for themselves in a patriarchal society despite the absence of both a paternal presence in the home and also against a milieu of incalculable cultural changes. Through hundreds of letters, newspaper clippings, personal journals, and photos, readers are introduced to first-hand accounts of the lives of two women who saved items that chronicled their ‘courting’ and social experiences during the first half of the 20th century in Americus, Georgia. This project shows that despite the hardships of economic struggle, patriarchal oppression, and a backwardness concerning the stigma of growing up in a single parent home, Julia May Morgan, like many women today, worked both within and also against cultural conventions to ensure social, marital, and economic success for her daughter, Virginia. ‘I believe this is a potentially fascinating study of gender construction as well as class aspiration in the early 20th century South. Denise Shaw has a unique collection of documents to work with as well as the support of the Mary Lily Research Grant through Duke University. With her new manuscript, Denise Shaw promises to interrogate the social meanings of both gender and class in the South.’ Dr. Pamela Barnett Director of the McGraw Center For Teaching and Learning, Temple University
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DENISE R. SHAW |
Denise R. Shaw is an Associate Professor of English and Women’s Studies at the University of South Carolina Union. Her areas of specialty include Southern literature and the 20th century American novel. Her first book, The Rape Narrative and the American South (2007), explores the proliferation of sexual violence in modern Southern literature. Denise Shaw has also been published in Hollins Critic, African American History Reference Series, Greenwood Encyclopedia of African American Women Writers, Infanticide in Its Global Context, Cleave, and Journal for the Association of Research on Mothering. Denise Shaw is a recipient of Duke University’s Mary Lily Research Grant, 2009 and a Co-Grantee of the National Endowment for the Arts Big Read, 2009-10. |
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