Dissertation Overview
My dissertation analyzes the erasure of marginalized voices within the Texas imaginary via the post-World War II shift in regional affiliation from South to West, and proposes an avenue of recovery through recognizing Texas public rhetoric and literature as geographically and culturally part of intranational border space. I use a southern studies lens combined with border theory to situate Texas cultural production within a framework that examines African-American and Latinx voices in a culturally hybrid space. Although new southern studies is predicated upon inclusiveness, Texas manages to elide scrutiny as an object of study—dismissed as more West than South. Border theory is usually concerned with transnational, rather than regional borders. I propose to use this dissertation as not only an intervention into the subject matter, but the methodology as well.
Three Research Questions:
Chapter One
My first chapter analyzes the subversion of classic Western tropes within Lonesome Dove and Blood Meridian. Each work was published in 1985 amid a crisis of Texas identity caused by the oil bust, and a resurgence of Western nostalgia. Both novels were written as anti-westerns, and I contend the texts were predicated upon Texas as an extension of the U.S. South.
Chapter Two
Chapter Two examines the 2014 novels, Ruby and Red Now and Laters that depict subaltern voices in Black East Texas communities grappling with institutionalized white supremacy. I analyze the use of magical realism as a metaphysical claim to the physical settings, creating a geo-cultural space combatting the erasure of black voices as part of the Texas public imaginary.
Chapter Three
The final chapter investigates Texas newspaper editorials immediately before and after the Kennedy assassination, as well as President Johnson’s rhetoric during his presidency and vice-presidency, to establish a timeline for a shift away from Southern affiliation concurrent with the progression towards civil rights legislation.