About the Author

Nell Irvin Painter is the Edwards Professor of American History Emerita at Princeton University. She is author or editor of ten books, including Old in Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over, The History of White People, Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol, and Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.

Reviews

Painter's thoughtful collection is the result of a career spent in close examination of southern history. She demonstrates how that text can still reveal much, but only if we sharpen and enlarge our intellectual armamentarium." - Florida Historical Quarterly

"The theories, ideas, and analysis investigated in this text advance our understanding of nineteenth- and twentieth-century southern culture--both black and white--in unexpected, provocative, and compelling ways. . . . A highly original and radically ambitious book. This immensely important and insightful study underscores the need for new thinking about the scholarship of southern historiography that reaches beyond race. . . . A groundbreaking contribution and a rewarding addition to the field of American history, particularly southern historiography." - North Carolina Historical Review

"Demonstrate[s] excellence marked by the transgressive verve of [an] innovative and progressive scholar. . . . An extremely successful attempt to move with intellectual rigor and consistency toward a meaningful interpretation of a world mapped in blood by cruelty and violence." - Southern Literary Journal

"Painter wields both a scalpel and an ax as she dissects multiple generations of southern-focused literature. . . . Compelling. . . . [Southern History across the Color Line] provides an insightful exploration into the historical factors that have led to an incomplete literature on the mutual impact of the color line in the American South. It deserves careful study by a wide range of scholars and students of southern history and race relations." - Gulf South Historical Review

"Bold and innovative." - Canadian Journal of History

"One cannot help but applaud the appearance of this collection, which provides a fine introduction to the ideas of an important scholar." - Journal of Southern History