Blackwell Reference Online

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Regionalism … is the true native ground. The perception of that home truth is an act of politics, cultural politics, a seizing of imaginative power, and the construction or re-construction of institutions … It is not a denial or a retreat from realities and issues – it is a way through and into them. L. Honnighausen, “The Old and New Regionalism,” p. 17 Regionalism in the era of the New Deal worked at the intersections of government, academia, politics, literature, and nationalism. Regionalists of the 1930s recognized their work as something different from the art and fiction of the late nineteenth-century literary regionalists. While the literary and aesthetic were not divorced from regionalism in this later era, the movement was explicitly interested in the intersections of such aesthetic practices with political practices. Regionalism explored the possibilities of transforming social theory into social action, whether through scholarly research, literary production, or politics. Self-proclaimed regionalists of the time used the idea of regionalism to confront the problems of the Great Depression. In so doing, they enacted a central tenet of regionalism in this period: that it would result in effective programs and policies. The question, then, is how regionalists of this era conceived of revitalizing the American nation. Participants in debates about regionalism came from numerous ... log in or subscribe to read full text