Michael T. Bernath
University of Miami (Coral Gables, FL 33146-2926)
FT-60692-13
Summer Stipends
Research Programs
|
Totals:
$6,000 (approved)
$6,000 (awarded)
Grant period:
6/1/2013 – 7/31/2013
|
|
In a Land of Strangers: Northern Teachers in the Old South and the Emergence of American Sectional Identity, 1790-1865
My book project focuses on the thousands of northerners who worked as teachers, tutors, and governesses in the Old South in order to analyze what their experiences, observations, and motives can reveal about emerging northern and southern identity during the antebellum period. Literally "bridging cultures," the presence of these teachers represented a direct contact point between northerners and southerners at a time when the two sections were becoming increasingly antagonistic. Uniquely, if sometimes uncomfortably, positioned within southern society, these northern teachers provide the ideal vantage point from which to explore perceptions of sectional difference and distinctiveness and to chart the emergence and contours of American identity.
|