In this major reexamination of the southern industrial economy and its failure to progress during the antebellum period, Fred Bateman and Thomas Weiss show that slavery and its consequences were not alone in inhibiting industrialization. They argue, rather, that the planters hesitated to invest in high-risk enterprises and worried that industrialization would undermine their authority. Underpinning this study is a massive data collection from census reports, which permits an economic analy...

Sign & Breath is a new critical anthology that takes a different approach to exploring these questions: What is poetry? What defines voice? Featuring a range of contemporary artists, many of whom work across different mediums and genres, Sign & Breath introduces the reader to one page that sings in any genre – prose, fiction, poetry, spoken word, hybrid forms, and song – across diverse traditions. Rather than define poetry as a genre with conventions, traditions, codes, a...