For centuries, Spain and the South have existed on the margins of U.S. and European identities—as much for the Francoist and Jim Crow periods as for their “exotic” cultures and sunny beaches attractive to tourists worldwide. Between Distant Modernities theorizes this trans-Atlantic link to show exactly how Spanish and Southern exceptionality became a performance developed as a specific response to modernity, and its perceived threat of homogenization, in the United States and Europe across the twentieth century. Seeing the War of 1898 as a climactic moment, this book begins by exploring the wr ... More

For centuries, Spain and the South have existed on the margins of U.S. and European identities—as much for the Francoist and Jim Crow periods as for their “exotic” cultures and sunny beaches attractive to tourists worldwide. Between Distant Modernities theorizes this trans-Atlantic link to show exactly how Spanish and Southern exceptionality became a performance developed as a specific response to modernity, and its perceived threat of homogenization, in the United States and Europe across the twentieth century. Seeing the War of 1898 as a climactic moment, this book begins by exploring the writings of the Nashville Agrarians and members of the so-called Generation of 1898, who each tried to regenerate a “traditional” Spain and South located in an agrarian past. That desire is constantly re-enacted by main characters in cultural production across the twentieth century as these characters simultaneously enact and problematize the issue of self/other, exile/citizen, and tourist/native that dominate both literary traditions.