Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University History Dissertations Department of History 4-24-2007 Reconfiguring Memories of Honor: William Raoul's Manipulation of Masculinities in the New South, 1872-1918 Steve Ray Blankenship Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/history_diss Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Blankenship, Steve Ray, "Reconfiguring Memories of Honor: William Raoul's Manipulation of Masculinities in the New South, 1872-1918." Dissertation, Georgia State University, 2007. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/history_diss/3 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of History at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in History Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. RECONFIGURING MEMORIES OF HONOR: WILLIAM RAOUL’S MANIPULATION OF MASCULINITIES IN THE NEW SOUTH, 1872-1918 by STEVEN R. BLANKENSHIP Under the Direction of Jared Poley ABSTRACT This dissertation examines how honor was fashioned in the New South by examining the masculine roles performed by William Greene Raoul, Jr. Raoul wrote his autobiography in the mid-1930s and in it he reflected on his life on the New South’s frontier at the turn of the century as change came to the region in all aspects of life: politically, economically, socially, sexually, and racially. Raoul was an elite son of the New South whose memoirs, “The Proletarian Aristocrat,” reveals a man of multiple masculinities, each with particular ways of retrieving his past(s). The paradox of his title suggests the parallel organization of Raoul’s recollections.