Reconstructing DixieThe South has long played a central role in Americas national imaginationthe site of the trauma of slavery and of a vast nostalgia industry, alternatively the nations moral other and its moral center. Reconstructing Dixie explores how ideas about the South function within American culture. Narratives of the region often cohere around such tropes as southern hospitality and the southern (white) lady. Tara McPherson argues that these discursive