| Abstract | An exploration of the questions and topics that scholars of historical memory have yet to address in the South. A shift has occurred in Southern historiography from a history of myth to a history of collective memory. The current approach to historical memory blends semiotics, material culture, and social, cultural, and political history and seeks to determine how historical meaning has been assigned through discourse, with due attention paid to forms of both elite and popular cultural expression. However, greater attention to the memories of individual Southerners will allow historians to uncover the ways in which historical memory informed day-to-day life. The more historians are able to restore the subjectivity of individuals to the study of historical memory, the better able they will be to provide a finely textured understanding of the processes of collective memory as well as of the emotional power of the recalled past.
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