RON RASH AND EUDORA WELTY: Walking the Same Worn Path

In her address to the Society for the Study of Southern Literature in 2012, entitled “New Landscapes of Southern Literary Studies,” Barbara Ladd charted the trajectory of southern literature from its perceived “aristocratic” roots, to the educated middle- and upper-class southern writers of the Renascence, such as Faulkner, O’Connor, and Welty, to more recent trends. Ladd recounted Louis D. Rubin Jr.’s attempt in the 1950s to find a director at Johns Hopkins for his proposed dissertation on Thomas Wolfe. One professor whom he approached stated that Wolfe did not really fit into the mold of the southern writer because he