When Flags in the Dust was written, the phrase "concentration camp" (355) referred to what we would call boot camp. After Buddy MacCallum enlists in Mississippi, he is sent to such a camp in Arkansas for training as an infantryman.
An "embarkation depot" was a port from which American soldiers sailed for France. There was one at Newark, New Jersey, during the First World War, though the novel simply locates the one from which Buddy MacCallum ships somewhere in that state.
On the map of this story, the square around the courthouse represents "the streets" of Jefferson. "That Evening Sun" begins by locating this setting in time rather than space, by contrasting the way, fifteen years ago, black women carried bundles of laundry on their heads from the homes of white patrons to their cabins with the present, in which the streets are paved and lined with telephone poles as well as trees, and the laundry is transported in "motor cars" (289).
Sarah Perkins is a doctoral candidate in English at Stanford University. Currently a Mellon fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center and a former fellow at the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE), she specializes in late nineteenth and early twentieth century American literature. Her dissertation, Dixie Bound: An American Mystery, explores the cultural history of the song, "I Wish I Was In Dixie."
Peter Alan Froehlich is Assistant Professor of English at Pennsylvania State University, Hazleton. His primary research interests include the grotesque, frontier mythology, and masculinity in Faulkner. His interest in Digital Humanities traces back to a previous career as a designer of massively multiplayer online role playing games. His current engagement in the scholarship of teaching and learning with technology includes research on digital storytelling in first-year composition classes.
William M. Teem IV received his MA from the University of Virginia and is currently ABD from Georgia State University, writing his dissertation on William Faulkner. He teaches English for Georgia Northwestern Technical College. Often speaking at regional and national conferences, he has published a number of journal articles on Southern Literature, particularly on the works of Lee Smith.
