Center Takes Studying South in New Directions

Thinking about the South, and rethinking what we have already thought, is the job of scholars in Southern Studies. “The U.S. South in Global Contexts,” an interdisciplinary symposium held February 13-15, 2004, in Barnard Observatory, did just that: it provided the opportunity for scholars to rethink some of the traditional assumptions guiding the study of the American South. The 32 symposium participants from all over the nation returned to some fundamental questions: Where is “the South”? What makes it distinctive? What constitutes a sense of regional identity? By posing these questions, pushing at national borders, and using a variety of theoretical approaches, participants of “The U.S. South in Global Contexts” tackled many issues immediately relevant to both American and Southern Studies.

As one participant, Deborah Cohn, put it, the symposium foregrounds the idea that defining America and not just the South is always relative: “we are in the Americas whether we are in Mississippi or Cuba or Brazil.” By exploring links between the U.S. South and other Souths, we can consider the role of regional identity in a hemispheric context. Doing so does not diminish the importance of more established topics related to the U.S. South: the Civil War, the civil rights movement, the dividing lines of race, class, and gender. Rather, thinking of the South as both locally grounded and globally connected only widens the avenues of study that make up Southern Studies and deepens our sense of regional histories. “We cannot understand the U.S. South,” pointed out keynote speaker Marshall Eakin, “unless we recognize that global forces created and have always shaped its histories, societies, and cultures. . . . The region first begins to emerge as a definable entity out of the clash of empires, peoples, and civilizations in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.” Now, in the 21st century, we find ourselves in what symposium participant Jon Smith called “the most vibrant time in Southern studies,” one that relies upon global connections and interdisciplinarity in trying to understand any patch of Southern soil.

Unlike traditional academic conferences, in which speakers read at length from prepared papers, this symposium featured a series of roundtable discussions that brought together scholars from more than 25 different institutions. Academic conversation and debate focused on five broad topics: “Theoretical Changes/Directional Shifts in Southern Studies,” “Rethinking Southern Communities,” “Other Souths,” “Southern Studies in the Institution,” and “Teaching the New Southern Studies.” The symposium additionally featured two plenary addresses, one by Karla Holloway, Professor of English and African American Studies and Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences at Duke University, and a second by Marshall C. Eakin, professor of history at Vanderbilt University. Holloway’s timely talk, “South Looking South: Surveillance, Science and Homeland [In]Securities” was the highlight of conference events on Friday, and Eakin’s presentation, “When South Is North: The U.S. South from the Perspective of a Brazilianist,” was the featured keynote speech at Saturday’s luncheon. Both speakers addressed an audience composed of academics, interested community members, and students, a number of whom were enrolled in a graduate seminar devoted to the symposium’s topic. At the event’s most robust moment, during Holloway’s keynote address, there were more than one hundred people in attendance.

The individual roundtable discussions, however, really constituted the heart of the conference by offering a forum for presenting work in progress and for engaging in scholarly debate. Each panel participant offered brief opening remarks before involving the audience at large. In the panel on “Theoretical Changes,” scholars addressed topics ranging from William Faulkner’s continued relevance in the study of a broadly defined America to the operating principles of one of the U.S. South’s most famous corporations, Wal-Mart. Panelists also reviewed current challenges to the definition of “Southern literature” and “Southern authors,” and they urged the audience to be mindful of our continued need to remain attentive to black/white tensions in the region’s literary output. In the panel on “Rethinking Southern Communities,” scholars considered the roles of Latin Americans and Native Americans in shaping both the historic and the contemporary South. Panelists who participated in the discussion of “Other Souths” explored connections between the U.S. South, the Caribbean, and Latin America from the disciplinary perspectives of history and comparative literature.

Rounding out the conference, the final two roundtables shifted from theory to current practices in Southern Studies. Composed of regional studies directors from programs around the country, the panel on “Southern Studies in the Institution” explored the challenges of new and expanded definitions of the “South” to their respective academic programs. The symposium ended on Sunday morning with “Teaching the New Southern Studies,” a panel on which many participants shared information on courses they had taught about the South. Panelists also discussed strategies that would allow teachers to reach beyond the simple binary of U.S. South versus U.S. North. Throughout the conference weekend, scholars repeatedly returned to questions about how to reframe the South theoretically, and they had exciting conversations about the value and use of postcolonial theory in situating the U.S. South as both a colonized and colonizing force in the national and international arena. Sponsored by a variety of departments and constituencies on campus, including the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, the Department of English, the Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College, the Croft Institute for International Studies, the College of Liberal Arts, the Office of the Provost, the Graduate School, the Office of Research, African-American Studies, and Gender Studies, “The U.S. South in Global Contexts” attracted top scholars and successfully anchored one of the most exciting cutting-edge exchanges about Southern Studies here at the University of Mississippi.

You can now hear and see selected proceedings of the symposium at www.southernspaces.org. Keep an eye out for a cumulative bibliography, as well as a publication of symposium proceedings, which the event’s directors, University of Mississippi professors Kathryn McKee and Annette Trefzer, plan to make available soon.

Kathryn McKee
Annette Trefzer

The “Southern Studies in the Institution” panel considers how to overcome systemic obstacles to genuinely interdisciplinary study. From left to right: George Handley, roundtable anchor, Brigham Young University; Monika Kaup, University of Washington; John Lowe, LSU; Patrick O’Donnell, Michigan State University; Anita Patterson, Boston University; and Charles Wilson, University of Mississippi.

Symposium participants remaining on Sunday morning gather in front of Barnard Observatory for an unexpected glimpse of Southern snow. From left to right: Row 1: Kathryn McKee, University of Mississippi; Anita Patterson, Boston University; Deborah Cohn, Indiana University-Bloomington; Earl Fitz, Vanderbilt University; Eric Anderson, Oklahoma State University; John Lowe, LSU; Barbara Ladd, Emory University. Row 2: Tara McPherson, University of Southern California; Jon Smith, University of Montevallo; Natalie Ring, Tulane University; Leigh Ann Duck, University of Memphis; Peter Schmidt, Swarthmore College. Row 3: George Handley, Brigham Young University; Marshall Eakin, Vanderbilt University; Monika Kaup, University of Washington; Gray Kane, University of Mississippi. Row 4: Patrick O’Donnell, Michigan State University; Jay Watson, University of Mississippi; Hosam Aboul-Ela, University of Houston. Row 5: John Matthews, Boston University; Susan Donaldson, College of William and Mary, Annette Trefzer, University of Mississippi; Katie Henninger, LSU; Riché Richardson, University of California at Davis.