CFP: Routledge Companion to the Literature of the American South

CFP Reminder:
We are looking for contributors for the Routledge Companion to the Literature of the U.S. South, which will offer forty-five (45) short articles by scholars from a wide range of backgrounds who are working in or tangential to the field of U.S. southern studies. The goal of the Companion is to create a multi-faceted conversation around a series of topics in U.S. southern studies, and to bring in the widest variety of perspectives possible to a general audience of both students and scholars. This proposed Companion incorporates the trends in the field from the past twenty years, but opens them up even further by highlighting the perspectives of a wide number of scholars, a mix of junior and senior scholars, and those directly in the field as well as those whose work is indirectly related. Building on the momentum of recent manifestos in the PMLA and Mississippi Quarterly journals that have called for radical reconceptions of the field of U.S. southern studies. The Companion will offer a comprehensive overview of the southern studies field, including a chronological history from the U.S. colonial era to the present day as well as theoretical touchstones, while also introducing new methods of reconceiving region and the U.S. South as inherently interdisciplinary and multi-dimensional.

The Companion will be organized into three categories. The “Foundations” section includes essays which cover literary movements, time periods, and chronological eras, such as Colonial Writing, the Harlem Renaissance, or the Postsouthern South. The “Touchstones” section includes essays on major topics and themes in southern literary studies, including genres, themes such as the Southern Gothic and Ecocriticism, and topics such as immigration, music, and activism. The final section, “Trajectories,” looks to the future of southern literary studies. While we have some topics we would like to have addressed in this section, such as new media and the urban south, we are actively seeking suggestions from contributors for topics that they would like to address in this section.

Please submit a short (200-300 word) proposal for an essay, in which you briefly explain the topic you would like to address, to Katie Burnett, Fisk University (kburnett@fisk.edu), Monica Miller, Middle Georgia State University (monica.miller@mga.edu), and Todd Hagstette, University of South Carolina Aiken (toddh@usca.edu).

You may suggest a topic for the “Trajectories” section, or you may choose a topic from this list to address:

Pre-Columbian Literature

The Harlem Renaissance

Jim Crow and the Civil Rights Era

Southern Cultural Studies

Slave Narratives

Pro-Slavery Writing

Poetry and Verse

Native Souths

Ecocriticism and the Environment

Appalachian Literature

Class and economics

Film

Southern Cityscapes

Afrofuturism

Multiethnic Souths

Hip-Hop and the South

In order to include a wide variety of essays, we are asking that you keep the essay around 1,500 words. In addition to the main essay, we’d also like for you to write a short (~500 words) an author or text that exemplifies this topic. Each section will have a short text or author spotlight that demonstrates, represents, or otherwise supplements the main essay.

This companion is aimed at a general academic audience: libraries, researchers, students, and instructors. The aim is to present a snapshot for researchers and professionals outside of the field, including the average undergraduate student and those with PhDs, while also offering a more expansive overview for those actively researching and writing in the field.

The deadline for proposals is December 1, 2019. If your proposal is accepted, the deadline for essays is November 1, 2020.

CFP: Armistead Maupin’s Transgressive Tales

CFP: Armistead Maupin’s Transgressive Tales
2020 Society for the Study of Southern Literature Conference
April 2-5, 2020
Fayetteville, AR

In the 1970s, Armistead Maupin wrote sketches for a serialized column, Tales of the City. It was the creation of a still-expanding universe emanating from the storied 28 Barbary Lane in San Francisco. Maupin adapted the material from the column into Tales of the City, a novel published in 1978; eight more books in the series followed between 1980 and 2014. Along the way, Tales has shape-shifted into television (including a recent Netflix reboot), radio, and musical adaptations. In 2017, the tale of Tales, along with other aspects of Maupin’s life, got an airing with the release of Logical Family: A Memoir and a documentary film, The Untold Tales of Armistead Maupin. In these autobiographical works, Maupin documents the varied paths his life has taken: growing up in Raleigh as the scion of a North Carolina family with ancestral ties to the Confederacy; enlisting in the military during the Vietnam War; working for Jesse Helms, the far-right senator from North Carolina who was infamous for his racism and homophobia; and coming to terms with his homosexuality and coming out as a gay man in the San Francisco of the seventies. Maupin has demonstrated a penchant for crafting stories that blend fiction and social history to cast era-defining touchstones from the AIDS crisis to the politics of gentrification in intimate settings. Through a Dickensian tapestry of interwoven characters and storylines, Maupin traces the social boundaries of repressive conformity and tracks the efforts of queer people to transgress them in the pursuit of solidarity and equality.

Despite Maupin’s ties to the southeastern US, scholars in southern literary and cultural studies have yet to devote significant attention to his life and work. For SSSL 2020, the organizers of this round table are hoping to have a conversation that will start to redress this critical neglect. We are currently accepting proposals for ten-minute talks on topics related to Armistead Maupin’s life and work, including but not limited to the following:

--Issues of LGBTQ+ representation
--Gender and sexual identity/expression/politics
--Racial and ethnic identities/experiences/intersections
--Literature and/as social history
--HIV/AIDS in literature and culture
--Queer diasporas/communities
--Queer spaces and temporalities
--Tales of the (big) city and metropolitan bias in queer literature and history
--Matters of genre, form, and adaptation (social novel, melodrama, serialization, closet/coming out narratives, reboot culture, etc.)
--Families (biological, logical/chosen)
--Generational ties/tensions
--Maupin and literary/celebrity culture
--(Auto)biographical approaches

Please submit a brief description of the proposed talk (200-300 words) and a short bio by October 1, 2019 to Monica Miller (monica.miller@mga.edu) and Ted Atkinson (tba34@msstate.edu).

CFP: The Tacky South

CFP: The Tacky South
As a way to comment on a person’s style, the word “tacky” has distinctly southern origins. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it first emerged around 1800 as a noun to describe “a poor white of the Southern States from Virginia to Georgia.” Although the OED does not draw connections between this origin and the origins of the adjective describing something “dowdy, shabby; in poor taste, cheap, vulgar,” these definitions suggest a clear link between national stereotypes of region, race, and class and urbane (and northern urban?) notions of taste, class, and sensibility.
This edited collection will use these observations regarding the term’s origin to ask new questions about how southern culture and identity have been and continue to be associated with “tackiness.” For instance, in what ways are questions of taste and class still bound up with regional identification? Or, how do “lowbrow,” popular representations transmit and recreate images of the South and southern history? Should we be suspicious of the celebration and enjoyment of southern tackiness at both the popular and scholarly levels? What power structures emerge from labeling something as “tacky” or the implementation of tackiness as an aesthetic mode? Ranging from the rise in popularity of southern-themed reality shows and tourist attractions, to mainstream media’s attempts to address topics such as slavery and civil rights, often the specters of class, race, and region still linger in contemporary notions of what registers as tacky, particularly in the way it refers to things that are cheap, vulgar, common, and unsophisticated.
By March 30, 2019, please submit 500-word abstracts and a short, 100-word bio to Katie Burnett, Fisk University (kburnett@fisk.edu) and Monica Miller, Middle Georgia State University (monica.miller@mga.edu). Formal proposals to the publisher will then go out; accepted proposals will be expected to submit a finished essay of ~5,000 to 6,000 words by May 1, 2020. Feel free to send queries with any questions regarding proposals (including feedback on ideas) at any time.

CFP: Flannery O'Connor Society at Louisville Conference

Flannery O’Connor Society Call for Papers:
2019 Louisville Conference

The Flannery O’Connor Society seeks proposals for a pre-organized panel at the 2019 Louisville Conference on Literature and Culture after 1900, taking place February 21st-23rd, 2019, in Louisville, Kentucky.

The panel is open-topic, but the following areas are of special interest:

• O’Connor’s influence by and/or on other authors
• O’Connor and popular culture
-O'Connor's treatment of racism, particularly in light of Toni Morrison's recent reading of O'Connor in THE ORIGIN OF OTHERS.
• The treatment of gender in O’Connor’s fiction
• Teaching sensitive topics—e.g., racism, sexism, sexuality, violence—in O’Connor
• A Prayer Journal and/or other materials from Emory University’s MARBL collection
• Readings of O’Connor in light of Trumpian politics

Please send proposals (300 words) to Matt Bryant Cheney at the following email address by Thursday September 6, 2018: mbryantcheney@cn.edu.

CFP: SSSL MLA 2019

CFP: SSSL MLA 2019

Southern Foodways: Textual Transactions and Regional Food Writing

If “eating is a means of performing identity” and if “the way southerners eat is a text,” as critics David Davis and Tara Powell assert in their introduction to Writing in the Kitchen: Essays on Southern Literature and Foodways, then how do we think, talk, and write about culinary “textual transactions?”

The Society for the Study of Southern Literature is sponsoring a 2019 MLA panel on the changing landscape of southern foodways and food writing. Given the growing interest and debates on the topic, we are organizing a panel that discusses food writing and food in literature in the context of recent discussions and shifts in the field. Drawing upon the conference theme of “Textual Transactions,” this panel will consider the “mutually constitutive engagements” enacted not only by food itself but also by the ways in which food is written about, understood, and used as shorthand for and as a symbol for the U.S. South.

Possible themes or questions to consider include:

*The ways in which writers and/or critics build from or ignore the Southern Foodways Alliance values statement, “All presentations and plates benefit from context.”

*Literary representations of regional cuisine that complicate or further our understanding of southern consumers.

*Representations--literary or otherwise--of southern food that invite historical, contextual inquiry: for example, exploring a particular ingredient or recipe’s affiliation with one group or region despite its historical origins with another.

*Considering the roots and routes of regional cuisine to ask how movement and migration have changed both the reception and representation of so-called “regional” items.

By Sunday, March 15, please submit 250-word abstracts along with A/V requirements and a short, 100-word bio to Katie Burnett, Fisk University (kburnett@fisk.edu), Erica Abrams Locklear (elockea@unca.edu), and Monica Miller, Middle Georgia State University (monica.miller@mga.edu).

CFP: The Tacky South at ASA

Call for papers: The Tacky South
American Studies Association Annual Meeting
Atlanta, Georgia
November 8-11, 2018

As a way to comment on a person’s style, the word “tacky” has distinctly
southern origins. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it first emerged
around 1800 as a noun to describe “a poor white of the Southern States from
Virginia to Georgia.” Although the OED does not draw connections between this
origin and the origins of the adjective describing something “dowdy, shabby;
in poor taste, cheap, vulgar,” these definitions suggest a clear link between
national stereotypes of region, race, and class and urbane (and northern urban?)
notions of taste, class, and sensibility. 

This panel will use these observations regarding the term’s origin to ask new
questions about how southern culture and identity have been and continue to
be associated with “tackiness.” For instance, in what ways are questions of taste
and class still bound up with regional identification? Or, how do “lowbrow,”
popular representations transmit and recreate images of the South and
southern history? Should we be suspicious of the celebration and enjoyment of
southern tackiness at both the popular and scholarly levels? What power
structures emerge from labeling something as “tacky” or the implementation of
tackiness as an aesthetic mode? Ranging from the rise in popularity of
southern-themed reality shows and tourist attractions, to mainstream media’s
attempts to address topics such as slavery and civil rights, often the specters of
class, race, and region still linger in contemporary notions of what registers as
tacky, particularly in the way it refers to things that are cheap, vulgar, common,
and unsophisticated. This panel will consist of three to four, 15-20 minute
presentations.

By January 27, 2018 please submit 250-word abstracts along with A/V
requirements and a short, 100-word bio to Katie Burnett, Fisk University
(kburnett@fisk.edu) and Monica Miller, Middle Georgia State University
(monica.miller@mga.edu).  

It's Just a Little Misogyny

This weekend was an odd juxtaposition of feminist issues on social media. On the one hand, there was the #MeToo campaign, which was visually striking. The idea was that if every woman who has been sexually harassed or sexually assaulted wrote “Me, too” on social media, it would be impossible to ignore.

And indeed, my Facebook feed was filled with variations of “Me, too,” as well as men responding about how heartbreaking it was to see, some men responding, “I see you,” as well criticism of the gender exclusivity of the meme and the responsibility it placed on women to “out themselves,” rather than on men to admit to being part of the culture of coercion.

If it takes your Facebook feed to realize that sexual harassment and sexual assault is a widespread problem, okay. In the wake of the “revelations” about Harvey Weinstein, I admit, in my ornery mood, to kind of feeling like some of these responses are like Captain Renault in Casablanca, shocked to discover that there’s gambling going on.

(Although, to be fair, I will admit that there are all sorts of mitigating factors, as John Scalzi importantly brings up.)

What I can’t stop thinking about, however, is one comment I saw on Facebook in response to a #MeToo post, making the claim that, really, most women are just exaggerating, giving the example of a man humping you uninvited on the dance floor--it’s doesn’t mean anything.

And the thing is, this comment was made by a woman. A woman I don’t know, and that I know nothing about, but I admit that it stings a bit, seeing a woman seem to be saying, “Oh, it’s just a little misogyny. Get over it.”

I think the reason why I find this comment so difficult to shake is that it goes so well with the other big feminist issue on social media this weekend: the inclusion of Bernie Sanders as a speaker at the upcoming Women’s Convention in Detroit. What I saw this weekend was the official Women’s March Facebook page posting several articles about the upcoming convention, all of which had headlines about Sanders being the opening night speaker. To which I--along with plenty of other women--had a variety of negative reactions, from surprise and disappointment to anger and outrage. All weekend, there were posts about how insulting it was to have Sanders “headlining” the event, expressing outrage and disappointment that Sanders, whose campaign against Hillary Clinton brought out a lot of misogyny on the left, would be promoted as the headliner. And the Women’s March’s response was to double down, complain that we hadn’t read right--Sanders was just one of many speakers, that it was the media characterizing as the “headliner,” and that our outrage was completely uncalled for.

First of all, I found this defensive stance disingenuous as well as completely unproductive. It was the Women’s March itself which was posting the articles promoting Sanders as the headliner--if this was such a misunderstanding, then they should have made that clear. However, the main speaker on the first night of a convention counts as a headliner, even if you don’t call it that. That is prime time real estate.

Second, I get that having a “controversial” speaker like Sanders definitely draws attention, and is a draw for a lot of people who feel marginalized by the mainstream. However, there are plenty of us who feel not only marginalized but endangered by Sanders. He continues to support anti-choice candidates, which is a bottom line issue for myself as well as plenty of others. And the misogyny which his campaign against Clinton engendered continues to run rampant.

So once again, women are told that we’re over-reacting and hysterical. It’s just a little misogyny, why can’t you get over it?

I wish I had some sort of sweeping conclusion to come to here, about making our voices heard or listening to women or what it’s going to take to get beyond “Fuck Bernie.” I don’t. I still feel disheartened and frustrated and quite a bit of anger. But I’m using this longer form to try to more clearly articulate where these feelings have come from, in the hope that at least some people who saw a weekend of surprising reactions from women might understand a bit more.