The Southern Quarterly solicits papers for a special issue, “‘My Southern Home’: The Life and Literature of 19th Century Southern Black Writers,” scheduled for publication in Spring 2008. This special issue will provide a critical survey of the experiences of African Americans, either as slaves or free people, who considered the South their home throughout the nineteenth century despite the social conflicts they might have encountered while living in the region. It will feature those African Americans who, as southerners, wrote about matters of race and region in their fiction, poetry, plays, speeches/essays, and/or autobiographies. Contributors to this issue may examine a specific writer(s), various modes of writing (from fictionalized autobiographies to political essays) that were produced by black southerners, and/or significant topics (e.g. the “race problem”) that appear in their works. Welcome are papers that also concentrate on definitions of southernness that contest an imagined, pure antebellum southern culture as well as a constructed, white hegemonic post-bellum southern identity. Discussions of the regional literature that will appear in this special edition of The Southern Quarterly will provide a literary historical context for understanding the southern sense of “place” that influenced so many African American writers throughout the 20th century and even today. All entries (20-30pgs) should be sent to the following address:

Dr. Sherita L. Johnson, Guest Editor
The Southern Quarterly
The University of Southern Mississippi
118 College Drive #5078
Hattiesburg, MS 39402-5078

For all inquiries, contact Sherita L. Johnson at Sherita.Johnson@usm.edu or Douglas Chambers at Douglas.Chambers@usm.edu

Papers should be submitted in 12 pt. Times New Roman, MSWord on diskette or CD-ROM. Use endnotes, with a full bibliography (MLA or Chicago Manual Style). Electronic submissions should be sent to Ann.Branton@usm.edu. For general guidelines, visit The Southern Quarterly’s website (www.usm.edu/soq).