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We are soliciting abstracts for papers focused on some aspect of the nineteenth-century U.S. South for two panels at the upcoming conference "Imagining: A New Century," sponsored by C19: The Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists.
The conference will be held May 20-23, 2010 at Penn State University in State College, Pennsylvania:
http://outreach.psu.edu/programs/c19-americanists/papers.html
Our panels will be organized under the title "Re-imagining the U.S. South: Regional Spaces, Bodies, and Texts."
In recent years the study of the literature and culture of the U.S. South has been reinvigorated by a wholesale reassessment of the region's place in the world. Drawing on the methodological tools of comparative cultural history, postcolonial and globalization theories, and indigenous, transnational, and global south studies, the "New
Southern Studies" has reimagined both its objects of study and its fields of inquiry. Unfortunately, this recent work has focused almost exclusively on the 20th and 21st centuries. We hold that such a presentist bias represents a missed opportunity to reimagine earlier U.S. Souths.
The aim of these panels is twofold: to help promote greater attention to the 19th century by those interested and working in southern studies, and to help promote broader dialogue about the South with other Americanists.
Papers may address any period of the 19th century, though we hope for a range of papers that cover topics from the early national, antebellum, and postbellum years. Papers might address any of the following concerns, among many others:
19th century transnationalism
US South-Caribbean connections
Early southern sexualities
Native Americans and the South
Indian Removal
Landscapes, Architecture, and Literature
New Perspectives on slavery
New Immigrants
Print culture in the South
Oral cultures in the South
Race, Law, and Literature
"High" vs. "low" literature and/or culture in the South
Southern periodicals
Southern theatre and/or performance
Interracial relations and/or racial mixing
African American leadership
Reimagining southern women's identities
Submit 300 word abstracts to Eric Gary Anderson by 1 September 2009.
Eric Gary Anderson, George Mason University
Michael Bibler, University of Manchester
Coleman Hutchison, The University of Texas at Austin
Sherita L. Johnson, University of Southern Mississippi
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