Rhetorics of Southern Place: Contemporary Memoirs and Analyses
Jennifer Beech and Heather Palmer, co-eds (contracted with Brill Press)
This collection aims to explore representations of the US South through a rhetorical and critical media lens which engages issues of ideology, power, and the production of knowledge which form a type of cultural pedagogy about the South that, as CML scholars point out, “perpetuates or challenges positive and/or negative ideas about people, groups, and issues; it is never neutral”(Funk, Kellner, & Share, 2016, pp. 7–8). This area of scholarly inquiry has been gaining traction since the mid-1990s, with the work of critical cultural geographers on the politics of place (see the works of Tim Cresswell and David Harvey), and in the early 2000s, with the work of scholars in rhetoric and composition who began surface place-based writing pedagogies (see the works of Nedra Reynolds, Marilyn Cooper, Weisser and Dobrin); further, indigenous studies scholars, like Kanaku Maoli, have emphasized the importance of place-based pedagogies for understanding Native-American composing practices. Alongside these lines of inquiry, the field of Southern Studies has explored scholarship by and about Southern peoples, the place of monuments in Southern culture, and Southern pastimes (foodways, NASCAR, football, etc.).
The field of Southern place studies is a capacious and fertile one and there is a steady stream of interest, in popular culture and academia, particularly in Appalachian culture, often engaging the urban/rural cultural divide. After the 2016 presidential campaign and the rise of Brexit, political theorists and rhetoricians have surmised that the old “Southern Strategy” became national and then global–with the newer twist of hyper-emphasis on immigration. Other scholars are drawing comparisons between the plight of the working-classes in the UK and in the U.S.A. in ways that lead us to also see parallels between the UK and Southerners or Southern politics (see Justin Gest’s book The New Minority: White Working-Class Politics in the Age of Immigration and Inequality, Oxford UP, 2016).
A critical rhetoric of Southern Place feels particularly urgent in an era of collapsing ecosystems and their effects on already strained economic systems, exacerbating the material conditions of those who inhabit these pressurized geographies. Some scholars refer to such a "shock of the anthropocene" (see Brenneuil and Fressoz, Verso Books, 2016) as specifically affecting the already vulnerable regions of the Global South. This collection takes up critical responses in and to mediated representations of this specific vulnerability or precarity in the US South. Further, it will map out the origins and traditions of place-based rhetoric and establish the need for rhetorically informed discussions of Rhetorics of Southern Place.
The collection will be divided by different types of rhetorical forms: memoirs engaging intersectional experiences growing up or living in the South; critical analyses of how the South figures into our current political landscape and influences policy; cultural studies analyses of the South as (mis)represented in popular culture and as represented in public rhetoric, like monuments; rhetorically informed discussions of Southern foodways; affective experiences of Southern place; sonic rhetorics of the South (roots of jazz and blues, new forms of Hip-Hop, the Dirty South); and place-based analyses of environmental issues and of other artifacts/pastimes. Other themes may include: over-determination of the urban/rural divide, the New vs. Old South, trauma-based place literacy, folklore and mythology in cultural imaginaries of the South, difference between the Global South and US South, the construct of "Appalachian,” and the limits of the rhetorics of "regionalism.”
We are calling on scholars from the fields of rhetoric, communication, education, and critical media studies to join this conversation by considering how we might re-think representations of the South as cultural pedagogy. Specifically, we seek pieces that foster readers’ abilities as critical media consumers, as well as their cultural competencies in representing the cultural practices and lived experiences of those in the US South. Please note that though this is an academic collection, we aim to attract a broader audience interested in better understanding the US South as a specific place, a lived experience, and a rhetorical formation that occupies a particular spot in our cultural imaginary. To that end, we want to encourage accessible, engaged, embodied, and vibrant writing styles.
Please submit proposals (1-2 paragraphs) by March 1 to: jen.beech and Heather-Palmer.
Drafts Due by May 15 (Final page count around 15 or less).