Creating and Consuming the South 

4th "Understanding the South, Understanding Modern America" conference, University of Copenhagen, Thursday 19 to Saturday 21 August 2010

• Conference schedule

The creation and consumption of "the South" has long been a feature of southern history, literature, culture, and politics. Certain images of southernness, from the Scopes Trial and Gone with the Wind to Dukes of Hazzard and Kentucky Fried Chicken, proliferated during the twentieth century, an era that witnessed the emergence of "media-made Dixie." In the early twenty-first century, southernness.com markets a cologne that claims to capture "the celebrated Southern ‘sense of place,'" while post-Katrina New Orleans offers "disaster tourism" as one more experience for the visitors on whom so much of the city's economy relies.

This proliferation of "Souths" in and through a media-dominated consumer culture impacts on how southerners imagine and fashion themselves: as Richard Gray observes, "southerners can see themselves in terms of the many South imagined on film, television, and other electronic/mass media." But as James Cobb, Leigh Anne Duck and others have recently emphasized, the creation and consumption of southern identity operates at national and global levels too. This phenomenon has led Amy Elias to ask "is regional identity being created by multinational outsiders now marketing southerners to themselves as lifestyle products as well as lifestyle producers? Are southerners...now products rather than consumers in the global market?" At the same time, the South is being redefined on native ground by an unprecedented influx of immigrants. This process that has led James Peacock to emphasize that "globalization casts people into new spaces in which they create places"-even in a supposedly well-defined (or over-determined) "place" like the South.

The late-capitalist creation and consumption of the South sometimes involves the return of a barely repressed southern history--or mythology. Tara McPherson has noted the continuing selling power of the Old South in "the successful courtship between the region and the titans of international corporate commerce"-an image of the South, McPherson notes, that "reinscribes the region as a site of authenticity at the very moment that globalization blurs the boundaries of the nation." Other commentators complain that gated communities called Tara Club Estates or the design for life provided by Southern Living constitute a disturbing (in Umberto Eco's phrase) "faith in fakes." Recently, however, Scott Romine has emphasized that even if "the South is increasingly sustained as a virtual, commodified, built, themed, invented or otherwise artificial territoriality," this "has hardly removed it from the domain of everyday use." Romine raises the possibility that an increasingly commodified and supposedly inauthentic South may be preferable to a "real South" that so often was defined by racism, poverty, and violence.

This conference will explore various ways in which the South has been created and consumed in history, literature, culture, and politics. Potential subthemes include

• The emergence of "media-made Dixie"
• The South, cultural tourism, and the "nostalgia industry" (McPherson)
• The marketing and consumption of southern history (Civil War reenactments, Civil Rights tours, Hurricane Katrina tours, etc.)
• Rebranding the region as the New South, the New New South, the Sunbelt, the NuSouth, the Dirty South, etc.
• Selling southern lifestyles: Southern Living, The Oxford American, and other southern-inflected publications
• Casino capitalism in the contemporary South
• Globalization and "southern" corporations: Coca Cola, Wal Mart, etc.
• (Re)creating and consuming versions of southern womanhood (the lady, the mammy, the belle, etc.)
• The creation and consumption of a "post-racial" or "multicultural" South
• Virtual Souths: reimagining region on the worldwide web
• Creating the urban South and the "world city"/"international city" (i.e., Atlanta, Miami)
• Creating and consuming southern foods: fast food, soul food, barbecue, etc.
• Creating and consuming southern music: local scenes, marketing, festivals, etc.
• Creating and consuming "southern literature"
• Creating southern identities through monuments/monumentalization
• How the South has been created and consumed in national and transnational contexts
• The "Americanization of Dixie" and the "Southernization of America"
• The conundrum of "conspicuous southernness" (Romine)
• The creation and consumption of the South in academia: e.g., does the New Southern Studies (NSS) enable us to critique and escape earlier ways of inventing "the South" in academia, or is the NSS itself just one more rebranding of the South and southern studies?

Schedule 

All keynotes and panel sessions will take place in Multisalen (21.0.54), Karen Blixens Vej, see map.

Thursday 19 August

2.30-3.25: Registration

3.25 Welcome and opening remarks by Associate Dean of the Faculty of Humanities, Mette Thunø, University of Copenhagen

3.30-4.45: KEYNOTE #1

Introduction and chair: Prof. Brian Ward (University of Manchester)

Prof. Richard King (University of Nottingham):"No Longer and Not Yet': Southern Artists and the Great Migration"
Abstract

4.45-5.00: Coffee break

5.00-6.15: PANEL SESSION #1

Spectacle and Authenticity in the Creation and Consumption of Southern Cultures

Chair: Prof. William Link (University of Florida, Gainesville)

Prof. W. Fitzhugh Brundage (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill): "The ‘Authentic' South: The Uses of Southern Popular Culture in Twentieth Century"
Abstract

Dr. Anne Dvinge (University of Copenhagen): "‘No Shame. There's Pride on Bourbon Street': Spectacle and Musicking in New Orleans Jazz"
Abstract

8.00: Dinner (in town)

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Friday 20 August

9.30-10.45: PANEL SESSION #2

Staging the Blues South

Chair: Dr. Anne Dvinge (University of Copenhagen)

Dr. Paige McGinley (Yale University): "Theatricality with a Double Edge: Staging the South in the ‘Classic' Blues"
Abstract

Dr. Adam Gussow (University of Mississippi): "Creating and Consuming ‘Hill Country Harmonica': A Mississippi Academic's Adventures in the Blues Tourism Business"
Abstract

10.45-11.15: Coffee break

11.15-12.30: PANEL SESSION #3

Southern Sexualities

Chair: Dr. Michael Bibler (University of Manchester)

Dr. Ben Wise (University of Florida): "Fixations: Cultural Obsession and Sexual Deviance in the American South"
Abstract

Prof. E. Patrick Johnson (Northwestern University): "Southern (Dis)comfort: Homosexuality in the Black South"
Abstract

12.30-1:30: Lunch

1.30-2.45: PANEL SESSION #4

Transatlantic Circulations of Southern Cultures: the U.S. South and Britain

Chair: Dr. David Brown (University of Manchester)

Prof. John Howard (King's College London): "Keeping Up with The Joneses: Screening Working-Class Trans-Formations of Southern Family Values"
Abstract

Dr. Andrew Warnes (University of Leeds): "Singing Things: Commodification and the Return to Blues Rhythm in UK Postpunk, 1977-78"
Abstract

2.45-3.15 Coffee break

3.15-4.30: KEYNOTE #2

Introduction and chair: Dr. Jon Smith (Simon Fraser University, Canada)

Prof. Tara McPherson (University of Southern California): "Producing the South"
Abstract

7.30: Dinner (in town)

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Saturday 21 August

9.15-10.30: PANEL SESSION #5

Chair: Prof. Russell Duncan (University of Copenhagen)

(Sub)regional, National, Transnational: The Scales of U.S. Southern Cultures

Prof. Brian Ward (University of Manchester): "Delius, Davidson and the Drive-By Truckers: Three Meditations on Southern Music and Regional Identities"
Abstract

Dr. Jon Smith (Simon Fraser University, Canada): "Of Scales, Political Factions, and Public Spheres in American Cultural Studies"
Abstract

10.30-11.00 Coffee Break

11.00-12.30: KEYNOTE #3

Chair and introduction: Dr. Martyn Bone (University of Copenhagen)

Prof. Scott Romine (University of North Carolina, Greensboro): "God and the Moon Pie: Disenchantment, Consumption, and the Reliably Lost Cause"
Abstract

1.30: Lunch (in town) 

On Saturday evening, Adam Gussow will perform with Danish blues harmonica player Lars Ringgaard at Mojo Blues Bar: see http://www.mojo.dk/?option=com_mojoprogram&dato=20100821&Itemid=59 and http://www.myspace.com/larsringgaard. Conference participants still in town are strongly encouraged to attend!

General information

For general information about "Understanding the South", read more