About South

Small Documents and Thoughts on Southern Cultures

I’m trying out Medium in anticipation of using this platform for a class I’ll be teaching in the fall of 2014 at Georgia State University in Atlanta. The course — titled Documenting the American South — will be using non-fiction literary texts and films to explore a few questions: What and where do we mean when we say “the South”? What do we imagine when others say those words? How have visual artists, filmmakers, writers, and performers created multiple souths? Taken together, what does it mean to document the region today?

The class will be exploring these questions through a selection of readings and viewings, and they will be writing and editing their own collections of materials as they explore topics that pertain to the south — broadly conceived.

So the teacher must first learn, and this summer, I’ll be using this platform to explore these questions myself as I travel and live around and about Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, South Carolina, North Carolina, and more. Constructive and creative critique is always welcome.