Navigating Souths: Transdisciplinary Explorations of a U.S. Region

The work of considering, imagining, and theorizing the U.S. South in regional, national, and global contexts is an intellectual project that has been going on for some time. Scholars in history, literature, and other disciplines have developed an ad­vanced understanding of the historical, social, and cultural forces that have helped to shape the U.S. South. However, most of the debates on these subjects have taken place within specific academic disciplines, with few attempts to cross-engage.Navigating Souths broadens these exchanges by facilitating transdisciplinary conversations about southern studies scholarship. The fourteen original essays in Navigating Souths articulate questions about the significances of the South as a theoretical and literal “home” base for social science and humanities researchers. They also examine challenges faced by researchers who identify as southern studies scholars, as well as by those who live and work in the regional South, and show how researchers have responded to these challenges. In doing so, this book project seeks to reframe the field of southern studies as it is currently being practiced by social science and humanities scholars and thus reshape historical and cultural conceptualizations of the region.

About the Author

Michele Grigsby Coffey (Editor) MICHELE GRIGSBY COFFEY is an instructor of history at the University of Memphis. Her work has been published in the edited collection South Carolina Women: Their Lives and Times (Georgia), Louisiana History , and in the Encyclopedia of U.S. Political History . Jodi Skipper (Editor) JODI SKIPPER is an assistant professor of anthropology and southern studies at the University of Mississippi. Her work has been published in the Journal of Community Archaeology and Heritage , the Southern Quarterly , the Black Scholar , Community Development , and Sociology of Race and Ethnicity .