Southern Literatures across Multiple Southscapes

This seminar examines “southern literature” from a comparative perspective, examining how “the South” may be invoked and imagined at different locales.Taking Thadious M. Davis’s concept of “southscapes” as a point of departure, we examine southern spatial imaginaries at multiple geographical scales including, but not limited to, the region (Global South, US South, Caribbean, South Asia), continent (South America), and nation (South Korea, South Africa, South Sudan, South Vietnam). We are particularly interested in how differently situated texts represent landscapes, environment, space, and place, and how these representations of various Souths both reverberate across, as well as diverge from, texts from other southern geographies. What does it mean to be Southern or from a southern place? Is Southerness political, cultural, or spatial (or some combination thereof)—and how is it represented in literature and media? For example, how is the trope of the plantation depicted across different southscapes? How are southern futurities imagined across divergent southern locales? What are potential political connections between southscapes? In what ways does the work of William Faulkner, Edwidge Danticat, Monique Truong, Isabelle Allende—or any Southern writer, broadly defined—reverberate across literatures from multiple southscapes and beyond? In our collective inquiry, we are interested in examining what Antonio Gramsci might mean by a distinct “southern politics,” and how such a politics may address urgent questions of our time.