Understanding the South, Understanding Modern America: The American South in Regional, National, and Global Perspectives
The University of Manchester, May 22-24, 2008
This interdisciplinary Conference is the first of a series of meetings around the theme of Understanding the South, Understanding America organized jointly by the Universities of Manchester and Florida. The 2008 Manchester Conference explores the importance of the South in shaping the history of the post-War US and, by extension, the region's influence on the nation's relationship with much of the modern world. In various ways the Conference will test the proposition that a greater understanding of the American South is crucial to understanding the contours of modern US history and the nature of its global cultural, economic, ideological, diplomatic and political connections.
In particular, the Conference will reflect, extend and help to bring together two important recent intellectual trends in the study of the US South. First, it features scholars who are at the heart of the New Southern Studies . This is an interdisciplinary move rooted in cultural and literary studies which stresses the parallels and relationships between the American South and other societies (particularly those located in the Atlantic World) which have had broadly similar experiences of plantation and post-plantation economies, military defeat and occupation, and in which racial and gender issues have been particularly important in defining political, economic, social and cultural affairs. Second, it brings together some of the leading historians of the post-War South: scholars whose work has illuminated the continuing peculiarities of the region, noting its internal differences and sub-cultures, while simultaneously revealing the enormous influence of southern social, political, cultural and economic developments on the broader domestic and international history of the contemporary US. Thus far, these two flourishing research streams have proceeded in parallel, rather than in a mutually beneficial dialogue. The conferences intend to provide an arena for such dialogue.