Southern Literature and the 1930s

full name / name of organization: 
Brandon Gordon
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We're looking for a third panelist for a proposed special session centering around Southern Literature and the 1930s. Judged "the Nation's No. 1 economic problem" by the National Emergency Council's Report on Southern Economic Conditions in the South, the South was particularly vulnerable to the dislocations of the Great Depression. However, even as tropes of the South's economic backwardness were employed to propel economic reform, Southern intellectuals - notably the Fugitive Agrarians - resisted such efforts, valorizing the region's agrarian economic base and sought to maintain the South's organic, communal society as a bulwark against industrialization.

We are looking for proposals that examine how Southern writers responded to the effects of the Depression. Possible topics include literary responses to: the New Deal, the Depression's effects on regional identity and cohesion, the plight of sharecroppers and tenant farmers, etc.

Please send 500 word abstracts and a brief bio by March 30.