Southern Exposure: Analyzing the U.S. South through Film

CFP: Critics often cite D. W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation as the
origin of the Hollywood feature film and credit it with helping to
form the Hollywood narrative style. However, the film also marks the
importance of the U.S. southern setting in shaping the American
cinematic imagination. Griffith's film raises the broad issues of
war, tragedy, and romance, but also depicts the more disturbing
issues that continue to be associated with the filmic south: racial
and sexual violence, slavery, vigilante justice, and lynching.

We are requesting contributions for a collection of essays that will
investigate the role of cinematic southern space and place in
interpreting broader questions of regional and national identity.
Essays should be of interest to a scholarly audience, but suitable
for graduate and undergraduate students in a variety of disciplines:
American studies, film studies, and southern studies. Topics might
include, but are not limited to:

Southern history through film
Film adaptations of Southern literature
Documentaries
Southern humor
Southern nostalgia
Representation of race, class, gender in the South
Sexual/racial violence
Southern lawyer/courtroom drama
Southern Indie
Sexuality
U.S. South in relation to Other Souths
Civil War
Civil Rights
Transnational perspectives on the U.S. South

Send 300 word abstracts or completed papers by February 1, 2006 to either

Deborah Barker (dbarker_at_olemiss.edu) or Kathryn McKee (kmckee_at_olemiss.edu)
Department of English
Box 1848
University of Mississippi
University, Mississippi 38677

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Received on Sun Oct 23 2005 - 23:10:53 EDT