The sixth annual Liberal Arts Conference at Auburn University at Montgomery invites panel and paper proposals on the literature of the American South. Topics might include:

--Southern food studies
--Slavery and the American South; slave narratives
--Civil War narratives
--Civil Rights narratives; explorations of race and conflict
--Southern religion and literature
--Ecocriticism and the landscape of Southern writing
--Regionalist writers of the American South
--Explorations of the Southern worker
--The plantation novel
--Changing conceptions of Southern aristocracy in literature
--Southern women writers
--Southern travel writing
--Southern children's literature
--Cross-cultural exchanges between the South and other geographic areas
--Native American literature of the South
--Stories of immigration / migration and border-crossings
--Contemporary reconceptions of "The South"
--Contemporary literacy and writing programs of the American South
--Studies of works by canonical Southern authors such as Twain, Welty, and Faulkner
--Studies of works by lesser-known Southern writers

Distinguished speakers will include James L. Roark, S. C. Dobbs Professor of History, Emory University, an expert on race in the nineteenth century, and David R. Davies, Professor of Journalism, University of Southern Mississippi, whose work has focused on race relations and newspaper reporting. The featured conference artist will be John D. Powers, University of Alabama at Birmingham, and the featured documentary filmmaker will be Andrew Grace, University of Alabama.

Registrants to the conference will be able to enjoy peer-reviewed panels on the topic of the South over two days, spanning the fields of anthropology, art history, American history, American literature and theater, music history, and sociology. Proposals for panels and papers of 250 words in length will be accepted until October 30, 2013, with notice of acceptance by mid to late November. Proposals will be refereed by established scholars in each discipline. Proposals for panels and papers as well as general queries can be addressed to aumlac@aum.edu. For more information, please go to http://www.liberalarts.aum.edu/southern-studies-conference