AML 5608 Fall 2020 Gaines

Just what is the U.S. South?

Maybe it’s a geographical location defined by a history of slavery.

Maybe the South is a thick and humid climate.

Maybe the South is a culture best defined by the sugar in its tea and not in its grits.

Maybe the South is defined by its dialectic preference for “y’all.”

Or maybe Ray Charles croons it best. Maybe the South is just like Georgia—a region “on our minds.”

As a place often defined by its history of racial terror, the U.S. South is paradoxically emblematic of the United States (think the representations of U.S. Americans outside of the country – often a cowboy or farmer with a twangy Southern accent), while also serving the internal function as national “other.” In the black imaginary specifically, the South functions as a mythical home in much African American narrative, possibly more so than even (re)imaginings of Africa.

Consequently, this course attempts to take on the ambivalent, slippery and fractured idea of the U.S. South in African American literature. We will do so by interrogating texts that offer contemporary readers historical constructions of the South as well as more recent texts that resituate and reconsider the place and value of the South in literature and popular culture. Our texts will be varied. They include slave narratives, fiction, memoir, photography, film, and music.