Southern Spaces

09/13/2023

Learn more about one of the largest sales of enslaved people in US history in this revamped article
by interdisciplinary scholar Dr. Kwesi DeGraft-Hanson.

In 1859, one of the largest sales of enslaved people in US history took place at the Ten Broeck Race Course, now an obscured landscape, on the outskirts of Savannah, Georgia. Four hundred and twenty-nine enslaved persons from the Butler plantations near Darien were sold in an event remembered as "Th...

08/15/2023

New publication alert: Check out this interview and except from Michelle Fishburne's Who We Are Now: Stories of What Americans Lost and Found during the COVID-19 Pandemic (UNC Press)

Michelle Fishburne's Who We Are Now: Stories of What Americans Lost and Found during the COVID-19 Pandemic (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2023) is an edited collection of interviews recorded in-person across the US between September 2020 and September 2021. Asking only one questio...

07/18/2023

Check out our latest publication: Nannie's Stone: Commemoration and Resistance!

Mount Zion and Female Union Band Society cemeteries, which together constitute the oldest African American burial ground in the Washington, DC area, is a long-contested space with powerful emotional holds on local communities of color. Among the cemetery’s most charged and beloved sites, the locus...

07/14/2023

We're disheartened by the passing of Minnie Bruce Pratt. Here she is reading above the Cahaba River back in 2004 for our Poets in Place series.

Poet Minnie Bruce Pratt (1946-2023) reads her poem "No Place," July 9, 2004, on a bridge over the Cahaba River in Bibb County, Alabama.

06/30/2023

New publication alert: Ra'Niqua Lee writes about the end of the COVID state of emergency and the resulting impact on mutual aid efforts in Atlanta. https://southernspaces.org/2023/end-pandemic-grassroots-perspective/

Grassroots organizer Ra'Niqua Lee addresses the "end" of the COVID public health emergency and the impact on mutual aid efforts in Atlanta and beyond. The collapsing of safety nets put in place in response to the pandemic will leave millions without the help they still need, but grassroots organizat...

05/22/2023

Read about COVID response in Bangladesh in our newest publication! https://southernspaces.org/2023/miking-against-covid-bangladesh/

Monzur Patwary of the Task Force for Global Health presents an array of tailored cultural responses to COVID-19 developed in his native Bangladesh. Underfunded centralized health services collaborate with NGOs in the creation of lively public service announcements in local dialects, video endorsemen...

04/12/2023

Come take a virtual tour of this Florida waterway with our newest publication: Thomas Hallock's "Draining Paradise: A Tour of Salt Creek in St. Petersburg, Florida!" https://southernspaces.org/2023/draining-paradise-tour-salt-creek-st-petersburg-florida/

Urbanized streams take us into the heart of a city's history. When a creek becomes a culvert, protections disappear. St. Petersburg's Salt Creek, a fragmented stream that feeds the Gulf coast of Florida, flows northwest from the Pinellas Peninsula into Tampa Bay. This culverted and fragmented waterw...

03/15/2023

Check out our latest publication: CDC in the Pandemic's Wake by former CDC branch chief Daniel Po***ck!

https://southernspaces.org/2023/cdc-pandemics-wake/

02/17/2023

New publication alert:
Scott L. Matthew's review "Segregation's Habits and Horrors: The Photographs of O. N. Pruitt."
https://southernspaces.org/2023/segregations-habits-and-horrors-photographs-o-n-pruitt/

02/09/2023

"This is Zora's form of phonography, that which loops together a zone in which she operates at the crossroads of the modern and the folk."

You know Zora Neale Hurston, the author. Now learn about Hurston the ethnographer.
https://southernspaces.org/2022/sonic-zora-florida/

In this media-enhanced excerpt from Liner Notes for the Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2021), Daphne A. Brooks delves into Zora Neale Hurston's 1939 experiences as the only Black woman on the staff of the Federal Writers Project's....

01/31/2023

Check out our latest publication, an excerpt from Chantal Mouffe's A GREEN DEMOCRATIC REVOLUTION from Verso Books. https://southernspaces.org/2023/green-democratic-revolution/

A Green Democratic Revolution offers the most appropriate strategy for articulating the many democratic struggles against different forms of domination, exploitation, and discrimination with the defense of the habitability of the planet. Excerpted from Chantal Mouffe's Towards a Green Democratic Rev...

01/30/2023

"Overall, the event reinforced how righteous white Pendletonians wanted to see themselves as on the vanguard of a battle, defending their way of life against anyone who might see things differently. In particular, it represented something unique about the place and the space—the town elites of Pendleton were insistent about policing ideas that might reach the less elite white neighbors."

Learn about the attack on the Pendleton Post Office:
https://southernspaces.org/2022/ablaze-1849-white-supremacist-attack-pendleton-post-office/

In 1849 a mob of white supremacists eager to seize anti-slavery mailings attacked the US Post Office in Pendleton, South Carolina. They burned leaflets and letters in a bonfire on the village green to make clear their stance against incendiary ideas. This essay explores the context of these events b...

12/19/2022

New publication alert: Steve Suitts addresses the recent US Supreme Court case Merill v. Milligan and its potential adverse impacts on Black voters: https://southernspaces.org/2022/voting-rights-justice-alitos-false-partisan-facts/

In October 2022, during oral arguments in a US Supreme Court case concerning reapportionment, Justice Samuel Alito suggested from the bench that racial bloc voting in Alabama is a partisan, ideological difference, unrelated to race. Steve Suitts reviews this voting rights case and briefly explains h...

12/02/2022

Check out our latest publication: Susanna Ashton's Ablaze: The 1849 White Supremacist Attack on the Pendleton Post Office! https://southernspaces.org/2022/ablaze-1849-white-supremacist-attack-pendleton-post-office/

In 1849 a mob of white supremacists eager to seize anti-slavery mailings attacked the US Post Office in Pendleton, South Carolina. They burned leaflets and letters in a bonfire on the village green to make clear their stance against incendiary ideas. This essay explores the context of these events b...

10/21/2022

Check out our latest publication, "'The Emblem of North American Fraternity': Opossums and Jim Crow Politics" by Stephanie Bryan! https://southernspaces.org/2022/emblem-north-american-fraternity-opossums-and-jim-crow-politics/

Stephanie N. Bryan examines the cultural meanings behind opossum hunting and consumption in the US during Jim Crow apartheid—from freed people of African descent for whom these activities represented ecologically rooted foraging skills, economic independence, and household sufficiency; to whites i...

10/05/2022

New publication alert: Covid Light and Darkness Alike, a photo essay by Duke University professor Tom Rankin. These thirty-three images of spaces in North Carolina and Mississippi explore the social impact of life during Covid. https://southernspaces.org/2022/covid-light-and-darkness-alike/

In a series of thirty-three photographs taken in North Carolina and Mississippi, Tom Rankin evokes two years of everyday, extraordinary "Covid weather," affirming through images the fullness of wonders and contradictions close to home.

08/29/2022

New publication alert: An excerpt from Adriana Chira's Patchwork Freedoms: Law, Slavery, and Race beyond Cuba's Plantations https://southernspaces.org/2022/patchwork-freedoms-law-slavery-and-race-beyond-cubas-plantations/

In this excerpt from Patchwork Freedoms: Law, Slavery, and Race beyond Cuba's Plantations (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2022), Adriana Chira draws on understudied archives to chart a new history of Black rural geography and popular legalism in nineteenth-century Cuba. Long before residents....

08/04/2022

Publication alert: A short documentary on the 3D modeling of the Trans-Atlantic slave ship the Marie-Seraphique. Find out how Steve Bransford and Emory Center for Digital Scholarship brought this ship to digital life!
https://southernspaces.org/2022/modeling-marie-seraphique-ship-trans-atlantic-slave-trade/

In this short documentary, members of an international team of scholars and visual artists describe to videographer Steve Bransford the process of creating a 3D model of the Marie-Séraphique, a Trans-Atlantic ship active in the trade of enslaved persons from 1769 to 1774. Making use of unique survi...

07/26/2022

Publication alert: Melissa S. Creary's comparative analysis of the role culture plays in the efficacy of public health systems in the United States and Brazil. https://southernspaces.org/2022/covid-19-vaccine-and-right-public-health/

Melissa Creary brings together a decade of experience as a health scientist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, years of extensive field work in Brazil, and her current work as a professor in the School of Public Health at the University of Michigan to provide a comparative analysis o...

06/28/2022

Check out our newest publication, an excerpt from Daphne A. Brooks's LINER NOTES FOR THE REVOLUTION. The excerpt centers Zora Neale Hurston's 1939 experiences as the only Black woman on the staff of the Federal Writers Project's Florida Guide. https://southernspaces.org/2022/sonic-zora-florida/

In this media-enhanced excerpt from Liner Notes for the Revolution: The Intellectual Life of Black Feminist Sound (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2021), Daphne A. Brooks delves into Zora Neale Hurston's 1939 experiences as the only Black woman on the staff of the Federal Writers Project's....

04/28/2022

New Publication Alert: "COVID-19: Lessons in Ignorance" by former CDC branch chief Daniel Po***ck. Po***ck reflects on what we might learn from failed institutional responses to the ongoing pandemic.
https://southernspaces.org/2022/covid-19-lessons-ignorance/

Former Centers for Disease Control branch chief, Daniel Po***ck, reflects on what we might learn from failed institutional responses to COVID-19 as well as the narratives that emerge from this epidemiological crisis. Po***ck emphasizes the need for interdisciplinary accounts of the pandemic that att...

04/14/2022

Check out our newest publication: Steve Suitts reviews The South: Jim Crow and Its Afterlives by Adolph L. Reed Jr.
https://southernspaces.org/2022/navigating-jim-crow-review-adolph-l-reeds-south-jim-crow-and-its-afterlives/

Steve Suitts reviews Adolph L. Reed's book The South: Jim Crow and Its Afterlives (New York: Verso Books, 2022), a text which illuminates the multifaceted structures of segregation, revealing the sources and objectives of this unstable regime, its contradictions, and its weaknesses.

03/23/2022

New publication alert: "Marching for Gay Rights in Atlanta, 1971: An Excerpt from A Night at the Sweet Gum Head" by Martin Padgett. https://southernspaces.org/2022/marching-gay-rights-atlanta-1971-excerpt-night-sweet-gum-head/

This excerpt, as well as the accompanying video stills, centers the activism of Bill Smith, a central figure in the founding of Georgia’s Gay Liberation Front and a member of the Southeastern Gay Coalition. Smith served as the first out-gay man in Atlanta city government as Sam Massell’s appoint...

02/18/2022

Just published: Along the Ulcofauhatche: Of Sorrow Songs and "Dried Indian Creek" by Mark Auslander and Rev. Avis E. Williams! https://southernspaces.org/2022/along-ulcofauhatche-sorrow-songs-and-dried-indian-creek/

Mark Auslander and Avis E. Williams recount the contested circumstances surrounding the naming of "Dried Indian Creek" in Newton County, Georgia and explore the lingering racial and institutional implications of this geographic history.

02/17/2022

Have you seen our latest call? We invite scholars, critics, writers, health care providers, public health practitioners, activists, media producers, community organizers, and patients to submit 1,000-word blog posts, as well as longer articles and media productions, that address the public health and political implications of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Learn more: https://southernspaces.org/2022/call-blog-posts-articles-and-media-covid-viral-times/

Call for Submissions Southern Spaces invites scholars, critics, writers, health care providers, public health practitioners, activists, media producers, community organizers, and patients to submit 1,000-word blog posts, as well as longer articles and media productions, that address the public he

01/21/2022

Just published: Stephanie Rountree's "Beer, Prayer and Nellydrama": (Im)Possibilities in Max Vernon's The View UpStairs! https://southernspaces.org/2022/beer-prayer-and-nellydrama-impossibilities-max-vernons-view-upstairs/

Stephanie Rountree examines the relational possibilities of q***r performance in Max Vernon's The View UpStairs, a play that dramatizes the 1973 Up Stairs Lounge fire in New Orleans. Rountree contextualizes the fire within the scope of the twentieth century gay liberation movement and explores how t...

01/10/2022

Check out our latest submission call: COVID in Viral Times. We hope that you will share with us your work, research, art, and experiences related to this ongoing pandemic.
https://southernspaces.org/2022/call-blog-posts-articles-and-media-covid-viral-times/

Call for Submissions Southern Spaces invites scholars, critics, writers, health care providers, public health practitioners, activists, media producers, community organizers, and patients to submit 1,000-word blog posts, as well as longer articles and media productions, that address the public he

12/16/2021

Just published! A documentary film by Joseph Quintana and Mary Campbell Kitchens on Dynamite Hill, a section of Birmingham, Alabama frequently bombed by white supremacists in the 1940s-1960s.

In this brief documentary film by Joseph Quintana and Mary Campbell Kitchens, Jeff Drew situates his family home within the broader history of the civil rights movement. Drew's home was among many residences bombed by white supremacists from 1947–1965 in an area of Birmingham, Alabama that came to be known as Dynamite Hill.
https://southernspaces.org/2021/1108-dynamite-hill/

In this brief documentary film by Joseph Quintana and Mary Campbell Kitchens, Jeff Drew situates his family home within the broader history of the civil rights movement. Drew's home was among many residences bombed by white supremacists from 1947–1965 in an area of Birmingham, Alabama that came to...

12/08/2021

Check out our latest installment in the Q***r Intersections Series: Amanda Mixon's article on historic gay spaces in early 1960s San Antonio!

Combining materials from the Carolyn Weathers Collection in the ONE National Gay and Le***an Archives and a 2015 interview with Weathers herself, Amanda Mixon sketches q***r experience in early 1960s San Antonio, Texas. Mixon revisits gay bars, community formation, racial dynamics, policing practices, cultural representations, and military suasion to highlight the ongoing need for further exploration and study of historic gay spaces across Texas.

https://southernspaces.org/2021/out-long-enough-be-historic-racialized-gay-space-pre-stonewall-san-antonio/

Combining materials from the Carolyn Weathers Collection in the ONE National Gay and Le***an Archives and a 2015 interview with Weathers herself, Amanda Mixon sketches q***r experience in early 1960s San Antonio, Texas. Mixon revisits gay bars, community formation, racial dynamics, policing practice...

10/28/2021

This , check out our latest publication from Gregory Samantha Rosenthal.

"The work of doing q***r history has the power to transform lives. It has the power to give new meaning to the places we call home."

https://southernspaces.org/2021/living-ghosts-q***r-pasts/

Samantha Rosenthal argues that the work of q***r history is also the work of public and local history. Exploring how the q***r past enlivens a q***r future, Rosenthal suggests that q***r histories have the power to give new meaning to the places we call home.