Call for Papers Special issue of Southern Cultures: Appalachia

Guest edited by Elizabeth S. D. Engelhardt, UNC

Southern Cultures, the award-winning, peer-reviewed quarterly from UNC’s Center for the Study of the American South, encourages submissions from scholars, writers, and artists for our Appalachia Issue, to be published Spring 2017. We will be accepting submissions for this special issue through May 15, 2016, at https://southerncultures.submittable.com/Submit . 

This call aims to gather work that documents and understands Appalachia in its full complexity, in its present moment, and in the voices of citizens, scholars, artists, and activists broadly defined. We understand Appalachia to be a diverse region with many communities and interests and seek to expand the conversation beyond the traditional (and sometimes limiting) lenses of coal mining/environmental degradation, poverty, the holler, or “exotic” others. To that end, we are less interested in stereotypes, revisiting past debates, or fetishized folk culture than we are in the interaction of peoples and cultures with the broader forces of political, social, historical, and economic change at work in contemporary Appalachia.

Submissions can explore any topic or theme related to the contemporary Appalachian experience, with a special interest in pieces that seek new understandings of the region, identify current communities and concerns, and address its present successes and challenges. We welcome explorations of the region in the forms Southern Cultures publishes: scholarly articles, memoir, interviews, surveys, photo essays, and shorter feature essays.

Possible topics might include (but are not limited to):

• Inter-regional and global circulations of cultures
• Changing cities and urban centers
• Contemporary Appalachian artists, popular culture creators, musicians, and entrepreneurial innovators
• Nuanced material and folk culture
• Historically underrepresented populations (Affrilachians, LGBTQ, Native, immigrant)
• Food studies, including sustainability and other food movements
• Religious and community traditions in new Appalachia
• Social justice movements and activism
• Geographic diversity and its role in community (diaspora, migrations, re-inhabiting)

As we also publish a digital edition, we are able to supplement essays with video, audio, and interactive visual content. We encourage creativity in coordinating print and digital materials in submissions and ask that authors submit any potential digital materials with their essay or introduction/artist’s statement.

We encourage authors to gain familiarity with the tone, scope, and style of our journal before submitting. Those whose institutions subscribe to Project Muse can read past issues for free via http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/southern_cultures/ . To read our current issue, access our submission guidelines, or browse our content, please visit us online at http:// www.SouthernCultures.org/ . 

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