Call for Papers: Southern Cultures Special 25th Anniversary Issue (Inside/Outside)

Southern Cultures, the award-winning quarterly of the UNC Center for the Study of the American South, is planning four special issues in 2019 to mark its 25^th year of publication. The four themes— Backward/Forward, Inside/Outside, Left/Right, and Here/Away—will highlight where the South is coming from and where it’s going, who’s included and who’s left out, how it’s changing and how it’s not, what’s near and what’s far. We’d like contributors to interpret these themes broadly and creatively, mixing serious interpretations of the South’s history, future, space, and politics with reimagined takes on what these tropes should mean going forward.

We invite submissions from scholars, writers, and visual artists for our Summer 2019 issue, Inside/Outside, through November 15, 2018, at https://southerncultures.submittable.com/submit.

Inside/Outside will explore and document the South’s communities and contours. What or where is the inside, and who are its gatekeepers? Who counts as southern? Who or what is included or excluded, and why? Which voices will be heard, and which will not? We’re looking for solidly grounded studies on major themes, speculations about what’s coming, reflections on the distant past or future, and snapshots of yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Who will be welcome?

Submissions can cover any topic or theme related to southern history and culture. We seek pieces that examine the South across time, explore new understandings of the region and its peoples, identify current communities and concerns, and address ongoing struggles for justice and expression going forward. 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 and questions to explore might include (but are certainly not limited to):

• Inclusion/exclusion
• Memory
• Reconciliation and reckoning
• Belonging
• Race, gender & sexuality, and class
• Education
• Religion
• Voting and elections
• Landscape and the built environment
• Art, media, and popular culture
• (Im)migration and demographic change
• Boundaries, borders, and the in-between
• Language and nomenclature
• Classification and categorization
• Health and healthcare
• Food and foodways
• Generational shifts and intergenerational tensions/alliances

As Southern Cultures publishes digital content online, we encourage creativity in coordinating print and digital materials in submissions and ask that authors submit any potential video, audio, and interactive visual content 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 with access to Project Muse can read past issues for free. To read our current issue and our submission guidelines, or browse our content, please visit www.southerncultures.org .