Race and Southern Studies (L. Harris, R. Byrd, J Crespino, E. Goldstein, M. Odem & A. Tullos)

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Much of the attention to race in southern studies, at Emory and nationally, has focused on the relationships between blacks and whites. In the past ten years, a new area of inquiry for southern studies scholars has been the increasing number of people outside of that racial dyad, particularly immigrants from Latin America, Africa, the Caribbean, East and South Asia, and other regions, who have made the southern United States their home, and the impact these migrants are having on the region socially, politically, economically and culturally.

Attention to these groups has occurred as new interpretations of the meaning of black-white race relations continues to emerge: the meaning of the civil rights movement, particularly the varied meanings of desegregation to African Americans, which may have differed significantly from integration; the relationship between the national resurgence of the Republican Party and the conservative movement and resistance to desegregation in the South; and most recently, the fate of the Gulf Coast in the wake of the 2005 hurricane season and the ways in which the impact of the 2005 hurricane season has been interpreted in racial and class terms.

The Race and Southern Studies Working Group at Emory will create a space in which scholars concerned with these and other intellectual developments in the field of southern studies will participate in workshops and planning meetings designed to foster creative research projects and generate innovative courses and curricula on the undergraduate and graduate level. RDI is pleased to supply seed funding for this initiative, which is primed to produce a strong and fundable scholarly legacy.