Blues played in Moscow? Southern fried chicken in Abu Dhabi?
It’s all true, say writers for a new online magazine, South Writ Large, who say Southern culture is spreading internationally as people everywhere embrace its food, music, literature and more.
On view at http://southwritlarge.com/, South Writ Large stems from the Global South Working Group at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The multidisciplinary group of authors, artists, historians, social scientists and others discusses ways in which the South links to the wider world. Not only is the South influencing other cultures, they believe, but it is changing, too – becoming more apt to combine global traditions with Southern mores.
“The world has gone flat and the South has gone global, and neither will ever again be the same,” said W. Hodding Carter III, professor of leadership and public policy and a member of the group. “The contributors to South Writ Large apply creative imaginings to a South no longer immobilized by old cultural anchors but still tethered to place and memory.”
Kenan Professor of Anthropology James Peacock, whose latest book is “Grounded Globalism: How the U.S. South Embraces the World,” contributed to the first edition, as did humorist Roy Blount Jr., novelist Lee Smith and Amanda Brickell Bellows, a UNC doctoral candidate who recently contributed to The New York Times’ Opinionator blog.
Supporters are UNC’s Center for Global Initiatives, Carolina Seminars and Center for the Study of the American South. For more information, email info@southwritlarge.com.
