Overview
On November 15, 2004, Tara McPherson presented "Re-imagining the Red States" at Emory University. Prof. McPherson discusses how a variety of maps, blogs, e-mails, and weblinks represent the US South since the November 2004 election. "The binary logic of red versus blue does not serve us well if we truly aim to imagine a more just nation," she concludes. In the second half of her illustrated talk, Prof. McPherson considers Katherine DuPre Lumpkin and Minnie Bruce Pratt as alternative models for southern identity who help to destabilize red-state/blue-state thinking.
Video
Part 1b: Re-imagining the Red States: New Directions for Southern Studies
Part 2: Re-imagining the Red States: New Directions for Southern Studies
Part 3: Re-imagining the Red States: New Directions for Southern Studies
About the Speaker
Tara McPherson is Associate Professor of critical studies and gender studies at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinema-Television. She is the author of Reconstructing Dixie: Race, Gender, and Nostalgia in the Imagined South (Duke University Press, 2003). She is co-editor (with Henry Jenkins and Jane Shattuc) of Hop on Pop: The Politics and Pleasures of Popular Culture (Duke University Press, 2003). Among her current projects is an anthology on new technology, a book manuscript on racial epistemologies in the electronic age, and the launching of an internet journal through the Institute for Multimedia Literacy.
Recommended Resources
Maps
2004 Election results maps and cartograms were generated by M. T. Gastner, C. R. Shalizi, and M. E. J. Newman at the University of Michigan. Original files are available at http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2004/
Weblinks
Minnie Bruce Pratt Website
http://www.mbpratt.org/.
Lumpkin, Katherine Du Pre. The Making of a Southerner. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1992 (reprint edition).
McPherson, Tara. Reconstructing Dixie: Race, Gender and Nostalgia in the Imagined South. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003.