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Southern Spaces
A journal about real and imagined spaces and places of the US South and their global connections
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Call for Submissions: Music and the US South

Series editor: Grace Elizabeth Hale, University of Virginia. 
Submission deadline: March 17, 2014.
Questions: write to managing editor Jesse P. Karlsberg.

Southern Spaces, a peer-reviewed, online journal, invites scholars, critics, writers, artists, and musicians to submit essays, photo essays, music essays, original documentaries, and digital projects for a new series "Music and the US South."

Second line of funeral procession, New Orleans, Louisiana, 2005. Photograph by Nick Spitzer. Courtesy of Nick Spitzer. From "Creolization as Cultural Continuity and Creativity in Postdiluvian New Orleans and Beyond," by Nick Spitzer.
From Nick Spitzer's "Creolization as Cultural Continuity and Creativity in Postdiluvian New Orleans and Beyond."

This series will examine how music and music-making relate to specific geographies—real or imagined—in or related to the US South and its regions, or to issues of space and place. We welcome contributions and projects relating to any time period or musical genre and from any (inter)disciplinary framework. We especially encourage analyses of musical forms not typically associated with the US South and work that explores transnational contexts. Where possible, proposed works should include media—sound, video, maps, images—as well as text.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

  • The impact on musics of migration into, out of, or within regions of the US South
  • Southern musics outside the US South
  • Intersections of music with place, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and class
  • Native American musics, Latina/o musics, musics of immigrant groups
  • Local music scenes: punk, hardcore, rock, folk, hip-hop, emerging genres, etc.
  • Radio and television stations and musicians playing live on the radio
  • Material culture relating to musics of the US South and its regions
  • Recording companies and recording studios
  • Music and musical instrument stores
  • Concert and performance venues
  • Music making at home, in the workplace, and in public spaces
  • Sacred and religious music, religious musical cultures
  • Song collecting and recording
  • Archiving and archives of musics of the US South
  • Sound studies
  • Folklorization, heritagization, and festivalization
  • Memorialization and memory of music and musicians
Cover of the CD single for the 1996 song "Dirty South" by Atlanta-based group, The Goodie Mob. © The Goodie Mob. From "Dirty Decade: Rap Music and the US South, 1997–2007," by Matt Miller.A coal miner listens to his radio, Westover, West Virginia, 1938. Photograph by Marion Post Wolcott. From the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LC-USF34-050293-E. From "The Tennessee Jamboree: Local Radio, the Barn Dance, and Cultural Life in Appalachian East Tennessee," by Bradley Hanson.
From Matt Miller's "Dirty Decade: Rap Music and the US South, 1997–2007."
 		From Bradley Hanson's "The Tennessee Jamboree: Local Radio, the Barn Dance, and Cultural Life in Appalachian East Tennessee."

In addition to essays, photo essays, and short videos, Southern Spaces will publish peer-reviewed music essays and digital projects as a part of this series. We imagine music essays as collections of audio recordings with accompanying text. Digital projects may take any of a number of forms. Please contact us if you have any questions about our process, infrastructure, or other aspects of digital project publishing. Southern Spaces editors are committed to assisting scholars at varying levels of technological proficiency. We will work with submitters on the process of producing image, sound, and video files for submissions. We will accept completed works as well as proposals. See our submissions guidelines for style and formatting. Please submit proposals (350–700 words), essays, or projects to seditor@emory.edu by March 17, 2014.

The following pieces are examples of the sort of critical, interdisciplinary, and multimedia engagement with music that we seek.

Jean Ritchie and Oscar Brand at WNYC, New York City, 1947. Photograph by George Pickow. Courtesy of George Pickow. From "John Cohen in Eastern Kentucky: Documentary Expression and the Image of Roscoe Halcomb During the Folk Revival," by Scott L. Matthews.
From Scott L. Matthews' "John Cohen in Eastern Kentucky: Documentary Expression and the Image of Roscoe Halcomb During the Folk Revival."

Hanson, Bradley. "The Tennessee Jamboree: Local Radio, the Barn Dance, and Cultural Life in Appalachian East Tennessee." Southern Spaces, November 20, 2008. https://southernspaces.org/2008/tennessee-jamboree-local-radio-barn-dance-and-cultural-life-appalachian-east-tennessee.

Matthews, Scott L. "John Cohen in Eastern Kentucky: Documentary Expression and the Image of Roscoe Halcomb During the Folk Revival." Southern Spaces, August 6, 2008. https://southernspaces.org/2008/john-cohen-eastern-kentucky-documentary-expression-and-image-roscoe-halcomb-during-folk-revival.

Miller, Matt. "Dirty Decade: Rap Music and the US South, 1997–2007." Southern Spaces, June 10, 2008. https://southernspaces.org/2008/dirty-decade-rap-music-and-us-south-1997–2007.

Spitzer, Nick. "Creolization as Cultural Continuity and Creativity in Postdiluvian New Orleans and Beyond." Southern Spaces, November 28, 2011. https://southernspaces.org/2011/creolization-cultural-continuity-and-creativity-postdiluvian-new-orleans-and-beyond.