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.
South Writ Large, available at http://southwritlarge.com/, stems from UNC’s Global South Working Group. 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 in the College of Arts and Sciences 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 a preface to the first edition. Other contributors include 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.