The Bohemian South

From the southern influence on nineteenth-century New York to the musical legacy of late-twentieth-century Athens, Georgia, to the cutting-edge cuisines of twenty-first-century Asheville, North Carolina, the bohemian South has long contested traditional views of the region. Yet, even as the fruits of this creative South have famously been celebrated, exported, and expropriated, the region long was labeled a cultural backwater. This timely and illuminating collection uses bohemia as a novel lens for reconsidering more traditional views of the South. Exploring wide-ranging locales, such as Athens, Austin, Black Mountain College, Knoxville, Memphis, New Orleans, and North Carolina's Research Triangle, each essay challenges popular interpretations of the South, while highlighting important bohemian sub- and countercultures. In addition to tracing the historical legacy of southern bohemians, the collection traverses such contemporary issues as contested memory, the commodification of the bohemian South, and how southern bohemians play with traditions in new ways that compliment, contradict, and commingle with the region's past traditional practices and ideas. The Bohemian South provides an important perspective in the New South as an epicenter for progress, innovation, and experimentation.

Contributors include Scott Barretta, Shawn Chandler Bingham, Jaime Cantrell, Jon Horne Carter, Alex Sayf Cummings, Lindsey A. Freeman, Grace E. Hale, Joanna Levin, Joshua Long, Daniel S. Margolies, Chris Offutt, Zandria F. Robinson, Allen Shelton, Daniel Cross Turner, Zackary Vernon, and Edward Whitley.

Scott Barretta, University of Mississippi

Shawn Chandler Bingham, University of South Florida

Jaime Cantrell, University of Mississippi

Jon Horne Carter, Appalachian State University

Alex Sayf Cummings, Georgia State University

Lindsey A. Freeman, Simon Fraser University

Grace E. Hale, University of Virginia

Joanna Levin, Chapman University

Joshua Long, Southwestern University

Daniel S. Margolies, Virginia Wesleyan College

Chris Offutt, University of Mississippi

Zandria F. Robinson, Rhodes College

Allen Shelton, State University of New York-Buffalo State

Daniel Cross Turner, Coastal Carolina University

Zackary Vernon, Appalachian State University

Edward Whitley, Lehigh University