Southern Studies Courses
Current Courses - Spring 2012
SOST 298—Topics in the American South
Time:
MW 2:30–3:45pm
In this reading-intensive course, we will focus on memoir and autobiography as forms for understanding individual stories that might resonate in broader themes about the American South in the twentieth century. Potential texts include Percy’s Lanterns on the Levee; Bragg’s All Over But the Shoutin’; Hannon’s The Cracker Queen; Youngblood’s I Must Remember This; Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings; Gates’s Colored People: A Memoir; Sessum’s Mississippi Sissy; Nicholas’s Buryin’ Daddy; Lumpkin’s The Making of a Southerner; Crews’s A Childhood; Robertson’s Red Hills and Cotton; Smith’s Killers of the Dream; and Sellers’s The River of No Return.
SOST 301—Introduction to Southern Studies (1580-1900)
Time:
TTh 12:30–1:45pm
Defining the South is just as much a matter of geography as culture, politics as imagination, history as fiction. In this course we will examine important social, cultural, and political developments from roughly 1580 to 1900. We will begin with two questions—“What is the South?” and “Who is a southerner?” Our approach to these questions will be interdisciplinary, drawing from historical, literary, cultural, and gender studies sources. We will study travel narratives, novels, diaries, letters, poems, paintings, film, and scholarly texts. In the process, we will not only learn more history, but we will also learn to use a variety of sources to understand the past.
SOST 302—Southern Studies: The Twentieth Century
Time:
TTh 11am–12:15pm
This course draws on recent imaginative writing inspired by the U.S. South to explore ways today’s southern writers respond to and continue to shape a range of ideologies about regional experience. This section in particular focuses on literary representations of historical moments shaping contemporary understandings of varieties of southern identity and will include guest lectures by several of the local authors studied. In addition to completing course readings in contemporary fiction and poetry, students will attend two local literary events of their choice outside of class, write two short essays, participate in class discussions and other group activities, and demonstrate mastery of course materials and skills on quizzes, a midterm, and a cumulative final exam. Possible course texts include Lan Cao, Monkey Bridge; Casey Clabough, Confederato; Elizabeth Cox, Slow Moon; Kwame Dawes, Wisteria; Gail Godwin, Unfinished Desires; Michael Griffith, Trophy; Minrose Gwin, The Queen of Palmyra; Silas House, A Parchment of Leaves; Ravi Howard, Like Trees, Walking; and Ray McManus, Red Dirt Jesus. Note: English majors and Southern Studies minors may choose to enroll for credit under either heading depending on the availability of seats, but the course is not restricted to majors or minors and has no prerequisites other than English 101.
SOST 405R—Southern Foodways
Time:
MW 5:30–6:45pm
The purpose of this course is to explore the formation of the growing, processing, cooking, and eating of food in the south from 1800 to 2009, with attention paid to Native American, Caribbean, African, and European contributions to the synthesis of southern style. The course will treat the garden experimentalism of antebellum agriculture and horticulture, the rise of a print culture of periodical recipes and cookbooks, the influence of nutritional thought, the role of industrialized farming and mass marketing of food, and the emergence of American regional food consciousness and the heritage foods movement. Guest speakers will include chefs, authors, and growers who concern themselves with aspects of food creation. Each student will be expected to develop a particular knowledge of some particular commodity central to southern cooking–i.e. rice, field peas, freestone peaches, sugar cane, sorghum.
SOST 405U—Comics and the U. S. South
Time:
TTh 9:30–10:45am
This course is a scholarly study of the way comics represent the U.S. South and explore southern histories, places, and identities. Drawing upon comic strips, comic books, graphic novels, and webcomics from the 1930s to the present, our investigation will focus on four major themes: The South in the National Imagination; Emancipation and Civil Rights Resistance; The Horrors of the South; and Revisualizing Stories, Rereading Images.
SOST 405V—Documentary Photography in the Rural South
Time:
M 2:30–5pm
While learning the theory and practice of documentary photography, students will work to complete a documentary photographic study of small town in South Carolina. This course will introduce students to the lyrical documentary tradition, particularly as it relates to work within a community and to focused, individual projects. Students will learn to make, choose, sequence, and pace their own images for purposes of class discussion, digital projection, and exhibition. Students must have access to transportation (including shared rides) during the semester. Each student’s final project will consist of at least twenty images combining work from all three assignments. No prior experience in photography is required.
SOST 405W—African Legacy in the Americas
Time:
TTh 3:30–4:45pm
This course will survey of the African heritage in the Americas from the 16th century to the present day. We will emphasize how Africans and their descendants went from slavery to freedom while responding to political, economic, and cultural changes in their diverse societies.
SOST 405Y—Southern Writers Today
Time:
TTh 2:30–3:15pm
This course draws on recent imaginative writing inspired by the U.S. South to explore ways today’s southern writers respond to and continue to shape a range of ideologies about regional experience. This section in particular focuses on literary representations of historical moments shaping contemporary understandings of local southern identities. In addition to completing course readings in contemporary fiction and poetry, and attending several local literary events of their choice outside of class, students write two short essays, participate in class discussions and other group activities, and demonstrate mastery of course materials and skills on weekly quizzes, a midterm, and a cumulative final exam.
SOST 500A—Southern Discomfort: Public Health in the American South
Time:
TTh 2–3:15pm
The American South possesses a unique health and disease profile that has contributed to the idea of Southern distinctiveness. Throughout history, the South has experienced regional disparities that have largely gone unresolved, even with the public health revolution. The purpose of this 3-credity course is to investigate these topics through lecture, film, and guided readings. Each interdisciplinary lecture will cover a different aspect of health in the South, ranging from an examination of the endemic diseases of the antebellum period to the current HIV/AIDS crisis. We will also spend time discussing the ethical implications of the pellagra and Tuskegee experiments and their lasting impact on health-related research.
Other Souther Studies Courses
The undergraduate curriculum in Southern Studies includes SOST courses sponsored directly by the Institute for Southern Studies and a wide variety of courses sponsored by other departments and the South Carolina Honors College that examine different aspects of the American South.
Not all courses are offered every semester.
SOST 298B: Topics in Southern Studies
Reading and research on selected interdisciplinary topics in Southern Studies. Course content varies and will be announced in the schedule of classes by suffix and title.
SOST 301 Introduction to Southern Studies
Interdisciplinary approaches to fundamental problems in the study of the American South. (Also listed as HIST 441. Not open to seniors. Restricted to students in the College of Arts and Sciences or the South Carolina Honors College and to declared Southern Studies minors in other colleges.)
SOST 302 Research in Southern Studies
Methods for production of original scholarship about the South. Course content varies and will be announced in the schedule of classes by suffix and title.
SOST 305 The Contemporary South
An investigation of Southern regional identity.
SOST 399 Independent Study
Contract appoved by instructor, adviser, and program director is required for undergraduates.
SOST 405 Topics in Southern Studies
Reading and research on selected topics in Southern studies. Course content varies and will be announced in the schedule of classes by suffix and title.
Related Courses from Other Departments
AFRO 335 Survey of Civil Rights Movements
ANTH 303 African-American Cultures
ANTH 304 Contemporary Cultures of South Carolina
ANTH 317 North American Indian Cultures
ANTH 321 Archaeology of South Carolina
BIOL 526 The Fall Flora
BIOL 527 The Spring Flora
BIOL 528 The Summer Flora
ENGL 427 Southern Literature
ENGL 428 African-American Literature
ENGL 438A South Carolina Writers
ENGL 456 The English Language in America
ENVR 200 Natural History of South Carolina
GEOG 221 Geography of South Carolina
GEOG 521 Landscapes of South Carolina
GEOL 215 Coastal Environments of the Southeastern United States
HIST 403 The Sections and the Nation, 1828-1860
HIST 404 Civil War and Reconstruction, 1860-1877
HIST 409 The History of South Carolina, 1670-1865
HIST 410 History of South Carolina Since 1865
HIST 415 Black Americans
HIST 442 The Old South
HIST 443 The New South
HIST 479 Oral History
HIST 615 The Civil War in American History
HIST 616 The Reconstruction of the Nation
HIST 648 The Black Experience in the United States (to 1865)
HIST 649 The Black Experience in the United States (since 1865)
POLI 363 Southern Politics
POLI 365 State Government
RELG 342 The African-American Religious Experience
RELG 573 Religion in the South
SCCC 325F Southern Intellectual and Cultural History
SCCC 367A Echoes in Blues
SCCC 425F South Carolina in the 20th Century