The Southern Labor Studies Association is soliciting panels for its (March 7-9) 2013 conference in New Orleans, LA. The conference theme, the “Many Souths,” invites a broad range of panels on southern working-class history, while at the same time it asks participants to examine how we have conceptualized the region: as rural and/or urban; as a single region, or as multiple sub-regions, e.g. the Mountain South, Deep South, etc.; as part of the Caribbean, Gulf Coast, and/or Atlantic World; and as a region defined by particular sets of race, class, and gender relations.
New Orleans is an ideal place to do this, as it is often set apart as somehow “exceptional” or outside the South in popular culture and historical accounts. For some, it is a city distinct from the rest of the South, even as for others, it is very much part of the South’s economic and racial framework. Others see New Orleans as a Caribbean capital. In fact, New Orleans, like much of the South, is often “exemplary” of larger historical trends related to migration, de-industrialization, the rise of the service economy, the importance of tourism, race relations, violence, and working-class struggles.
To this end, we welcome full panels on a broad range of southern labor themes, including panels related to slavery and unfree labor, prisons and labor, oil, fishing, and the Gulf Coast, work and disaster capitalism, tourism and the service economy, music and cultural workers, sex workers, the Global South, African American labor history, Latino and migrant workers, gender and labor activism, and migration throughout the South.
The SLSA will also be sponsoring three keynote events: Adolph Reed (University of Pennsylvania) will deliver a featured lecture, leading New Orleans musicians will perform and participate in a roundtable on the political economy of the music industry, and immigration activists will share their challenges and successes in the South. In addition, the conference will also include labor history tours of New Orleans and workshops on contemporary campaigns.
Please submit panels by September 14, 2012. Panel submissions must include a brief synopsis of the panel (250 words), abstracts for each paper (250 words), 2-pg CV of each participant, contact information of each participant, and contact information for panel organizer. Please submit panels to both Jana Lipman and Steve Striffler at jlipman@tulane.edu and sstriffl@uno.edu.
The SLSA is also excited to announce our collaboration with Southern Spaces, a cutting-edge, interdisciplinary multimedia journal about regions, places, and cultures of the U.S. South and their global connections. Selected panels and papers may be solicited for peer review and publication in conjunction with the conference. http://www.southernspaces.org/
