EDWARD'S LECTURE NOTES:
More notes at http://tanguay.info/learntracker
C O U R S E 
The American South: Its Stories, Music, and Art
William Ferris, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
https://www.coursera.org/course/south
C O U R S E   L E C T U R E 
The Region, the Diaspora, and the Mythic
Notes taken on October 20, 2014 by Edward Tanguay
we can think of the South at one time both as the most American and most un-American part of our nation
American
it was here that Thomas Jefferson shaped the nation-state by writing the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution
it's in the South we see deep roots of family, religion, and patriotism
un-American
it's also in the south that we see that most un-American institution of slavery where one race enslaved another
it's also in the South that we see the tragic scenes of violence of the civil rights movement in the 1960s
the South offers both a beautiful and a nightmarish world as we enter it
you can think of the South in three ways:
1. a distinct geographic region
the old confederate states
2. the South outside the South, the Southern diaspora
just as James Joyce said that he fled the nets of family, religion and politics in Ireland
people in the South have also fled, and we can add the net of race
Mississippi Delta black families left the South and moved to Chicago
Richard Wright
left Mississippi to Chicago, to New York and to Paris
Appalachian white families who moved to Cincinnati
3. a mythic reality
the music of B.B.King, the blues
the music of Elvis
the novels of William Faulkner
the plays of Tennessee Williams
the fiction of Alice Walker