Just Below South: Intercultural Performance in the Caribbean and the U.S. South

Jessica Adams, Michael P. Bibler, and CÈcile Accilien, eds.

288 pages, 6 x 9

Cloth 978-0-8139-2599-8 • $59.50

Paper 978-0-8139-2600-1 • $22.50

New World Studies

Available March 2007

Just Below South is the first book to examine the U.S. South and the Caribbean as a "regional interculture" shaped by performance—as a space defined not so much by a shared set of geographical boundaries or by a single, common culture as by the weave of performances and identities moving across and throughout it. By offering fresh ways for thinking about region, language, and performance, the volume helps to reimagine the possibilities for American Studies. It advances beyond current analyses of historical or literary commonalities between the South and the Caribbean to explore startling and significant connections between a range of performances, including Trinidadian carnival, Civil War reenactments, the Martinican dance form kalenda, dramatic adaptations of Uncle Tom's Cabin, rituals of spirit possession, the teaching of Haitian Kreyól, the translation of Louisiana Creole, and the imaginative "travels" of southern and Caribbean writers.

While generating textual conversations among scholars of Francophone, Anglophone, and Hispanophone literature and culture and forging innovative ties between cultural studies, performance studies, linguistics, literary analysis, and studies of the African diaspora, these essays raise provocative new questions about race, ethnicity, gender, class, and nationality.

Contributors
Jessica Adams, University of California, Berkeley * Carolyn Vellenga Berman, The New School * Anne Malena, University of Alberta * CÈcile Accilien, Columbus State University, Georgia * Don E. Walicek, University of Puerto Rico-RÌo Piedras * Julian Gerstin, San Jose State University * Rawle Gibbons, University of the West Indies, St. Augustine * Kathleen M. Gough, University of Glasgow * Shirley Toland-Dix, University of South Florida, Tampa * Michael P. Bibler, University of Mary Washington * Jana Evans Braziel, University of Cincinnati

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Jessica Adams is a Lecturer in English at the University of California, Berkeley. Michael P. Bibler is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Mary Washington. CÈcile Accilien is Assistant Professor of French and Francophone Literatures at Columbus State University, Georgia.