Southern Metrics of Dissent: A Transdisciplinary Analysis of Black and Brown Resistance, Coalitions, and Justice in the Shadow of the Civil Rights Movement in the Deep South

Session Submission Type: Paper Session: Talk Format

Abstract

This panel unpacks how the South and the memory of the Civil Rights Movement function as both a hegemonic metric and dissenting measure for the current neoliberal conjuncture, in the wake of Trump’s presidential election and the advent of his new administration--especially regarding issues of immigration, Black/Brown solidarity and a politics and pedagogy of dissent. This panel endeavors to think critically about the South as a site through which pedagogies of dissent emerge and operate in the post-Civil Rights era. Together these papers examine a variety of social justice movements in the contemporary U.S. South and how they have deployed the symbols and memory of the Civil Rights Movement.
The discourse on “civil rights” produces many dynamic questions about how the South is represented in relation to the nation, racial formation, “proper and successful” protest/organizing, solidarity politics and anti-blackness. This is especially so as the South is often represented as a spectacular site of heroic activism of the past or an exceptional site of anti-black racism and Jim/Juan Crow. This panel resists the pronvicializing tendencies of these simplistic narratives and instead examines how southern movements for social justice both challenge narratives of southern distinctiveness and reveal the enduring importance of region in the study of race and power.
We discuss how the Civil Rights Movement shadows contemporary resistance movements and politics, especially those advocating for Black Liberation and immigrant justice.

We analyze the South, often understood as a triumphant beacon for pedagogies of civil rights dissent and consider what conditions of possibility it presents for future and present organizing in the South and beyond. This panel offers a transdisciplinary perspective as it draws from scholars in American Studies, Black Studies, Latinx Studies, history, anthropology and sociology. Methodologically each of the scholars draws on a diverse set of reading practices including archival research, ethnographic observations, media analysis, and quantitative analysis. Using these transdisciplinary approaches our panel will offer insight into questions of how memories of dissent can be mobilized for cross-racial solidarity as well as the limits of such an approach. As a collective our dialogue critically engages how pedagogies of civil rights dissent function and emerge from the South and why it is a significant space for understanding race, immigration, resistance and state power in the Trump era.

Sub Unit

• American Studies Association Annual Meeting

Chair

• John D Márquez, Northwestern University

Individual Presentations

• “Unity in the Struggle: Immigration and the Emerging Civil Rights Consensus in Mississippi” - Jennifer A Jones, University of Notre Dame

• "Brown is the New Black:" Juan Crow and the Erasure of Black Suffering - Cecilia Marquez, New York University

• ¿Y Por Qué Juan Crow?: The Uneasy Insertion of the Civil Rights Movement Legacy into Immigrant Justice Organizing in Alabama - Gwendolyn Ferreti, University of Alabama

• The Neoliberal Turn in Civil Rights Memory: 50 Year Commemoratives, Anti-Blackness, and the Ubiety of the Deep South - Theoodre R Foster, Northwestern University