Contributors to this exciting collection continue the work of critically and creatively remapping the South through their free-wheeling studies of southern literature and its culture. In appraising representations of the South within a context that is postmodern, diverse, widely inclusive, and international, the essays present multiple ways of imagining the South and examine both new places and old landscapes in an attempt to tie the mythic southern balloon down to earth.

Essayists include the best and brightest in southern literary criticism: Suzanne W. Jones, Sharon Monteith, Richard Gray, Scott Romine, Barbara Ladd, Carolyn Jones, Jon Smith, Paul Lyons, Wes Berry, Eric Anderson, Robert McRuer, Matthew Guinn, Martyn Bone, Maureen Ryan, Amy J. Elias, Michael Kreyling, Christine Gerhardt, Deborah Cohn, Helen Taylor, and Diane Roberts.

Together these eminent scholars explore the roles that economic, racial and ideological tensions have played in the formation of southern identity through varying representations of locality, moving regionalism toward a "new place" in southern studies.

Associate professor of English at the University of Richmond, Suzanne W. Jones is the editor of three other books, including Growing Up in the South. Sharon Monteith, senior lecturer in the School of American and Canadian Studies at the University of Nottingham in England, is the author of Advancing Sisterhood? Interracial Friendships in Contemporary Southern Fiction.