Comparative Southern Questions

In the early stages of writing this book, I was lucky enough to be invited to speak on topics growing out of my research by a graduate program in literary studies at a large public university in the Deep South. The invitation arose not from my fame (since I had none) but from a personal connection with an old friend, with whom I had taught on the East Coast while I was adjuncting and job hunting and he was between master’s and Ph.D. programs. As we grew reacquainted, it became clear that undertaking doctoral work had crystallized many key intellectual issues for him; he was well on his way to excellent preparation for academic work. One of these key issues was the question of theory and its relationship to literary and cultural studies. He had become steeped in the major ideas of Lacan, Derrida, Foucault, Deleuze, and others, and this enhanced knowledge, which was being instilled so ably by his university, formed a powerful supplement to the training in more traditional literary criticisms that he had received at the master’s level. Over the course of the three days he hosted me, I found myself regularly fielding questions