In Erosion (Duke UP 2024) Gina Caison traces how American authors and photographers have grappled with soil erosion as a material reality that shapes narratives of identity, belonging, and environment. Examining canonical American texts and photography including The Grapes of Wrath, Octavia Butler’s Parable series, John Audubon’s Louisiana writings, and Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother, Caison shows how concerns over erosion reveal anxieties of disappearance that are based in the legacies of settler colonialism. Soil loss not only occupies a complex metaphorical place in the narrative of American identity; it becomes central to preserving the white settler-colonial state through Indigenous dispossession and erasure. At the same time, Caison examines how Indigenous texts and art, such as Lynn Riggs's play Green Grow the Lilacs, Karenne Wood’s poetry, and the photography of Monique Verdin, challenge colonial narratives of the continent by outlining the material stakes of soil loss for their own communities. From California to Oklahoma to North Carolina’s Outer Banks, Caison ultimately demonstrates that concerns over erosion reverberate out into issues of climate change, land ownership, Indigenous sovereignty, race, and cultural and national identity.
Rather than a media history of the region or a history of southern media, Remediating Region: New Media and the U.S. South formulates a critical methodology for studying the continuous reinventions of regional space across media platforms.
This innovative collection demonstrates that structures of media undergird American regionalism through the representation of a given geography’s peoples, places, and ideologies. It also outlines how the region answers back to the national media by circulating ever-shifting ideas of place via new platforms that allow for self-representation outside previously sanctioned media forms.
Winner of the 2019 C. Hugh Holman Award for best book in southern studies from the Society for the Study of Southern Literature
Finalist for the 2018 Georgia Author of the Year Award in History
Red States: Indigeneity, Settler Colonialism, and Southern Studies (UGA Press, 2018) takes up both white southern nativism and southeastern Native responses to the phenomenon — two issues that have not been considered thoroughly within one space. Using five core narratives — recovery, revolution, removal, resistance, and resilience — the book considers the importance of Indigenous literary traditions for shaping concepts of region. This renewed understanding of region affects larger national narratives of belonging particularly as it pertains to the concerns of Indigenous peoples. Ultimately, Caison concludes that the U.S. South is indeed made up of red states, but perhaps not in the way we initially imagine.
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Caison is committed to the principle that non-Native scholars such as herself should not profit from work that owes itself to the Indigenous communities that have offered them so much. Because this work could not have existed without her time at the UNC American Indian Center, all author proceeds from this book will be donated to that institution whose mission forwards the educational concerns of Native communities of present-day North Carolina. You can make your own gift to the UNC AIC here.
Honorable Mention for the 2017 C. Hugh Holman Award for the best book in southern studies from the Society for the Study of Southern Literature
As the first collection dedicated to the relationship between television and the U.S. South, Small-Screen Souths (LSU Press, 2017) addresses the growing interest in how mass culture represents the region and influences popular perceptions of it. In sixteen essays divided into three thematic sections, scholars of southern culture analyze representations of the South in a variety of television shows spanning the history of the medium, from classic network programs such as The Andy Griffith Show and Designing Women to some of today’s popular franchises like Duck Dynasty and The Walking Dead.
By analyzing depictions of the South from the classical network era to the contemporary post-broadcast age, Small-Screen Souths offers a broad historical scope and a multiplicity of theoretical and interdisciplinary perspectives on what it means to see the South from the television screen.
Small-Screen Souths is the first edited collection of scholarly essays to receive recognition from the Holman Award.
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From 2016-2019, About South was a weekly podcast hosted by Gina Caison. Each week About South talked to the people who create, curate, and critique southern cultures. Listen here.
