European Academics Travel West to Indulge Their Passion for the South

It’s an odd position to be in, Jan N. Gretlund says, but somebody’s got to do it. Americans are so--how to say it?--forward looking. They’re so trendy, ever looking for the new. Who then will preserve American tradition if not the Europeans?

Why, just the other day, Gretlund, who teaches American Southern studies at Odense University in Denmark, butted heads with a Mississippian who advanced a revisionist interpretation of the works of Eudora Welty. It was a wrongheaded approach to the author in Gretlund’s view, and he wasted few words saying so--not that he changed anybody’s mind.

“There are differing interests,” he said. “Europeans will look for traditions, values and history. Americans look for new ways of seeing these traditions.”

Every two years, members of the Southern Studies Forum, a group of European scholars who specialize in the culture and history of Dixie, meet to share views and argue with their American counterparts.

This year they met--for the first time--in the United States, smack dab in the middle of the kudzu-covered region they have spent their lives dissecting.

While some of them visit the United States often and know it well, the just-completed symposium was a welcomed three-day immersion in things Southern, hosted by the University of South Carolina’s Institute for Southern Studies. The 30 scholars hail from 10 European countries.

Participants report a huge interest overseas in the American South. At the University of Reading in Britain, “the classes are all oversubscribed,” said history professor Stuart Kidd. In Glasgow, a popular bar displays Confederate flags and features country music, said Andrew Hook of Scotland.

As Kidd noted, however, Europeans are captivated by the region but have inaccurate views of it.

“It’s a myth, sort of an European myth of America,” he said. Europeans see the South “as a more rural culture, one without masses and motors,” he said. They are fascinated because many of them feel a sense of loss because their own culture has become so urbanized, he said.

In fact, this idealized South disappeared long ago, if it ever existed. The mythic South, full of chivalry and manners, largely evades such issues as poverty and racism.

Kidd said his students are fascinated by larger-than-life Southern politicians and by the civil rights movement. The late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is one of the most popular figures for dissertation topics.

The other view of America, and of Southern cities such as Atlanta, is of a dynamic place driven by high technology. This view is derived largely from television, advertising, pop music and movies.

While Atlanta residents fret that visitors to the 1996 Summer Olympic Games will be disappointed by the city’s relative dearth of high culture and historic charm, Kidd said not to worry: Europeans will come expecting to be dazzled by the things Atlanta has in abundance, such as freeways. They will flock to the Coca-Cola museum, he said.

“The Europeans live with their history,” he said. “When they come to the states they’re looking for something different.”

Those differences were examined in depth during the symposium. One of the most popular presentations was a humorously detailed analysis of the Southern phenomenon of barbecue, complete with flow charts, maps indicating subregional sauce and meat preferences and photographs depicting prevalent architectural forms used for barbecue restaurants.

The presenter, Charles Kovacik of South Carolina, even showed a state map indicating each of the 140 establishments of which he had personal knowledge--as a researcher, of course.

In many ways, the conference--its location notwithstanding--was similar to those held previously in places such as Bonn and Budapest, Hungary, participants said. One difference was the presence of Josephine Humphreys, hailed as one of the South’s leading young authors.

After hearing discussions of the role of landscape and history in Southern fiction, with scholars tossing about such terms as mimesis, metonymy and metaphor, Humphreys was moved to observe: “There’s a bigger difference between academics and writers than between Europeans and Americans.”

She said she never thinks about those things when she sits down to create.

Another noteworthy difference between this year’s symposium and previous ones was the presence of black Americans--three of the 10 U.S. scholars, to be exact.

Black academics have been absent from forum meetings held overseas. Walter Edgar, director of the Institute for Southern Studies and chairman of the event, said that was an oversight that cried out for correction because race is a central issue in the history, culture and literature of the South.

Some Europeans “are where American scholars were 25 years ago,” he said. “They talk about South this or South that when they really mean whites.”

He said he thought holding the symposium here might help change that perception.