UNC Charlotte’s Center for the Study of the New South, in partnership with Levine Museum of the New South, will host Karen L. Cox at the museum on March 13 at 6 p.m. to talk about Dreaming of Dixie: How the South was Created in American Popular Culture.

“So often the South has been considered a cultural backwater of America, but Karen Cox reveals how essential the South and depictions of it have been in the creation of American popular culture,” says Jeffrey Leak, director of the Center for the Study of the New South.

Cox examines how popular culture has portrayed the American South as a region draped in moonlight and magnolias, especially as advertising agencies, musicians, publishers, radio personalities, writers, and filmmakers marketed the South. Some southerners embraced this image, especially for tourism reasons. Only when television news coverage of the civil rights movement brought images of violence, protest, and conflict in the South into people's homes did a more complex understanding of the South emerge in popular culture. She uses clips from the movie Gone With the Wind and music and radio broadcasts, to illustrate her points.

The event is free and open to the public. RSVPs are required, either by registering here or by calling 704-687-0085.

Distinguished Professor Jonathan Boyarin from UNC Chapel Hill will deliver the UNC Charlotte 16th annual Alice Tate Lecture in Judaic Studies on Monday, March 12, 2012.  The lecture will be held at 7:30 p.m. in the Sam Lerner Center for Cultural Arts at Shalom Park, 5007 Providence Road in Charlotte.

Boyarin will speak about his new book, Mornings at the Stanton Street Shul: A Summer on the Lower East Side, just published with Fordham University Press. The cultural importance of the Lower East Side to both Jewish life in America and American culture more widely is legendary. Boyarin’s book is already receiving rave reviews.

“This beautiful new book confirms Jonathan Boyarin's status as one of the most innovative scholars in Jewish Studies. Mornings at the Stanton Street Shul is a field journal and monument to religious endurance. But, first and foremost, it is a celebration of the pleasures of Jewish life.”—Matti Bunzl, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

“In a journal that is always humane, and often humorous, Jonathan Boyarin lovingly details one summer in the life of the Stanton Street Synagogue. Boyarin is the perfect tour guide to take us inside the ever-changing Jewish world on the Lower East Side--a place ‘where hip meets hip replacement.’”—Mort Zachter, Author of Dough: A Memoir.

The Center for The Study of the New South will convene a panel discussion of Dreaming of Dixie: How the South Was Created in American Popular Culture, by Dr. Karen Cox, on Tuesday, February 21, 2012 at 3:30 in the Halton Reading Room, in the J. Murrey Atkins Library. 

Participants will include David Goldfield (History), Richard Leeman (Communication Studies), Debra Smith (Africana Studies), and Mary Newsom (Urban and Regional Affairs). Sonya Ramsey (History) will serve as moderator. This event is free; registration is not required.

This campus event is the precursor to the Center for the Study of the New South’s annual lecture, on Tuesday, March 13 at 6 p.m., at the Levine Museum of the New South. This year’s distinguished speaker will be Cox. The March 13 event is free and open to the public. Seating is limited, and reservations are required, either by calling 704-687-0085 or registering here.

Juan Moreno-Cruz from the School of Economics at Georgia Tech University will present "The International Economics of Climate Engineering" at 3 p..m., Friday, Feb. 17, in McEniry 117.

In the talk, part of the Geography and Earth Sciences Department Speaker Series, Moreno-Cruz will analyze three frameworks of future climate engineering interventions, and how mitigation strategies, temperature and climate change costs are affected depending upon how climate engineering is implemented.

Future talks are also scheduled.  Each talk will be in McEniry 117, from 3 to 4 p.m.

• March 16, Jonathan Lees, Department of Geological Sciences, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Waveform Modeling of Volcano Explosions & Source Dynamics: Karymsky, Sangay, Santiaguito.
• March 23, Rich Crepeau, Department of Geography and Planning, Appalachian State University, "Landscape Ecology for the Analysis of the Human Habitats."
• March 30, Scott Burns, Department of Geology, Portland State University,  Richard H. Jahns Distinguished Lecturer in Engineering Geology, “Urban Landslides – Challenges to Forensic Engineering Geologists.”
• April 13, Brett Taubman, Department of Chemistry, Appalachian State University, “Aerosol Source Apportionment Over the Southern Appalachian Mountains: Initial Results from Appalachian Atmospheric Interdisciplinary Research (AppalAIR.)"