This week we will be talking Scott Romine, author of The Zombie Memes of Dixie (2024, UGA Press). The book traces the origin and development of several propositions, tropes, types, clichés, and ideas commonly associated with the U.S. South.
Approaching these propositions as memes Scott argues that many of them developed in defense of slavery and evolved in its aftermath to continue to form a southern group whose “way of life” naturalized an emergent regime of segregation.