Remediating Region

Book excerpt: 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. Remediating Region recognizes that all media was once new media. In examining how changes in information and media modify concepts of region, it both articulates the virtual realities of the twenty-first-century U.S. South and historicizes the impact of “new” media on a region that has long been mediated. Eleven essays examine media moments ranging from the nineteenth century to the present day, among them Frederick Douglass’s utilization of early photography, video game representations of a late capitalist landscape, rural queer communities’ engagement with social media platforms, and contemporary technologies focused on revitalizing Indigenous cultural practices. Interdisciplinary in scope and execution, Remediating Region argues that on an increasingly networked planet, concerns over the mediated region continue to inform how audiences and participants understand their entrée into a global world through local space.