The Mason and Dixon line marks a physical boundary, but beyond geographic location, what is the US South? Did its swamps spontaneously produce the blues? Did bluegrass music arise magically from the hills? How did Mississippi produce two such distinct figures as William Faulkner and Elvis Presley, and how were their works related to their origin? What does the history of slavery in the US South have to do with the emergence of country music, R & B, Soul, or Flannery O’Connor’s fiction? Should we understand the New York born James Baldwin as a southern author, given his family’s lineage in the South? In this course, we will examine the South in its cultural and historical incarnations to examine how it both generated and was generated by economic, technological, and political factors. Through textual and data driven analysis, we will come to understand how the South can be simultaneously the birthplace of rock and roll and the origin of the “Southern Strategy”—at once the seat of American authenticity and origin of Coca Cola, America’s first global brand.