This special issue of The Global South encourages striated readings of place that challenge nation-based models of the Global North (First World) and the Global South (Third World) by suggesting that one may exist within the other.  The political clout of a nation, its fiscal soundness or disrepair, its general attitude toward the value of education and the accessibility of health care, obviously do not consistently characterize the experiences of all of its residents, and this issue explores that gap.  We especially encourage essays that focus on the blurring of political demarcations of space, or essays that transgress disciplinary lines.  Interdisciplinary and co-authored studies are thus particularly welcome.  Questions guiding the issue’s theme include but are not limited to these:

*          Where do we find evidence of the Global South within the Global North, particularly within countries resolutely classified as First World?  Might we find the Global North similarly pocketed into the Global South?

*          What might be gained by revamping traditional nation-based classifications of how power is allotted?  What are the pragmatic advantages and pitfalls to reading place in a new more granular way?

*          What case studies most clearly illustrate the complications in traditional Global South/Global North hierarchies?

*          What might be revealed by situating seemingly disparate locations along a spectrum that accounts for the distribution of power as fundamentally connected to the characteristics of space?

*          How is interdisciplinary study particularly well-suited to grapple with the exigencies of place-based study?  What disciplines converge most productively via the study of both real and imagined places? 

Guest co-editors:

Kirsten Dellinger, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Mississippi

Jeff Jackson, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Mississippi

Katie McKee, Associate Professor of Southern Studies and English, University of Mississippi

Annette Trefzer, Associate Professor of English

Please submit 500 word proposals by January 15, 2014 and completed papers by May 15, 2014 to Annette Trefzer  (atrefzer@olemiss.edu) and Jeffrey Jackson (jacksonj@olemiss.edu).  For inquiries, please contact Annette Trefzer.