The Southern Studies Forum of the EAAS had been active since 1988, the year of its launching in West Berlin, Germany.

Starting in 1988 the Southern Studies Forum has organized, on a regular schedule of biennial Symposia and biennial Workshops, twelve independent Symposia and twelve Workshops within the EAAS Programs. The organizers have published seven books of essays.

The SSF purposes are : to tighten the exchanges of ideas and experiences  among scholars interested in the United States South , to be interdisciplinary and multinational. Cooperation with scholars  from  the United States and from all over the world  has allowed during the years to create a community of scholars, who have developed researches, discussed their achievements and created a network of friendship.

The European co- founders were, (in alphabetical order): Valeria Gennaro Lerda (Italy), Jan Gretlund (Denmark), Lothar Hönnighausen (Germany) and Tjebbe Westendorp (The Netherlands);  Tom Inge, (United States) contributed with his encouragement , his scholarship and his friendship, in every phase of the  life of the Forum.

Workshops at the EAAS biennial conferences and off-year Symposia (indented)

The list of the events organized by the members of the SSF shows both the participation in the EAAS biennial Conferences as a workshop on the South, and the independent Symposia in the off-years of the EAAS (indented).

1988- West Berlin. (Germany).EAAS Conference: Looking Inward, Looking Forward:The United States from the 1930s through the 1940s. SSF Workshop: "The Social and Cultural Scene in the American South in the 1930s and in the 1940s." Chair Valeria Gennaro Lerda.

• 1990- The United States South: Regionalism and Identity. University of Genoa, Italy. Organizer: Valeria Gennaro Lerda

1990- London.(Great Britain). EAAS Conference SSF Workshop: "From Victorian Thought to Modern Thought in the South." Chair Jon N.Gretlund. 

• 1991- Re-Writing the South. History and Fiction. University of Bonn , Germany. Organizer Lothar Hoennighausen.

1992-Seville (Spain). EAAS Conference: The American Columbiad. Discovering America, Inventing United States. SSF Workshop: "Inventing the South. A Mentality in the Making." Chair Francois Pitavy

• 1993- Southern Landscapes. University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC (United States). Organizer Walter Edgar

1994- Luxemburg. EAAS Conference: The Insular Dream.Obsession and Resistance. SSF Workshop: "Regional Obsessions: Criticism and Self- Criticism in the American South." Chairs Ineke Bockting and Waldemar Zacharasiewicz. 

• 1995- The Configuration of Race in the South. University of Cambridge (GB). Organizer Tony Badger.

1996 -Warsaw (Poland). EAAS Conference: American Culture and its Impact (1946-1996). SSF Workshop: "The Americanization of the South: Change and Continuity in Southern Cultures and Society since 1945." Chairs Stuart Kidd and Lothar Hönnighausen. 

• 1997- The Contemporary South and its Background. University of Odense, Aero Island , Denmark. Organizers Jan Gretlund and Clara Junker.

1998- Lisbon (Portugal). EAAS Conference: Ceremonies and Spectacles: America and the Staging of Collective Identities. SSF Workshop: "The Staging of Southern Identity." Chairs Tony Badger and Jon N.Gretlund. 

• 1999- The Many Souths: Class in Southern Culture. University of Vienna, Vienna (Austria). Organizer Waldemar Zacharasiewicz.

2000- Graz (Austria). EAAS Conference: Nature’s Nation Reconsidered: American Concepts of Nature from Wonder to Ecological Crisis. SSF Workshop: "The Land in Southern History and Cultures: Myths, Metaphors and Reality." Chairs Valeria Gennaro Lerda and Danièle Pitavy.

• 2002- The South as Another Place. University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, United States. Organizer Walter Edgar.

2002- Bordeaux (France) EAAS Conference : The United States of/in Europe : Nationhood, Citizenship, Culture. SSF Workshop : "Southern Cultures : The American South and /in Europe." Chair Waldemar Zacharasiewicz 

• 2003. Southern Ethnicities. Aristotle University. Thessaloniki (Greece). Organizer Youli Theodosiadou.

2004-Prague (Czech Republic). EAAS Conference: America in he Course of Human Events: Presentations and Interpretations. SSF Workshop: "The Forging of Southern Exceptionalism." Chairs Jacques Pothier and Stuart Kidd.

• 2005- Progress and Poverty in the South. The Roosevelt Study Center, Middelburg, The Netherlands. Organizers Cornelis Van Minnen and Anneke Leehouts.

2006-Nicosia (Cyprus) EAAS Conference.: Conformism, Non-conformism and anti-conformism in the culture of the United States. SSF Workshop: "Acquiescence, Dissent, and the South." Chairs Valeria Gennaro Lerda, Jon N.Gretlund.

• 2007 The (Un)popular South. Olomouc (Czech Republic). Organizer Marcel Arbeit (Sept. 6-9).

2006-Oslo (Norway) EAAS Conference: “E Pluribus Unum” or “E Pluribus Plura?” SSF Workshop: "South or Souths? The American South and the shaping of its singular or plural identity/ies". Organizers: Susanna Delfino-Jacques Pothier

• 2009  The Sense(s) of the South. Paris/Versailles. Organizers Jacques Pothier and Géraldine Chouard.

2010 Dublin. EAAS Conference. Forever Young? The Changing Images of America. SSF Workshop: “The past is Dead- Long live the Past!- Changing Images of the South." Organizers: Susan Castillo- John Andreas Fuchs

• 2011 Southern Destinations/The South in Motion. Santiago de Compostela. Organizer Constante Gonzales.(Sept.14-18)

2012 EAAS Conference The Health of the Nation, Turkey, March 30-April 2. SSF Workshop : “The Scourges of the South” Organizers Beata Zawadka and Thomas Aervold Bierre.

Books published

Valeria Gennaro Lerda and Tjebbe Westendorp, eds., The United States South. Regionalism and Identity, Roma,Bulzoni, 1991. (Collection from the Symposium of Genoa-Italy,  January 1990)

Lothar Hönnighausen and Valeria Gennaro Lerda, eds., Re-Writing the South. History and Fiction, Tubingen and Basel, Francke Verlag, 1993.(Collection from the Symposium of Bonn, Germany, 1991)

Tony Badger and Walter Edgar, Ian N. Gretlund, eds., Southern Landscapes, Tubingen , Stauffenburg Verlag, 1996. (Collection from  the Symposia of Columbia, SC-1993, and Cambridge, UK-1995)

Jan N. Gretlund, ed., The Southern State of Mind, Columbia , SC,1999. (Collection from the Symposium held at Aeroskoebing, Denmark, 1997).

Waldemar Zacharasiewicz, ed., The Many Souths. Class in Southern Culture, Tubingen, Stauffenburg Verlag, 2003. (Collection from the Symposium of Vienna, 1999) .

Suzanne W. Jones-Mark Newman, eds., Poverty and Progress in the US South,VU University Press, Amsterdam, 2006. (Collection from the Symposium in Middelburg, 2005)

Youli Theodosiadou. Ed., Southern Ethnicities, Thessaloniki, 2008.

Géraldine Chouard, Jacques Pothier. "Senses of the South" Transatlantica 1/2011 (Collection from the symposium at Versailles and Paris, 2009)

Newsletter

Information of the members of the Southern Studies Forum is disseminated through a newsletter. If you are interested in being included on the mailing list, write to the current editors, Mark Newman m.newman@ed.ac.uk and Thomas Ærvold Bjerre th.bjerre@litcul.sdu.dk .

(Mark Newman is a reader in History at the School of History, Classics and Archaeology, University of Edinburgh; Thomas Ærvold Bjerre teaches at the Center for American Studies at the University of South Denmark).

Many thanks to Valeria Gennaro Lerda for compiling the history of the SSF, and to Constante Gonzalez for his update.