The Author: Reta Ugena Whitlock is Assistant Professor of Adolescent Education at Kennesaw State University near Atlanta, Georgia. She received her Ph.D. in curriculum and instruction from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. She has published several articles in professional journals and made presentations at professional conferences on curriculum studies of place. She is also co-editor of the journal Current Issues in Middle Level Education.

«As one both deeply familiar with and perpetually puzzled by the United States ‘South,’ I found Reta Ugena Whitlock’s careful rendering of the contradictions of nostalgia, mystery, home, and grace insightful in its evocation of the lived and yet-to-be-lived meanings of place. She offers those of us who navigate this landscape of lushness and sensuality, of silences and normalization, ways to think about how we can contribute to rescripting the meanings of this particularly queer social geography.» (Susan Talburt, Director, Women’s Studies Institute and Associate Professor, Department of Educational Policy Studies, Georgia State University)«This remarkable book combines passion and honesty to remind us why the South still matters so much in American life. Writing in a voice entirely her own, Reta Ugena Whitlock shows us a South that is both profoundly new and profoundly old.» (Edward L. Ayers, Dean, College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and Hugh P. Kelly Professor of History, University of Virginia)