Time Travelling in Dixie: Race, Music, and the Weight of the Past in the British “Televisual” South

Abstract

This article examines a series of British travel documentaries on the American South made since 2008 which are representative of the way in which southern distinctiveness is maintained through television within a transatlantic context. The travelogues focus on historic racial struggles, southern food, and music, and frame the South as a distinctly historical space, where either historical moments obscure the contemporary South, or cultural continuity and resistance to change and modernity are celebrated. The article also discusses the similarities between the travelogues and the southern tourist industry, and how transatlantic “televisual tourism” works against the wider scholarly challenge to southern exceptionalism.