Southern Humanities Review :: NewPages Guide to Literary Magazines

        

Southern Humanities Review

About Southern Humanities Review: Fiction, poetry, personal and critical essays, and book reviews on the arts, literature, philosophy, religion, cultural studies, and history by new and established writers. Also publishes translations.

Publisher’s Description: The Southern Humanities Review was founded in 1967 as the official organ of the Southern Humanities Council, with which it remains affiliated. National and international in scope, SHR publishes fiction, poetry, personal and critical essays, and book reviews on the arts, literature, philosophy, religion, cultural studies, and history. Translations in all genres have also appeared in the journal. Our pages feature both established veterans and promising new writers. Our aim is to rediscover and revisit our cultural heritage and to participate in charting the future course of the humanities by bringing that heritage sharply into question. Contributors have included Elfriede Jelinek, Vincent Descombes, Christopher Norris, Sheryl St. Germain, Lee Zacharias, Kent Nelson, Donald Hall, R. T. Smith, Bin Ramke, Andrew Hudgins, Nanci Kincaid, Walt McDonald, and David Citino. Selections from SHR have been anthologized or have received honorable mention in New Stories from the South and Best American Essays, and have been reprinted in numerous critical editions.

The Southern Humanities Review is published quarterly in association with the Auburn University English Department. The Editors’ Comment of each Winter issue announces the recipients of the Theodore Christian Hoepfner Awards for the best essay, story, and poem published in the previous year.

Recent issues:

Art in life is a recurring motif in the Winter 2013 issue—its presence, its absence, and its many forms. Bert Cardullo reflects on The Glass Menagerie’s Laura Wingfield, who imagines an artistic life for herself. Kat Meads muses on her unfinished novel about Bessie Wallis Warfield, in the process providing a vivid portrait of her subject. For Stephanie Coyne DeGhett’s protagonist, storytelling, the visual arts, and memory are profoundly interrelated, while Greg Johnson presents an unstable mother whose artistic aspirations are merely superficial. Poems in this issue, by Elizabeth Bradfield, Matthew Gavin Frank, Rhonda Lott, Hilary Sideris, R. T. Smith, Paul Martin, Ann Struthers, Mitchell Untch, Susanne Kort, and Susan Cohen, consider how art can be found in nature and in human activities such as cooking, sewing, and dance. Excerpts at our website.

Many selections in the Fall 2012 issue speak to myth and mythmaking. Judith Dancoff offers an imagined portrait of the historical Annie Oakley, already a living myth when she performs with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show in Paris. Mariko Nagai explores the myths Japan holds true about itself, Patricia Foster argues that myths about writing can restrict the creative spirit, and Teddy Macker advises the academy to disbelieve the myth of technology. Melissa Dickson’s poems depict Ovid’s characters, and Craig Beaven’s suggest the myths we tell ourselves in order to feel better. Other contributors: Bill Snyder, Greg Moglia, Warren Slesinger, Chad Parmenter, Catharine Savage Brosman. Excerpts at our website.

An election year prompts us to look forward, and this issue of SHR (Summer 2012) features characters who, disenchanted with their lives, seek a new identity; poetry that turns on hopeful phrases; and nonfiction that asks, “How does one face the future?” and “How has technology changed the way we think?” Authors include Julian Hoffman, Martin Noval, Christopher Norris, Jennifer Cranfill, Toni Graham, Dana Koster, David Salner, Jacob Newberry, Ace Boggess, and Lisa Huffaker. See excerpts at our website.