Southern Anthropologist
Special Issue Call for Papers
Medical Pluralism in the New South
About this Issue
The American South has long been a site where multiple systems of healing, knowledge, and care coexist — biomedicine alongside herbalism, faith healing, midwifery, curanderismo, hoodoo, and countless other forms of healing practiced by locals, immigrants and refugee communities. Southern Anthropologist invites submissions for a special issue examining medical pluralism in the New South: how diverse healing traditions are practiced, negotiated, and transformed across the region's changing landscape. We welcome empirical, theoretical, and methodological work that takes seriously the coexistence — and sometimes collision — of medical systems in Southern contexts.
Themes and Scope
We welcome papers addressing topics including, but not limited to
- Coexistence and tension between biomedical and traditional/folk healing systems
- Migration and the transplantation of healing traditions across communities
- Religion, faith healing, and spiritual dimensions of Southern care
- Race, class, and access to pluralistic health resources
- Health disparities and alternative care-seeking behavior
- Midwifery, doula care, and reproductive health pluralism
- State regulation and the politics of "legitimate" medicine
We encourage submissions from all subfields of anthropology, as well as from sociology, linguistics, geography, and other relevant social science disciplines.
Submission Guidelines
Manuscripts should be submitted to https://egrove.olemiss.edu/southern_anthropologist/
Accepted manuscripts will be published on a rolling basis. Submissions received by October 1, 2026 will receive full consideration for inclusion in the special issue.
Please direct questions about the special issue guest editors, Andria Timmer (andria.timmer@cnu.edu) or Drew Baird (andrew.baird@cnu.edu).
About the Journal
Southern Anthropologist (ISSN: 1554-4133) is the peer-reviewed journal of the Southern Anthropological Society (SAS), a four-field organization of anthropologists founded in 1966. The journal seeks to broaden knowledge of all subdisciplines in anthropology, including in their applied and engaged forms. The editors take a wide view of anthropology in and of the South. The journal highlights the scholarship and practice of anthropologists working on dynamics within the South, as well as those who are based in the South and conduct research elsewhere.
Southern Anthropologist is published electronically through eGrove at the University of Mississippi. It is wholly open access, with no charge to authors or readers. The peer-review process is double anonymized. The journal follows Chicago Manual of Style, 18th edition.
Southern Anthropologist editors invite research articles and reports, as well as proposals for creatively formatted submissions.
- Research article (5,000 – 8,000 words)
- Report on research, practice, or teaching anthropology (3,000 – 4,000 words)
- Creative formats: please contact the editor to discuss creative possibilities for publication including, for example:
- photo essays
- interviews, profiles, auto-ethnography
- reflection on applied work, community engagement, collaboration
- reviews or commentary on books, films, exhibits, events
For questions about Southern Anthropologist, please email southernanthropologistjournal@gmail.com
Current Issue: Volume 39, Number 1 (2025) “Getting Through”: Anthropologies of Crisis, Resistance, and Resilience
Introduction
From the COVID pandemic to the opioid epidemic, from Hurricane Katrina to Hurricane Helene, from wildfires to droughts to oil spills, mass shootings, secularization, misinformation and polarization, crises have proliferated during the last quarter century. How have communities “gotten through,” and how are they doing so now? In these times of pervasive uncertainty and structural violence, how are people evaluating claims to truth and negotiating relationships between perceived interests of the individual and of the polity? How have they mobilized such strategies as resistance, resilience, care work, and networking to sustain themselves while in the throes of intertwined economic, political, social, educational, environmental, cultural, and public-health crises? This special issue of Southern Anthropologist welcomes submissions on themes of upheaval, disaster, emergency, determination, compassion, and hope – of “getting through.”Front Matter
Research Articles
Community Engagement and Experiential Learning to Understand Food Insecurity in Georgia’s Urban Environments
Gregory Gullette, Jenna Andrews-Swann, Nicole Villamil, and Christin Cain
Black Swans and Safety Nets: Food Aid, Dispersal, and Eugenics in Corbin Hollow
Glenn Davis Stone and Richard K. Robinson
