What Is the Most Influential Southern Novel?

Airs Wednesday, May 13 at 8 p.m.

SCETV invite Southern literature fans to participate in the Take on the South online poll (see below) by voting for the novel you feel is the most influential, and letting us know why.  Don't see your favorite on the top 20 list?  Let us know that, too.

Host Dr. Walter Edgar will be joined by two of the premiere scholars of Southern literature as they debate and discuss the influences of novels by authors ranging from Flannery O'Connor to James Dickey to Harper Lee  to Zora Neale Hurston, and many more.  Guests include:

·         Dr. Trudier Harris, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she teaches courses in African American literature and folklore

·         Dr. Noel Polk, Professor Emeritus, Mississippi State University, a specialist on the American novel who has edited the novels of William Faulkner for the Library of America and Random House, and a "restored" text of Robert Penn Warren's "All the King's Men" for Harcourt Brace

ETV is asking for fans of Southern literature to add their voices to the mix as well.  Take on the South online poll by voting for the novel you feel is the most influential, and letting us know why.  Don't see your favorite on the top 20 list?  Let us know that, too. 

How were the top 20 novels selected?

Profs. Polk, Harris and six faculty members from USC's Institute for Southern Studies were asked to submit fifteen Southern novels they considered to be the most influential. These are the 20 novels mentioned the most times.

Funding for the program was provided by the University of South Carolina's Institute for Southern Studies with a grant from the Watson-Brown Foundation.