Jason Black, chair of the Department of Communication Studies, and co-author Ray Harrison, assistant professor at Tennessee State University, are recipients of a national communications award.
They received the National Communication Association Critical & Cultural Studies Division Outstanding Article of the Year Award. The full citation for the article is: Jason Edward Black and Ray Harrison, “Southern Paternal Generationalism and the Rhetoric of the Drive-By Truckers,” Western Journal of Communication 79:3 (2016): 283-306.
“This essay examines Southern paternal generational themes in the lyrics of the alt-country band the Drive-By Truckers (DBT) to get a better sense for how the songs’ agents work to construct a progressive White Southern character that at once embraces the stories and advice of the past, but often does so in ways that move the stories outside of Southern stereotypes,” according to the article’s abstract.
“Ultimately, the analysis reveals that select DBT songs inscribe a paternal generationalism that plays out as a larger story of the “Progressive South” and unfolds through three thematic components,” the abstract indicates. “First, the lyrics reflect a sense of the American Dream as both a goal and sham; despite one’s industriousness, dejection is the likely result. Second, the songs demonstrate a balance on the part of the protagonists between recalling and treasuring one’s past and “casuistically stretching” the past in order to make it fit a new progressive rebel. Finally, the lyrics demonstrate a reliance on hegemonically masculine characteristics that complicate paternal generationalism.”
The National Communication Association advances communication as the discipline that studies all forms, modes, media, and consequences of communication through humanistic, social scientific, and aesthetic inquiry. The Critical and Cultural Studies Division is one of the NCA’s divisions, made up of colleagues who share an interest in an area of substantive inquiry.
