The Autobiographical Demand of Place

The Author: Brian Casemore is Assistant Professor of Secondary Education in the Graduate School of Education and Human Development at George Washington University. He received his Ph.D. in curriculum theory from Louisiana State University. His research focuses on Southern place, social psychoanalysis, and anti-racist education.

«This book stands as an exquisite, at times searing analysis of the personal, social, and historical memories attached to the 'many Souths' in the United States. Brian Casemore offers his readers a broad historical and disciplinary range, a density of interpretive materials, and a nuanced and sophisticated analysis of the ways in which literary and imaginary landscapes can become a force of cultural power and a means through which to erase our nation's violent history from consciousness. With this most refined book, Casemore strikes many new and generative chords for future scholarship in curriculum theory.» (Paula M. Salvio, Associate Professor, University of New Hampshire)
«I am also a white male who came of age in Louisiana, and I found myself nodding in agreement, smiling in affirmation, and weeping with solemn delight as I savored each page and every narrative in this compelling text. In the tradition of Eudora Welty and William Faulkner - and with inspiration from contemporary Southern writers Yusef Komunyakaa and Ellen Douglas - Brian Casemore presents themes that inspire across time and place while also deconstructing the nostalgia of cohesion in the psychology of the American South. Casemore presents a complicated chthonian vision. His curriculum inquiry is precisely the scholarship that introduces the curriculum field to the voices of the post-reconceptualization generation. Casemore has established himself as one of the leading Lacan scholars in the curriculum field, and with this book he takes readers on a penetrating journey into the complex matrix of the Real in the American South. This dimension of place and subjectivity, Casemore shows, is bound by 'landscapes that coincide with Lacan's Imaginary'.» (Patrick Slattery, Professor and Regents Scholar, Texas A&M University)