This weekend, I had a great time attending the Southern Historical Association‘s annual meeting in Atlanta. The past few days have been filled with panel sessions, walking tours, and book events. Overall it has been great to connect with scholars of Southern history and learn about groundbreaking research. This was my first time attending a SHA conference, and I hope to attend again in the future!
On Friday, I presented a poster using some recent research on World’s Fairs. Starting at the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893, organizers of these fairs gave states an opportunity to build their own buildings, leading to an interesting dilemma: how do you distill an entire state into one building? My poster looks at how the question was answered by the South, and shows between 1893 and 1916 a shift from buildings emphasizing industry and the New South to buildings focused on attracting tourists and residents.
The full poster can be found below, and in the future I hope to expand this research into a larger project.
