SouthS

counternarratives
towards counterlandscapes
10.18 – 10.19, 2025

organized by
scottie mcdaniel


The American South is not a singular story but a complex, layered terrain shaped by history, ecology, and culture. Too often reduced to myths of decadence or decline, the South is, in reality, a dynamic landscape of resistance, reinvention, and intersecting identities.

Souths is a transdisciplinary symposium that challenges reductive narratives and amplifies untold stories across urban, suburban, and rural contexts. Through dialogue spanning geography, politics, foodways, storytelling, and infrastructure, this gathering seeks to uncover counterlandscapes revealing hidden truths and imagining transformative futures for the region and beyond.

Follow us: @southscounterlandscapes





moderators




C.L. Bohannon, Ph.D., FASLA, is an  Associate Professor in the Landscape Architecture Department and Senior Associate Dean of Faculty Affairs and Community Engagement at the University of Virginia. Dr. Bohannon is a nationally recognized scholar and educator specializing in community-engaged design, social and environmental justice, and African American landscapes, particularly in the American South.

Before joining UVA in 2022, Dr. Bohannon was an Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture and Interim Director at Virginia Tech’s School of Architecture + Design. He also directed the Community Engagement Lab and served as a faculty principal at the Leadership and Social Change Residential College.

Dr. Bohannon's research and teaching focus on addressing social and environmental inequities in marginalized communities through community mapping, storytelling, and interdisciplinary study. Dr. Bohannon serves on the Board for the Landscape Architecture Foundation and was recently elected President for the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture.


Leah Kahler is a landscape designer and researcher whose work probes the socioecological legacies of the plantation landscape, focused on urban-rural connections through sites of labor, extraction, and production. Their work attends to the often-invisible dynamics of power, resource, and politics that shape the material processes of the built environment and produce meaning across space. Leah’s current project, conducted with support from the Ian L. McHarg Center for Urbanism and Ecology, investigates the socio-ecological geographies of the global plant nursery trade through ethnographic fieldwork and archival methods.

Leah earned a Masters of Landscape Architecture from the University of Virginia, where their research as a Benjamin C. Howland Fellow explored the possibilities of an abolition ecology through speculative fictions at the site currently known as the Louisiana State Penitentiary. While at UVA, Leah co-edited the 15th volume of LUNCH design journal, themed THICK. They were a 2021 Landscape Architecture Foundation Olmsted Scholar finalist, and she received the LAF Honor Scholarship in Memory of Joe Lalli, FASLA.

Kahler practiced with Reed Hilderbrand's Cambridge studio, where they played a key role in the design and construction of a 24-acre public park on the Tennessee River in Knoxville. Kahler has taught at the Boston Architectural College and more recently at University of Pennsylvania as the 2024-2025 McHarg Fellow where they received the G. Holmes Perkins Distinguished Teaching Award. They hold a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology and the Growth and Structure of Cities from Bryn Mawr College.


Scottie McDaniel, MLA + M.Arch, is an Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture in the College of Architecture and Design and affiliated faculty with the Appalachian Justice Research Center at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She is a designer, educator, and environmental researcher whose work focuses on rural land practices, visual storytelling, and participatory design in the American South.

Before joining UTK in 2018, McDaniel taught architecture at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa and served as a Research Associate at the University of Stuttgart’s Institute of Land Planning and Ecology. She has contributed to design and research projects with Reed Hilderbrand, Landworks Studio, Höweler + Yoon, and Matthias Bauer Associates.McDaniel’s scholarship examines how resistance, resilience, and contested histories shape rural landscapes, particularly in Southern Appalachia. Her work investigates the ecological and political dimensions of land—specifically where tenure, stewardship, and identity intersect. In collaboration with social scientists, artists, legal scholars, and landowners, she develops alternative design methods to visualize and interpret complex issues of land justice and care-based stewardship. She positions design as a critical tool for advocacy, cultural memory, and community resilience—capable of navigating entangled histories and imagining more just, reciprocal futures.









schedule



10.18 SATURDAY
9:00 AM - 10:00 AM
Registration + Coffee
10:00 AM
Symposium Welcome + Introductions
10:30 AM - 12:00 PM
Panel 1: Southern Narratives of Resistance
12:00 PM - 1:30 PM
Symposium Lunch (provided on-site)
1:30 PM - 3:00 PM
Panel 2: Care + Adaptation Across the Southern Landscape
3:00 PM - 3:30 PM
Coffee + Coversation
3:30 PM - 5:00 PM
Panel 3: Reimagining a Better South
5:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Closing Circle followed by Happy Hour
6:30 PM - 8:00 PM
Symposium Dinner (provided on-site)
8:30 PM
After Party

10.19 SUNDAY — Excursions
10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
01: Walking Tour of Knoxville with Knoxville History Project
12:00 PM - 3:30 PM
02: Tour of Norris Dam
10:00 AM - 5:00 PM
03: Thunderhead Mountain Hike
9:00 AM - 12:00 PM
04: Conservation Fisheries Tour Hosted By Tennessee RiverLine

10.18 SATURDAY 9:00 AM - 10:00 AM Registration + Coffee 10:00 AM Symposium Welcome + Introductions 10:30 AM - 12:00 PM Panel 1: Ecologies of Resistance in the South 12:00 PM - 1:30 PM Symposium Lunch (provided on-site) 1:30 PM - 3:00 PM Panel 2: Care + Adaptation Across the Southern Landscape 3:00 PM - 3:30 PM Coffee + Coversation 3:30 PM - 5:00 PM Panel 3: Reimagining a Better South 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM Closing Remarks followed 
by Happy Hour 6:30 PM - 8:00 PM Symposium Dinner (provided on-site) 8:30 PM After Party 10.19 SUNDAY — Excursions 10:00 AM - 12:00 PM 01: Walking Tour of Knoxville 12:00 PM - 3:30 PM 02: Tour of Norris Dam 10:00 AM - 5:00 PM 03: Thunderhead Mountain Hike 9:00 AM - 12:00 PM 04: Conservation Fisheries Tour 
Hosted By Tennessee RiverLine