In spring 2014, the society for the study of southern literature (sssl) executive council asked us to assemble a roundtable of manifestos by emerging scholars on the future of southern literary studies for Other Souths, a conference to take place in Arlington, Virginia. As a companion to a plenary panel of manifestos by senior scholars, this roundtable, titled Future Souths, was sure to draw an engaged crowd. We anticipated that the speakers would not only delineate their research but also set the stage for new trajectories in the field. Before organizing the event, we discussed our ideas about where southern literary studies was headed in the short term and where we thought it ought to go next.