'I take SPACE to be the central fact to man born in America, from Folsom Cave to now. I spell it large because it comes large here. Large, and without mercy.' -Charles Olson "Where you from?" and "Where y'at?" are two turns of phrase that are ritually important in day to day exchanges and encounters in one southern locality. Variations on those two questions are part of the day-to-day in many places. The two questions offer the opportunity to consider place - place as location, as locale, as situation, as indication of lineage, and as social position. What are the imaginative and theoretical responses to "where you from" and "where y'at" that can be tracked through close readings of poetry, prose, and film by contemporary artists? In this transnational moment of the multilingual and multi-sited subject, it's useful to look at how artists represent and trouble the multiple possibilities that a place may contain. To this end, we will investigate the kinds of places that are imagined and represented, and analyze the "language" used in these representations, and analyze how, through these representations, artists may theorize power, the public and private, relations between myriad locations, communities, and subjectivities. How are traditional senses of place challenged by the difficulty of narrating and aestheticizing identity and experience? How does identity operate through these representations of place? What role does art play in the processes of articulating where?

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