The North Carolina State University Libraries and the North Carolina Research Campus (NCRC) will host a lecture series this spring to examine the economic, social, and cultural forces that have shaped–and are shaping–the South. Entitled the New New South, the series will place the region’s current transformation into an information economy into the context of the earlier shift from agriculture to manufacturing in North Carolina.

The NCSU Libraries and the NCRC are in unique positions to further the public dialogue about this transformation. In 2005, the University of North Carolina system and David H. Murdock, owner of Castle & Cooke, Inc. and Dole Food Company, announced a partnership to build the 350-acre mixed-use NCRC in Kannapolis, a small town in North Carolina that has been ravaged by the offshoring of the textile industry. As a world-class research hub where collaborative science is leading the charge for great discoveries in nutrition, health and biotechnology research, NCRC is transforming the former site of the Cannon Mills plant and the downtown of Kannapolis into an engine of economic growth for the region.

In 2009 the NCSU Libraries launched the NCRC Archives to capture this historic metamorphosis in real time by making available a wide range of primary sources on the development, construction and operation of the NCRC.

The New New South series will give participants an opportunity to hear from leading scholars in North Carolina on both the move into the information economy and the previous economic shifts that have shaped the area. Speakers will provide attendees with a nuanced understanding of social, demographic, labor, industrial, and public/private collaborative history of this region, past, present, and future.

Presenters will include southern historians, scholars of the economics of the South, individuals involved with North Carolina Research Campus, researchers, entrepreneurs, labor historians and regional educators and movers and shakers. The series is open without charge to the general public, but will be of special interest to historians, scientists, economists, social scientists, archivists, students, and university faculty.

Scheduled talks

Partnering Transformation: Challenges of a Public/Private Partnership
Dr. Steven Leath, vice president for research for the UNC system and CEO of the David H. Murdock Research Institute
NCRC, Kannapolis, February 23, 6:00 p.m.

North Carolina Workers and the Industrial South
Dr. David Zonderman, professor and associate department head in history at NC State University
D. H. Hill Library, NC State University, March 4, 4 p.m.

Rising to the Research Challenge of the Twenty-first Century: The New Workforce
Panel consisting of Dr.Tom Miller; vice provost for distance education and learning technology, NC State; Donnie Goins, COO and president of Tavve Software Company; and Dr. Larry Monteith, former chancellor at NC State
D. H. Hill Library, NC State University, March 25, 4 p.m.
and NCRC, Kannapolis, April 8, 6 p.m.

Communities in Transition
Dr. Michael Walden, a William Neal Reynolds Distinguished Professor and extension economist in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics at North Carolina State. He will be referencing his book North Carolina in the Connected Age: Challenges and Opportunities in a Globalizing Economy
D.H. Hill Library, NC State University, April 15, 4 p.m.