The head vs. the gut: Emotions, positionality, and the challenges of fieldwork with a Southern nationalist movement

This essay explores the inner process of researching a group that is proudly white, conservative, fundamentalist Christian, and Southern. The recent attention to emotions in scholarship has not extended to the subject of fieldwork with right-wing movements. I discuss my experience interviewing members of the League of the South and explore the extent to which my positionality shaped the interactions that I had with League members and informed my emotional response to the fieldwork.