Co-sponsored by SMU's Clements Center for Southwest Studies and the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West, "Sunbelt Rising: The Politics of Space, Place, and Region in the American South and Southwest" is an all day symposium dedicated to academic discussion on the issues of the Sunbelt. The sunbelt, a region born of recent history, has been steadily drawing Americans from older cities to burgeoning metropolitan centers across the southwest since World War II. Warmer temperatures and air conditioning only begin to tell the story. This conference will explore the political, economic, and social transformations that have been making the Sunbelt into a unified region rivaling traditional centers of power in the East.