The US South and the 2008 Election
Overview Essay At least since the 1960s, every presidential election has elicited abundant commentary on the role of the South in national politics. The 2008 election has been no different. It is often difficult, however, distinguishing between what is truly notable historically and that which is mere post-election chatter. Map of the Sunbelt (marked in […]
John Cohen in Eastern Kentucky: Documentary Expression and the Image of Roscoe Halcomb During the Folk Revival
Overview Preface On a muggy Sunday afternoon in June of 1959, John Cohen wandered the winding mountain roads of eastern Kentucky searching for old-time musicians. Neon, Bulan, Vicco, Viper, Daisy, Defiance — tiny coal and timber towns with sonorous names popped up around each bend before giving way to the Cumberland Mountains. Cohen had come […]
Mapping Souths
Overview Essay Stories that use the South by purporting to map it are no new thing, as two nineteenth-century passages responding to the question of southern secession will illustrate: It is true that science has achieved, over space and time, triumphs almost miraculous, but it has not annihilated them. . . . It is almost […]
Dirty Decade: Rap Music and the US South, 1997–2007
Overview Introduction Introduced in a 1995 song by the Atlanta-based group Goodie Mob, the idea of the “Dirty South” spread quickly throughout the rap music subculture and industry, and by the early years of the twenty-first century moved into more general usage in a variety of contexts not directly related to rap. The concept of […]
Wherein the South Differs from the North: Naming Persons, Naming Places, and the Need for Visionary Geographies
Overview Essay No Southerner by origin, Gertrude Stein was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania. “As I am an ardent Californian,” she has Alice B. Toklas say in The Autobiography, “and as she [i.e., Stein] spent her youth there I have often begged her to be born in California but she has always remained firmly born in […]
“This is Not Dixie:” The Imagined South, the Kansas Free State Narrative, and the Rhetoric of Racist Violence
Overview Introduction Emporia, Kansas, 1909Library of Congress American Memory Archive The South “is as much a fiction, a story we tell and are told, as it is a fixed geographic space,” argues Tara McPherson. “If one is to understand the many versions of the South that circulate throughout US history and culture, one has always […]
On Native Ground: Indigenous Presences and Countercolonial Strategies in Southern Narratives of Captivity, Removal, and Repossession
Overview Introduction Map of Major Indian Tribes in the “South,”circa 1750 I borrow only my title from Alfred Kazin’s 1942 study On Native Grounds, an influential reading of modern American prose in which Kazin never, by “Native,” means American Indian writing from any region of the Americas. My new book project, On Native Southern Ground, […]
The Countryside Transformed: The Eastern Shore of Virginia, the Pennsylvania Railroad, and the Creation of a Modern Landscape
Introduction Map of Eastern Virginia, circa 1862 When in 1884 the New York, Philadelphia, and Norfolk Railroad, a subsidiary of the powerful Pennsylvania system, extended its line south through the Eastern Shore of Virginia, it had been anticipated for over forty years. The coming of the Pennsylvania system’s railroad to the Eastern Shore was catalytic. […]
Latinos, the American South, and the Future of US Race Relations
Overview Latinos, the American South, and the Future of US Race Relations: Part 2: Sanchez explores the impact of Mexican immigration on construction work in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina Part 3: Sanchez explores how the US South became the primary point of destination for Latin American immigrants in the 1990s Part 4: Sanchez explores how a century-old […]
A Mind To Stay Here: Closing Conference Comments on Southern Exceptionalism
Overview A Mind to Stay Here Part 2: Egerton compares his observations in The Americanization of Dixie with social conditions today Part 3: Egerton traces recent politics in the New South, noting how Karl Rove built directly upon Nixon’s Southern Strategy Part 4: Egerton reflects upon the contradictions of the South, highlighting the importance of racial integration and […]