Southern Cultures

Classroom Favorites

250,000 READERS HAVE VOTED.
Over the last few years, students, scholars, and other readers from all over the globe have accessed our content hundreds of thousands of times: in print, online, and in eBook formats for Kindle, Nook, and Sony Library Reader. (The free apps are here.) 

We've published numerous special theme issues during the past decade, such as our Photography Issue (left), which was our most popular in print in 2011.  Our Food Issue (right) has been the most popular online of all theme and regular issues during 2010 and 2011.  (The Second Food Issue will appear this summer.)

Our last decade of material includes hundreds of essays, articles, interviews, and other features.  The following list is our TOP 70 MOST-READ ONLINE ESSAYS & FEATURES. Each link below will take you--at no charge--to the full text of the essay or feature in the Project Muse digital library.

 
1.  Jim Crow's Drug War:
Race, Coca Cola, and the Southern Origins of Drug Prohibition
     by Michael Cohen
 "'You could buy all the dope you wanted in the drug store. Just ask for it, and you got it.'"

2.  "Oh, so many startlements...": 
History, Race, and Myth in O Brother, Where Art Thou? 
     by Hugh Ruppersburg
“It’s a southern tall tale, the story of a confidence man, of a treasure hunt, of a man trying to prove himself to his children and estranged wife, of a political campaign, of three buddies on the road, of the quest for home.”

3.  O Brother, What Next?: Making Sense of the Folk Fad 
     by Benjamin Filene
“Think of the tale of Bob Dylan going electric at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival and an enraged Alan Lomax trying to pin Dylan’s manager to the ground while Pete Seeger hunted for an ax to cut the cables.”
 

4.  "The South Got Something to Say":
Atlanta's Dirty South and the Southernization of Hip-Hop America
     by Darren E. Grem
"We got the feel of the blues, the togetherness of funk music, the conviction of gospel music, the energy of rock, and the improvisation of jazz."

5.  Promoting the Gothic South
     by Rebecca C. McIntyre
“Taking a boat ride down a swampy southern river was a thrilling escape into the unknown, a peep show of the grotesque, a blending of the realistic and the fantastic, which thrilled in a strange and disturbing way.” 

6. Locals on Local Color:
Imagining Identity in Appalachia
     Algeo, Katie
“Movies, television, comic strips, and postcards feature the lanky, gun-toting, grizzle-bearded man with a jug of moonshine in one hand and a coon dog at his feet.”

7.  "An Oasis of Order": 
The Citadel, the 1960s, and the Vietnam Antiwar Movement 
     by Alex Macaulay
“Pat Conroy, a 1967 Citadel graduate, recounts the horrors of his freshman year in gruesome detail. In My Losing Season, Conroy describes the plebe system he endured as ‘mind-numbing, savage, unrelenting, and base.’”

8.  The Dead Mule Rides Again     
     by Jerry Leath Mills
“Uncle Jimbo ‘once won a twenty-dollar bet by eating a bologna sandwich while sitting on a dead mule.’”

9.  Black, White, and Huckleberry Finn:
Re-imagining the American Dream (review)
     by Christopher Windolph
“‘Persons attempting to find a motive will be prosecuted.’”

10. "The Dread Void of Uncertainty": Naming the Dead in the American Civil War
     by Drew Gilpin Faust
“The Civil War left some 620,000 American soldiers dead-- more than the total number killin all other American wars from the Revolution to Vietnam. But whose responsibility would it be to track the soldiers' deaths, inform their families, and record their names? On the battlefield of Antietam”

11.  Is It True What They Sing About Dixie?
     by Stephen J. Whitfield
“‘Won’t-cha come with me to Alabammy,
Back to the arms of my dear ol’ Mammy,
Her cookin’s lousy and her hands are clammy,
But what the hell, it’s home.’”

12.  Feeding the Jewish Soul in the Delta Diaspora
     by Marcie Cohen Ferris
“Throughout the nation food strongly defines ethnic and regional identity. But in the South, and especially in the Delta, a region scarred by war, slavery, and the aftermath of reconstruction and segregation, food is especially important.” 

13. "I'm Just a Louisiana Girl": 
The Southern World of Britney Spears
     by Gavin James Campbell
“The controversial stage outfits, she reassured us, ‘were the kind of clothes we used to wear in Kentwood. It can be scorching during the summer, so the barer the better!’”

14.  The Redemption of Atticus Finch
     a letter from Marcus Jimison
“Joseph Crespino’s interpretation of To Kill a Mockingbird must be politically motivated, because it certainly is not based on the text.” 

15.  Elvis Presley and the Politics of Popular Memory
     by Michael T. Bertand
"'A Lonely Life Ends on Elvis Presley Boulevard,' blared the headline of a late-summer special edition of the Memphis Press-Scimitar. 'The King is Dead.'"

16. The First Century of Blues:
One Hundred Years of Hearing and Interpreting the Music and the Musicians
     by R.A. Lawson
"In 1961 Bob Koester, a producer with Chicago-based Delmark Records, made an amazing discovery. Sleepy John Estes, a bluesman who had achieved fame on the race record labels during the interwar years, was found to be still alive and residing on the outskirts of the small western Tennessee town of Brownsville."

17. Alice Walker: "I know what the earth says."
     with William R. Ferris
“I love B. B. because he loves women. They can be mean, they can be bitchy, they can be carrying on, but you can tell he really loves them. He’s full of love. I would like to be the literary B.B. King.”

18. Tracking the Economic Divergence of the North and the South
     by Peter A. Coclanis
“Plantations dominated the southern economy by the 1770s, and those who controlled them had decisively shaped the region’s economic course, and, perhaps, destiny.”

19. "Lord, Have Mercy on My Soul": 
Sin, Salvation, and Southern Rock
     by Michael J. Butler
“The band delighted in sharing their bottle of Jack Daniels with a chimpanzee.”

20.  "Where Is the Love?": Racial Violence, Racial Healing, and Blues Communities
     by Adam Gussow
"Does love have the power to heal our blues?"

21.   The American South and the Self
     by Larry J. Griffin
"Just as the history of the South is contradictory and contested, so, too, is the identity of southerners."

22.  Martin Luther King and the Southern Dream of Freedom
     by Timothy B. Tyson
"When we come together to celebrate Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., it is important to realize that the King holiday is just shorthand for honoring all of those local people who stood up for justice in the civil rights-era South. The patient local labors of thousands and thousands of black southerners lifted him up among the rulers of the world."

23. Quoting, Merging, and Sampling the Dream: 
Martin Luther King and Vernon Johns
     by Ralph Luker
“‘I must be measured by my soul--the mind is the standard of the man.'’”

24.  Teaching Southern Lit in Black and White
     by Michael Kreyling
“I had to stop. It wasn’t funny, and the bravura failed to lift any literary hearts. In this reading in this place, these words, whatever I might think about their literary merits, described white men on horseback with dogs hunting a defenseless black man on foot.”

25.  Commemorating Wilmington's Racial Violence of 1898:
From Individual to Collective Memory
     by Melton A. McLaurin
“On November 10, 1898, an armed mob of whites destroyed the state’s only daily African American newspaper by burning the building in which it was housed.”

26. The Most Southern Sport on Earth: NASCAR and the Union
     by Danile S. Pierce
“‘I have a pistol and I know how to use it. I’ve used it before.’”

27.  King Solomon's Dilemma -- and the Confederacy's
     by Eugene D. Genovese
“If southerners did not live up to Christian standards in their daily lives and, in particular, bring slavery up to Abramic standards, they warned, a wrathful God would use the heathen Yankees, as He had used heathens of yore, to smite his Chosen People.”

28.  South to Death
      by Earl Higgins
“Those who are given the power by law to exercise mercy become too intoxicated, overwhelmed by the power to end life; they can no longer grant the mercy advocated by the scriptural teachings they purport to follow. Matthew 5:7, for example, instructs, ‘Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.’”

29. The Contradictory South
     by Sheldon Hackney
“The tension between individualism and organization is a central theme of American history, a running argument between Clint Eastwood and Bill Gates. It occurs in the South with a regional flavor.”

30. "Just a Little Talk with Jesus":
Elvis Presley, Religious Music, and Southern Spirituality
     by Charles Reagan Wilson
"Presley faced criticism from ministers about his lewd performances."
 
31.  The Banner That Won't Stay Furled
     by John Shelton Reed
“First of all, what is it with Mississippi?”

32.  New People in the New South:
An Overview of Southern Immigration
     by Carl L. Bankston“ The making of a global South is a relatively new phenomenon, yet these dynamics that drive recent immigration to the region have deep historical roots. ”
 
33. Forty Defining Moments of the Twentieth-century South
     by John Shelton Reed
“It will surprise no one to see that the two big stories of the twentieth-century South are the transition from an agricultural to an urban society and the transformation effected by the civil rights movement.”

35.  Robert F. Williams and the Promise of Southern Biography
     by Timothy B. Tyson
“But nonetheless I have been lurking in the shadows, plotting and sulking like one of William Faulkner’s vindictive barn-burners.”

36.  "A World Properly Put Together":
Environmental Knowledge in Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain
     by Albert Way
“It has been more than seven years since the publication of Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain, and it has become nothing short of a phenomenon.”

37. Driving Miss Daisy:
Southern Jewishness on the Big Screen
     by Eliza McGraw
“‘Now, Miss Daisy, somebody done bomb that temple back yonder, and you know it.’”

38.  The Edible South
     by Marcia Cohen Ferris“
I used to give a speech which began by claiming that Ella Baker invented the 1960s. That’s not as crazy as it sounds.”

39. The Twenty Most Influential Southerners of the Twentieth Century
     by John Shelton Reed
“Unknown saints will have to get their reward in heaven, as usual.”

40. The Grand Ole Opry and the Urban South
     by Louis M. Kyriakoudes
“‘Lord, Lord, you ought to take a ride, get in a Ford with a donnie by your side.’"

41.    A Conspiracy of Dunces?
Walker Percy's Humor and the Chance of a Last Laugh
     by Bryan A. Giemza
“‘Percy took a punch intended for Foote--from an outraged woman, no less--and had the good grace to earmark the scene for fictional purposes. ’”

 42. The Promise of a Sociology of the South
     by Larry J. Griffin
“Even as he turned to a form of largely conservative cultural commentary on all sorts of things, Reed retained a keen sociological consciousness.”

43.  "Fighting Whiskey and Immorality" at Auburn:
The Politics of Southern Football, 1919-1927
     by Andrew Doyle
“President Spright Dowell of Alabama Polytechnic Institute, today’s Auburn University, had raised admission standards and improved the professional qualifications of the faculty. . . . Yet this solid record was overshadowed by a raging public controversy sparked by the decline of the once-powerful Auburn football program.

44. Living with Confederate Symbols
     by franklin forts
“When General Robert E. Lee is commemorated, what do we do with the fact that he was a racist?”

45.  Images of African Americans in Southern Painting, 1840-1940
     by A. Everette James
“Southern paintings showed African Americans as largely dehumanized caricatures, black stereotypes rather than distinct individuals.”

46. Whatever Happened to the Search for Eric Rudolph?
     by Cynthia Lewis
“‘CNN is Eric’s best friend. If it hadn’t been for the media, Eric Rudolph would have been caught in the first two days. The media’s the worst thing that ever happened to this case. The worst thing.’”

47. Racial Violence, "Primitive" Music, and the Blues Entrepreneur: 
W. C. Handy's Mississippi Problem
     by Adam Gussow
“‘My idea of what constitutes music was changed by the sight of that silver money cascading around the splay feet of a Mississippi string band.’”
 
48.  Anatomy of a Quilt: The Gee's Bend Freedom Quilting Bee
     by Nancy Scheper-Hughes
“Something akin to a bitter culture war took place each time I would bring out a sample of those decidedly un-Yankee Gee’s Bend quilts. ‘They don’t look right,’ we were told. ‘Who would want to sleep under something like this?’”

49. Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement:
A Radical Democratic Vision (review)
     by Charles M. Payne
“Southern food is many things to many people-- a vast world of meaning and symbolism and plain old eating to generations of southerners and visitors to the region.”

50.  "The Obituary of Nations"
Ethnic Cleansing, Memory, and the Origins of the Old South
     by James Taylor Carson
"The wilderness settlers thought they were entering was in fact a landscape created and managed by the First Peoples."

51.   From Smiles to Miles:
Delta Air Lines Flight Attendants and Southern Hospitality
     by Drew Whitelegg
“In 1965 Braniff introduced the ‘air strip,’ in which a flight attendant disrobed bit-by-bit during the flight. Delta preferred coquetry to crudity.”

52. Zelda Sayre, Belle
     by Linda Wagner-Martin
“There are few more memorable wives in twentieth-century American culture than Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald, who was married to the successful young author F. Scott Fitzgerald.”

53. "In My Heart, I'm An American": Regional Attitudes and American Identity
     by Larry J. Griffin and Katherine McFarland
“According to the idealistic political understanding of America, part of the nation's mission-however insufficiently realized in practice, policy, and law- has always been as beacon and magnet to the world's downtrodden and despised. No other country has become home to so many immigrants, and to so many different kinds of immigrants.”

54. Hamlet Rides among the Seminoles
     by Robin O. Warren
“When William Forbes and his company of actors steamed out of Savannah in May 1840, they were about to enter the Second Seminole War. Before they had been in Florida for more than a full day, the actors were ambushed by real-life Indians, lost two of their number, and had their props and costumes sacked.”

55. Kudzu: A Tale of Two Vines
     by Derek Alderman
“Perhaps no other part of the natural environment is more closely identified with the South than this invasive and fast growing vine.”

56. Enough About the Disappearing South:
What About the Disappearing Southerner?
     by Larry J. Griffin and Ashley B. Thompson
“Are southerners a dying breed?”

57.  Gone with the Wind in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam
     by Mart Stewart
“‘There were a lot of Scarletts in Vietnam after 1975.’”

58. Heritage, not Hate? Collecting Black Memorabilia
     by Lynn Casmier-Paz
“When I arrived at Southern Springs Armory, I found the place jammed with brown and black people hawking 'Authentic Slave Shackles' that only a consumer with a platinum credit card could purchase”

59. Broken Levees, Broken Lives, and a Broken Nation after Katrina
        by Karen M. O'Neill
 "Many people viewed the extreme disorder after Hurricane Katrina as the failure of a comprehensive system of public works and emergency preparedness they assumed was designed to ensure safety and security. No such system exists."

60. Jackie Robinson and Dixie Walker: Myths of the Southern Baseball Player
     by Larry Powell
“Jackie took a lot of abuse, but there was no violence.Even if you count hard slides with raised spikes, that was nothing compared to what happened in the 1950s and 60s during the Civil Rights movement.” 

61. A Jazz Funeral: A Living Tradition
     by Angelo P Coclanis and Peter Coclanis
“‘There were a lot of Scarletts in Vietnam after 1975.’”

62. Give Me That Old Time Music. . . or Not.
    by Larry J. Griffin
"American popular culture would be unimaginable without the music created by the South's disfranchised, impoverished, and forgotten peoples, black, brown, and white—jazz and country, gospel and bluegrass, salsa and zydeco, blues and rock 'n' roll."

63. "Playing Rebels: Reenactment as Nostalgia or Defense."
    by James O. Farmer
"In the late 1990s, when journalist Tony Horwitz traveled the South in his quest to understand the tenacious hold the Civil War still has on many in the region, he found that in South Carolina "hardly a day . . . passed without some snippet about the Civil War appearing in the newspaper: a school debate on whether to play 'Dixie' at ball games; an upcoming Civil War reenactment."

64. John Dollard: Caste and Class Revisited
     by William R. Ferris
  "'I was alone, and being alone on a social investigation was very hard to explain to people in Southerntown. Since I was a stranger and, in their eyes, 'a Yankee,' they were very likely to think something else about me, that I might be a labor organizer or something." "The rich array of photographs and graphics, and the sincere and effective attempt at readerly appeal, go well beyond what is attempted by most… Southern Cultures is truly impressive.'” 

65. Food for Thought: Race, Region, Identity, and Foodways in the American South
     by Beth A. Latshaw
"Its sights, sounds, tastes, smells, and touch are thought to evoke reminiscences of childhood, stir up emotions from the past, and aid southerners in creating new memories around the modern dining table. In the hearts and minds of southerners from the past and present, only one thing could possibly embody such traits and induce such sentiment: southern food."

66. Rethinking Southern History
      by David L. Carlton
"Any understanding of John Shelton Reed's legacy to the study of southern history should begin with an appreciation of his pivotal position within modern southern intellectual history itself."

67. Economic Development and Globalization in South Carolina
       by Lacy K. Ford and R. Phillip Stone
 "The boundary between the South and the world continues to melt."

68. "When Carolina Indians Went on the Warpath": The Media, the Klan, and the Lumbees of North Carolina
        by Christopher Arris Oakley
"On a frigid Saturday night in January 1958, Grand Dragon James 'Catfish' Cole and fifty other members of the Ku Klux Klan gathered for a rally in a cornfield near Hayes Pond just outside of Maxton, a small town located in Robeson County in southeastern North Carolina. But before the rally even began, several hundred Lumbees chased the Klansmen from the frozen cornfield."

69. Truth, Reconciliation, and the Klu Klux Klan
         by David Cunningham
 "One of the Eisenhower Commission’s primary targets was the Ku Klux Klan, linked at that point to hundreds of acts of racial terror perpetrated by some of its approximately 17,000 dues-paying members."

70. Struggling with Robert E. Lee
      by Michael Fellman
 "During the war Lee finally found an outlet he could consider legitimate for his most powerful emotions, and as he was at war, that emotion was anger, martial ardor, or as the French call it, rage militaire."