A Brief History of Southern Cultures
Founding editors John Shelton Reed and Harry L. Watson began publishing the quarterly in 1993. In 1996, UNC Press redesigned Southern Cultures and entered into a continuing long-term collaboration with the Center to produce the journal. Lisa Eveleigh signed onto the editorial staff in 1996, too, for a twelve-year run marked by distinction as copyeditor and then consultant. Along the way, scholars James Leloudis, Annette Wright, Paul Quigley, and Spencer Downing also have played crucial roles on the editorial team.
Reed still writes for the quarterly and remains active in an advisory role but resigned his formal title in 2005 for another renowned southern sociologist, UNC's Larry J. Griffin, to serve as editor alongside Watson, the director of the Center and longtime professor in UNC's Department of History. Dave Shaw (executive editor), Ayse Erginer (deputy editor), Michael Chitwood (poetry editor), and Aaron Smithers (music editor) still serve Southern Cultures, and the peer-reviewed journal's editorial board reads like a Who's Who in southern studies. When Griffin resigned in 2009, Jocelyn Neal, from UNC's Department of Music, took over as co-Editor alongside Watson.
In nearly seventy issues across seventeen volumes Southern Cultures has published an extensive array of award-winning scholars, authors, and icons. In addition to interviews with Walker Evans, Alex Haley, B.B. King, Pete Seeger, Alice Walker, Eudora Welty, and Robert Penn Warren, the quarterly has published writing from Doris Betts, David Cecelski, James C. Cobb, Peter Coclanis, Pat Conroy, Hal Crowther, Drew Gilpin Faust, William Ferris, Allan Gurganus, Sheldon Hackney, Trudier Harris, Fred Hobson, Doug Marlette, Melton McLaurin, Michael McFee, Robert Morgan, Michael O'Brien, Michael Parker, Tom Rankin, Shannon Ravenel, Louis D. Rubin, Anne Firor Scott, David Sedaris, Alan Shapiro, Bland Simpson, Lee Smith, Henry Taylor, Timothy Tyson, Charles Reagan Wilson, C. Vann Woodward, and many others, as well as the original letters of Zora Neale Hurston and William Faulkner.
The quarterly occupies a unique position among publications about the South by targeting both an academic and an educated lay audience, and over the last decade Southern Cultures has expanded its circulation in large part due to its emphasis on reader-friendliness. According to the CELJ, "The rich array of photographs and graphics, and the sincere and effective attempt at readerly appeal, go well beyond what is attempted by most journals. This dimension of Southern Cultures is truly impressive." Each printed issue now reaches 2000-3000 readers, up from only a few hundred in 1998, and Southern Cultures additionally receives tens of thousands of visits every year to its online editions. To date, the journal's readership exceeds 250,000 readers over its entire history. The publication's rapid growth prompted the 2008 release of UNC Press's Southern Cultures: The Fifteenth Anniversary Reader, an anthology of the quarterly's most requested material for classroom use.