Fact Sheet
Publishing History: UNC's Center for the Study of the American South founded Southern Cultures in 1993, and UNC Press has published Southern Cultures for the Center since 1996. The peer-reviewed quarterly has garnered awards for design, editorial vision, and individual essays, and its regional, national, and international audience is rapidly expanding. Throughout its history, Southern Cultures has remained the only publication on the South dedicated to reaching academic and lay readers.
Contents: all aspects of southern cultures, including their music, history, art, literature, politics, and sociology--in interviews, essays, articles, personal reminiscences, fiction, poetry, photography, and surveys on contemporary trends.
Theme issues: Music (5 issues), Hurricane Katrina, Biography, Photography (2 issues), Sports, Politics, Tobacco, Food, Civil Rights, Native Americans, the Global South (2 issues), Memory, and others.
Interviews: Eudora Welty, Alex Haley, B.B. King, Walker Evans, Pete Seeger, Margaret Walker Alexander, Julian Bond, Bukka White, Son Thomas, William Christenberry, Robert Penn Warren, and others, as well as the original letters of Zora Neale Hurston and William Faulkner.
Authors and Poets: Pat Conroy, Alice Walker, David Sedaris, Doris Betts, Allan Gurganus, Lee Smith, Robert Morgan, Rick Bass, Henry Taylor, Doug Marlette, David Cecelski, Hal Crowther, Randall Kenan, Michael Parker, Elizabeth Spencer, Michael Chitwood, Michael McFee, Alan Shapiro, Bland Simpson, Louis Rubin, Cathy Smith Bowers, and Shannon Ravenel, and others.
Scholars: Trudier Harris, C. Vann Woodward, Sheldon Hackney, Drew Gilpin Faust, Timothy Tyson, William R. Ferris, Jocelyn R. Neal, James C. Cobb, Fred Hobson, Marcie Cohen Ferris, Charles Reagan Wilson, Tom Rankin, Larry J. Griffin, John Shelton Reed, Anne Goodwyn Jones, Peter Coclanis, and numerous other award-winning scholars,
International Circulation: available in print, online, and via eBooks for a rapidly increasing readership that has included over 50,000 readers in more than sixty countries in the past year alone, up from 800 annual readers a dozen years earlier. 250,000 online users alone have viewed Southern Cultures's content more than one-half million times over the last few years.
Mentorships and Opportunities for Enhanced Student Learning: internships in the form of assistant editor positions for undergraduate and graduate students, additional volunteer assistant editor mentorships, and independent study courses for undergraduates through UNC's Department of American Studies.
Digital Archive: http://www.SouthernCultures.org, a portal to the digitized catalog of the quarterly's published material since 2001. The Library of Congress has chosen this website to be preserved in the LOC's own online archives.
Financial Structure: Southern Cultures operates on revenue generated through sales and with Center support for two editorial positions but receives no public funding for operating costs.
Support