Famous Southerners (N-S)
This is a compendium of all our material from the last decade by and about Southern movers and shakers of the last century-and-a-half, including Pete Seeger (right).
You can read each essay, interview, or feature by following the direct links below to the content on Project Muse, which includes material from our Special Biography Issue, as well as by clicking on $0.99 Kindle or Nook downloads for each of our most recent essays.
We've listed these contents alphabetically by last name. Famous Southerners from A to G are here, Famous Southerners from H to M are here, Famous Southerners from T to Z are here, and this section covers Famous Southerners from N to S, beginning with Gloria Naylor.
Gloria Naylor
Trudier Harris's
The Power of the Porch: The Storyteller's Craft in Zora Neale Hurston, Gloria Naylor, and Randall Kenan
reviewed by Margaret D. Bauer
Southern Cultures, Volume 4, Number 2, Summer 1998
Flannery O'Connor
Margaret Earley Whitt's
Understanding Flannery O'Connor
Ted R. Spivey's
Flannery O'Connor: The Woman, the Thinker, the Visionary
Joanne Halleran McMullen's
Writing against God: Language as Message in the Literature of Flannery O'Connor
reviewed by Rachel V. Mills
Southern Cultures, Volume 3, Number 4, Winter 1997
Scarlett O'Hara
Tara, the O'Haras, and the Irish Gone With the Wind
by Geraldine Higgins
"Into the debate about place, race, and the second-best-selling book of all time, we can also bring Irishness."
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Southern Cultures, Volume 17, Number 1, Spring 2011: The Irish
Anya Jabour
Scarlett’s Sisters: Young Women in the Old South
reviewed by Katy Simpson Smith
"As a regional phenomenon, southern girlhood is as culturally resonant as it is understudied. From the myths surrounding Virginia Dare to the surreal pageantry of modern debutantes, the South has shaped its young women in its own ritualistic image."
Southern Cultures, Volume 15, Number 1, Spring 2009
Charlie Patton
Poem with a Refrain from Charley Patton
poetry by Travis Smith
". . . and now the guitar's high note
sings what he can't sing. . ."
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Southern Cultures Volume 17, Number 4, Winter 2011: Music
Walker Percy
A Conspiracy of Dunces?
Walker Percy's Humor and the Chance of a Last Laugh
by Bryan 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. ’”
Southern Cultures, Volume 9, Number 2, Summer 2003
William Alexander Percy
On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry: Nostalgia, Sex, and the Souths of William Alexander Percy
by Benjamin E. Wise
"'What I wrote seemed to me more essentially myself than anything I did or said.'"
Southern Cultures, Volume 14, Number 1, Spring 2008
"Riolama"
poetry by William Alexander Percy
"There is a land beyond the lands you know. . ."
Southern Cultures, Volume 14, Number 1, Spring 2008
Pocahontas
Helen C. Rountree
Pocahontas, Powhatan, Opechancanough: Three Indian Lives Changed by Jamestown
reviewed by Michael D. Green
"Rountree debunks the myth of Pocahontas saving Smith’s life as he was about to have his head beat in."
Southern Cultures, Volume 12, Number 2, Summer 2006
Elvis Presley
The KISS Letter: An Encounter with Elvis
by Eugenia Dettelbach Wicker
with an introduction by Marcie Cohen Ferris
"The last time I kissed him he only had on half a shirt. He has a wonderful chest. I am really crazy about him now+have the funniest feeling in me, all over."
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Southern Cultures Volume 17, Number 4, Winter 2011: Music
Elvis Presley and the Politics of Popular Memory
by Michael T. Bertrand
"'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.'"
Southern Cultures, Volume 13, Number 3, Fall 2007: Music II
"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."
Southern Cultures, Volume 12, Number 4, Winter 2006: Music I
Vernon Chadwick, editor
In Search of Elvis: Music, Race, Art, and Religion
reviewed by William McCranor Henderson
Southern Cultures, Volume 4, Number 2, Summer 1998
Charles Reagan Wilson's
Judgment & Grace in Dixie: Southern Faiths from Faulkner to Elvis
reviewed by Wayne Flynt
Southern Cultures, Volume 4, Number 2, Fall 1998
Elvis, Martin, and Mentors: The Making of Southern History in Britain
by Brian Ward
How the British have mined popular culture to make sense of the South.
Southern Cultures, Volume 4, Number 4, Winter 1998: The South in the World
Jackie Robinson
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.'"
Southern Cultures, Volume 8, Number 2, Summer 2002
Jimmie Rodgers
Blue Yodeler: Jimmie Rodgers
by Bland Simpson
"The Blue Yodeler’s first royalty came out to $27."
Southern Cultures, Volume 12, Number 4, Winter 2006: Music I
Louis D. Rubin Jr.
The Southern Martial Tradition: A Memory
by Louis D. Rubin Jr.
Southern Cultures, Volume 1, Number 2, Fall 1995
Eric Rudolph
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.’”
Southern Cultures, Volume 7, Number 4, Winter 2001
Thomas Ruffin
Judge Thomas Ruffin and the Shadows of Southern History
by Sally Greene
"Ruffin was ideologically sympathetic to the Confederate cause and remained so to his death. ‘The power of the master must be absolute,' Ruffin wrote in State v. Mann (1829), ‘to render the submission of the slave perfect.' State v. Mann became the most notorious opinion in the entire body of slavery law."
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Southern Cultures, Volume 17, Number 3, Fall 2011: Memory
Charles Seeger
Touching the Music: Charles Seeger
interviewed by William R. Ferris
"Pete thumbed his way all over that triangle from Maryland to Florida to Texas. Whenever he saw someone carrying a banjo or guitar, he would cotton up to them. And if they knew anything he didn't know, he'd just find out what it was, learn to do it, and then go on to the next."
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Southern Cultures, Volume 16, Number 3, Fall 2010: Music IV
Pete Seeger
Pete Seeger, San Francisco, 1989
interviewed by William R. Ferris and Michael K. Honey
"I first started learning about the world, and there was a place called the South. It was a distant, romantic place, like the Far West or the islands of the Caribbean."
Southern Cultures, Volume 13, Number 3, Fall 2007: Music II
Morris "Railroad Bill" Slater
Looking for Railroad Bill: On the Trail of an Alabama Badman
by Burgin Matthews
“Over the next two years, Morris Slater—known forever after as “Railroad Bill”—terrorized trains, illegally riding the south Alabama freighters, often robbing them of their goods and occasionally engaging in shootouts with resisting trainmen or police. Eventually, in one of those shootouts, he added murder to his record.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 9, Number 3, Fall 2003
Lee Smith
"All Wrought Up": The Apocalyptic South of McKendree Robbins Long
by Lee Smith and Hal Crowther
with a poem by Robert Hill Long
“We often had dates for the revival, since there wasn’t anything else to do in that town, or anyplace else to go, and that oftentimes your date would be holding your hand while you both got all wrought up together. So there was a sexual thing going on there, too.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 10, Number 1, Spring 2004
Nancy C. Parrish's
Lee Smith, Annie Dillard, and the Hollins Group: A Genesis of Writers
reviewed by Amy Thompson McCandless
"It was like falling into a womb."
Southern Cultures, Volume 5, Number 4, Winter 1999
William Gilmore Simms
John C. Guilds and Caroline Collins, editors
William Gilmore Simms and the American Frontier, and: From Nationalism to Secessionism: The Changing Fiction of William Gilmore Simms
reviewed by Michael O'Brien
Southern Cultures, Volume 5, Number 2, Summer 1999
Britney Spears
Letters to the Editors: Britney's Ghost
"I figured I'd better wait awhile to see if y'all would settle down and get back to doing what you do best: aggravating people, but not insulting them."
Southern Cultures, Volume 9, Number 1, Spring 2003
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!’”
Southern Cultures, Volume 7, Number 4, Winter 2001
Elizabeth Spencer
Elizabeth Spencer on Intruder in the Dust and The Reivers
from "Personal in My Memory": The South in Popular Film
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Southern Cultures, Volume 17, Number 3, Fall 2011: Memory
FAMOUS SOUTHERNERS A-G
FAMOUS SOUTHERNERS H-M
FAMOUS SOUTHERNERS T-Z