Global South
The South's relationship with the rest of the world has been evolving for decades, if not centuries, and Southern Cultures has devoted much of our discussion to describing this evolving relationship, including a special Global South issue and The South in the World. This material and the rest of our essays and features on the Global South are below, and you can follow the links to access the texts in full. We include first the new vintage material we've recently posted here.
The Apprehension of the South in Modern Culture
by Michael O'Brien, Guest Editor
Michael O'Brien considers the South in the world.
Southern Cultures, Volume 4, Number 4, Winter 1998: The South in the World
Haiku
by C. Vann Woodward
The preeminent historian of the South recalls the ironies of teaching southern history in Japan.
Southern Cultures, Volume 4, Number 4, Winter 1998: The South in the World
Sushi South: Teaching Southern Culture in Japan
by Anne Goodwyn Jones
Unexpected insights into the contradictions of Japan's cultural and historical response to defeat and reconstruction.
Southern Cultures, Volume 4, Number 4, Winter 1998: The South in the World
Faulkner and Southern History: A View from Germany
by Peter Nicolaisen
An account of one German novelist's struggle with his nation's past, and of Faulkner's resonance within German culture.
Southern Cultures, Volume 4, Number 4, Winter 1998: The South in the World
When the North is the South: Life in the Netherlands
by Edward L. Ayers
A Southerner's observations on regionalism and southern stereotypes abroad.
Southern Cultures, Volume 4, Number 4, Winter 1998: The South in the World
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
Acknowledgments
by Steven Stowe
Reflections of a native Californian on his lifelong passion for history and for the South.
Southern Cultures, Volume 4, Number 4, Winter 1998: The South in the World
W. C. Corsan's
Two Months in the Confederate States: An Englishman's Travels Through the South
reviewed by Susan H. Irons
Southern Cultures, Volume 4, Number 4, Winter 1998: The South in the World
Africans in Colonial Louisiana: The Development of Afro-Creole Culture in the Eighteenth Century
by Gwendolyn Midlo Hall
reviewed by Clarence E. Walker
Volume 1, Issue 1, Fall 1994
Creole New Orleans: Race and Americanization
by Arnold R. Hirsch and Joseph Lodsdon, editors
reviewed by Karen Trahan Leathem
Volume 1, Issue 1, Fall 1994
The Old Ship of Zion: The Afro-Baptist Ritual in the African Diaspora
by Walter F. Pitts
reviewed by Jerrilyn McGregory
Volume 1, Issue 3, Spring 1995
Twistin' at the Fais Do-Do: South Louisiana's Swamp Pop Music
by Shane K. Bernard
Like zydeco and Cajun music, swamp pop is vital to the cultural identity of Cajun and Creole country.
Volume 2, Issues 3 & 4, Fall/Winter 1996
The Forgotten Centuries: Indian and Europeans in the American South, 1521-1704
by Charles Hudson and Carmen Chaves Tesser, editors
reviewed by Sarah H. Hill
Volume 3, Issue 1, Spring 1997
The Landscape of Louis Rémy Mignot, a Southern Painter Abroad
catalogue and exhibition
by Katherine E. Manthore, with John Coffey
reviewed by Peter H. Wood
Volume 3, Issue 2, Summer 1997: Writers on Art
The Confederados: Old South Immigrants in Brazil
by Cyrus B. Dawsey and James M. Dawsey
reviewed by John Chasteen
Volume 3, Issue 2, Summer 1997: Writers on Art
Choong Soon Kim's
Japanese Industry in the American South
reviewed by W. Miles Fletcher III
Volume 3, Issue 3, Fall 1997: Sports
Jerald T. Milanich's
Florida Indians and the Invasions from Europe
reviewed by Amy Turner Bushnell
Volume 3, Issue 4, Winter 1997
Scottish Heritage Southern Style
by Celeste Ray
Scottish and southern heritages meld into a new kind of southern identity, one founded on lost causes but refashioned for today's South.
Volume 4, Issue 2, Summer 1998
Charles Hudson's
Knights of Spain, Warriors of the Sun: Hernando de Soto and the South's Ancient Chiefdoms
reviewed by Peter H. Wood
Volume 4, Issue 2, Summer 1998
"Wie Geht's, Y'all?" German Influences in Southern Cooking
by Fred R. Reenstjerna
Volume 4, Issue 2, Summer 1998
"Hot Music on the Half-Shell for Two": Anton Rubinstein's Southern Fan
by Gavin James Campbell
Volume 5, Issue 1, Spring 1999: Scarlett O'Hara
Choong Soon Kim's
Japanese Industry in the American South
reviewed by W. Miles Fletcher III
Volume 3, Issue 3, Fall 1997
A Nine Year Old Boy's Memories of World War I
by Floyd Waldrep
Volume 3, Issue 1, Spring 1997
Vietnam and the Southern Imagination
by Owen W. Gilman Jr.
reviewed by Melton McLaurin
Volume 1, Issue 1, Fall 1994
"A lengthening chain in the shape of memories"
The Irish and Southern Culture
by William R. Ferris
"Irish rockers U2 are committed fans of B.B. King and wrote the song ‘When Love Comes to Town' at his request. The song introduced King to important new rock audiences."
Full Issue for Kindle ($6.95), for Nook ($6.95), or for Sony Reader ($6.95)
Volume 17, Number 1, Spring 2011: The Irish
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."
Full Issue for Kindle ($6.95), for Nook ($6.95), or for Sony Reader ($6.95)
Volume 17, Number 1, Spring 2011: The Irish
Another "Lost Cause"
The Irish in the South Remember the Confederacy
by David Gleeson
"As there had been only two prominent Irish generals, and only one, Cleburne, had had a very distinguished record, the story of the common soldier was the story of the Irish Confederate."
Full Issue for Kindle ($6.95), for Nook ($6.95), or for Sony Reader ($6.95)
Volume 17, Number 1, Spring 2011: The Irish
Blacks and Irish on the Riverine Frontiers
The Roots of American Popular Music
by Christopher J. Smith
"One of the realities of American life is that certain features of African American performance style will remain strange and alluring to those outside the culture. Not least among such features is the making of hard social commentary on recurring problems of life, often through cutting and breaking techniques-contentious interactions continually calling for a change of direction."
Full Issue for Kindle ($6.95), for Nook ($6.95), or for Sony Reader ($6.95)
Volume 17, Number 1, Spring 2011: The Irish
Smoke 'n' Guns
A Preface to a Poem about Marginal Souths, and then the Poem
by Conor O'Callaghan
"Addressing a jubilant crowd in Belfast shortly after the declaration of the original ceasefire in 1993, Gerry Adams reminded his audience that ‘they haven't gone away, you know.' He meant that even as ‘the cause' was dwindling, its upholders-‘the boys'-were still among us. He might just as easily have been talking about the Klan."
Full Issue for Kindle ($6.95), for Nook ($6.95), or for Sony Reader ($6.95)
Volume 17, Number 1, Spring 2011: The Irish
Longing: Personal Effects from the Border
photographs by Susan Harbage Page
with an introduction by Bernard L. Herman
“Images of a deflated inner tube dropped by the road, a wallet mired, with its contents spilling into the mud, footsteps revealed in soft earth, and river-wet clothes wrung, wadded, and cast aside document ordinary things possessed with extraordinary associations of flight, hope, panic, determination, and fear.”
Full Issue for Kindle ($7.69) or for Sony Reader ($9.45)
Southern Cultures, Volume 16, Number 1, Spring 2010
James L. Peacock
Grounded Globalism: How the U.S. South Embraces the World (review)
reviewed by Leon Fink
"A Ugandan boy is lovingly adopted by a Peace Corps volunteer. An Indian wedding at the Carolina Inn features a groom entering on a white horse (substituting for an elephant) while a priest chants in Sanskrit."
Southern Cultures, Volume 15, Number 1, Spring 2009
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
To Know Tobacco
Southern Identity in China in the Jim Crow Era
by Nan Enstad
“ Many southerners from rural areas did not yet have electricity or indoor plumbing in the early twentieth century. In Shanghai they encountered more modern amenities and an elaborate public nightlife, full of perfect strangers. ”
Southern Cultures, Volume 13, Number 4, Winter 2007: Global South
New People in the New South
An Overview of Southern Immigration
by Carl L. Bankston III
“ 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. ”
Southern Cultures, Volume 13, Number 4, Winter 2007: Global South
Your Dekalb Farmers Market
Food and Ethnicity in Atlanta
by Tore C. Olsson
“While the culinary atmosphere of 1977 Atlanta may have remained 'traditional,' the city itself was hardlly reminiscent of the romantic world Margaret Mitchell depicted in Gone with the Wind. ”
Southern Cultures, Volume 13, Number 4, Winter 2007: Global South
Bill Smith
Taking the Heat--and Dishing It Out--in a Nuevo New South Kitchen
with Lisa Eveleigh
“The Mexican guys said, 'let me do it, let me do it!' And they were peerless. ”
Southern Cultures, Volume 13, Number 4, Winter 2007: Global South
Of Chickens and Men
Cockfighting and Equality in the South
by Marko Maunula
“At the referee's signal, the handlers let their rooster go, and the birds, as if filled with sacred rage, assault each other in a hurricane of feathers, beaks, glittering spurs, and flapping wings. ’”
Southern Cultures, Volume 13, Number 4, Winter 2007: Global South
Selling Which South?
Economic Change in Rural and Small-Town North Carolina in an Era of Globalization, 1940-2007
by Peter A. Coclanis and Louis M. Kyriakoudes
“If national planners and the federal government first became interested in rural manufacturing as a development strategy in the 1930s and 1940s, the South had by that time been poursuing such a strategy for generations, albeit with mixed success. ”
Southern Cultures, Volume 13, Number 4, Winter 2007: Global South
The Institute and the Factory
Business Leadership and Change in the Global South
by John Russell
"We can't lead in this world for long by making people afraid. It simply is impossible to succeed while being afraid."
Southern Cultures, Volume 13, Number 4, Winter 2007: Global South
"In My Heart, I'm an American"
Regional Attitudes and American Identity
by Larry J. Griffin and Katherine McFarland
"No other country has become home to so many immigrants and to so many different kinds of immigrants."
Southern Cultures, Volume 13, Number 4, Winter 2007: Global South
There's a Word for It--
The Origins of "Barbecue"
by John Shelton Reed
"For all that southerners have made barbecue our own, the fact remains that this symbol of the South, like kudzu, is an import."
Southern Cultures, Volume 13, Number 4, Winter 2007: Global South
The Color of Music
Social Boundaries and Stereotypes in Southwest Louisiana French Music
by Sara Le Menestrel
"One Cajun woman who grew up in the 1960s was convinced that the AM/FM options on her radio referred to the distinction between American Music and French Music."
Southern Cultures, Volume 13, Number 3, Fall 2007: Music II
Economic Development and Globalization in South Carolina
by Lacy Ford and R. Phillip Stone
"'More of the same is not going to work, because you can only get so many BMWs.'"
Southern Cultures, Volume 13, Number 1, Spring 2007
Life-everlasting
Nature and Culture on Sapelo Island
by Mary Hussmann
“What was most moving was that it was here that the ghosts of the people we’d read about jumped out of history and into our lives.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 12, Number 1, Spring 2006
Teaching Gone with the Wind in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam
by Mart Stewart
“‘There were a lot of Scarletts in Vietnam after 1975.’”
Southern Cultures, Volume 11, Number 3, Fall 2005
Queuing up for Q in London’s East End
by John Shelton Reed
“He remembers seeing a man from the Church of Christ cooking a steer with some apparatus involving chicken wire, an oil-rig pipe, and a hole in the ground. He also remembers playing cowboys and Indians with a young Billy Clinton.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 11, Number 3, Fall 2005
James L. Peacock, Harry L. Watson, and Carrie R. Matthews, Editors
The American South in a Global World (review)
James C. Cobb and William Stueck, Editors
Globalization and the American South (review)
Jon Smith and Deborah Cohn, Editors
Look Away! The U.S. South in New World Studies (review)
reviewed by David A. Davis
"Perhaps the question to ponder now is how will the South change the globe?"
Southern Cultures, Volume 11, Number 3, Fall 2005
Globalization, Southern Style
Ways of Dixie Win in Latin America
by Helen Bullitt Lowry
with an introduction by James C. Cobb
“And duels still settle matters of honor between gentlemen.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 10, Number 2, Summer 2004
Don Harrison Doyle
Nations Divided: America, Italy, and the Southern Question (review)
reviewed by Susan Delfino
“Northerners were not all angels, just as southerners were not all devils.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 9, Number 4, Winter 2003
Vietnam War Memorial
poetry by Robert Morgan
“. . . From that pit you can’t see much
official Washington, just sky
and trees and names and people . . .”
Southern Cultures, Volume 9, Number 3, Fall 2003
Southern Nigerian
by Elaine Neil Orr
"What I most recall is the sun slamming down, ricocheting off tin roofs of mud and plaster houses that duplicated one another endlessly down a thousand bicycle paths, splashes of puddles during the rains, and a hundred women on their way to market.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 9, Number 3, Fall 2003
Helen Taylor
Circling Dixie: Contemporary Southern Culture through a Transatlantic Lens (review)
reviewed by Brian Ward
“In 1958 a newspaper survey of thirty British schoolchildren revealed that although only twelve of the fourteen-year-olds had heard of Dwight Eisenhower, seven of Nikita Khrushchev, and four of Jawaharlal Nehru, “everyone was on Christian name terms with a Mr. Presley.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 8, Number 2, Summer 2002
Our Lady of Guadeloupe Visits the Confederate Memorial
by Thomas A. Tweed
“Some observers have trumpeted the South as the last stronghold of faithful Christian witness; e H.L. Mencken dismissed it as ‘the bunghole of the United States, a cesspool of Baptists, a miasma of Methodism, snake-charmers, phony real-estate operators, and syphilitic evangelists.’”
Southern Cultures, Volume 8, Number 2, Summer 2002