Sports
Southerners have long loved their sports and their leisure-time activities. We've collected our sports material from the last nineteen years, which you can read through Project Muse by following the direct links below. Our most recently published articles also are available for Kindle and Nook for only $0.99. We begin with material we've just posted here for the first time, including essays from our special issue on Sports.
Causes Won, Not Lost: College Football and Modernization of the American South
by Andy Doyle
Southern Cultures, Volume 3, Issue 3, Fall 1997: Sports
Bloomers and Beyond: North Carolina Women's Basketball Uniforms, 1901-1994
by Pamela Grundy
Southern Cultures, Volume 3, Issue 3, Fall 1997: Sports
The "Tennessee Test of Manhood": Professional Wrestling and Southern Cultural Stereotypes
by Louis M. Kyriakoudes and Peter A. Coclanis
Southern Cultures, Volume 3, Issue 3, Fall 1997: Sports
Southern Crossroads: An Olympic Cultural Festival
by George Holt
Southern Cultures, Volume 3, Issue 3, Fall 1997: Sports
Tell about the South
reviewed by Andy Ambrose
Four photographic and art exhibitions of the 1996 Olympic Arts Festival
Southern Cultures, Volume 3, Issue 3, Fall 1997: Sports
Kenny Dalsheimer's
Go Fast, Turn Left: Voices from Orange County Speedway
reviewed by Elizabeth A. Fenn
Southern Cultures, Volume 5, Issue 1, Spring 1999
Bruce Adelson's
Brushing Back Jim Crow: The Integration of Minor-League Baseball in the American South
reviewed by Steven F. Lawson
"They saw themselves as heirs to Jackie Robinson's legacy."
Southern Cultures, Volume 5, Issue 4, Winter 1999
Catfish and Home
by Josh Eure
"Jimmy ‘Catfish' Hunter pitched for the Oakland Athletics and the New York Yankees and in 1987 was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame-all the while maintaining his small-town farming roots. He played every game with the shotgun pellets from a childhood hunting accident lodged in his foot, and natives imagined he held a major piece of them in his cleats."
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Southern Cultures, Volume 17, Number 3, Fall 2011: Memory
The Indian Sports Mascot Meets Noble Savage and Noble Savage Confronts Indian Mascot
A poem by Leanne Howe
"But here we are. You with a bow and arrow. Me in a headdress."
Southern Cultures, Volume 14, Number 4, Winter 2008: First Peoples
The Wildest Show in the South: The Politics and Poetics of the Angola Prison Rodeo and Inmate Arts Festival
by Melissa Schrift
"Against the brutal backdrop of its own history Angola now poses itself as a progressive prison."
Southern Cultures, Volume 14, Number 1, Spring 2008
Bottomland Ghost: Southern Encounters and Obsessions with the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker
by Michael K. Steinberg
"Until the announcement in 2005 of the rediscovery of the ivory-bill, there had not been a broadly accepted ivory-bill sighting for sixty years."
Southern Cultures, Volume 14, Number 1, Spring 2008
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
I'm Talking about Shaft: Halftime at a High School Football Game
by Michael Parker
"Now we were about to premiere, for an audience suspecting more anemic halftime show standards, the hottest jam of the Black Moses, Mr. Hot Buttered Soul himself."
Southern Cultures, Volume 12, Number 3, Fall 2006
Drafting Away from It All
by Lucas Marcoplos
"A dark secret hid itself under my overt appreciation for barbecue and bluegrass: I knew next to nothing about NASCAR."
Southern Cultures, Volume 12, Number 1, Spring 2006
Friday Night Heroes: Small-Town Wrestling in Tennessee
by Joseph Shay
"The crowd was at a fever pitch, seemingly waiting for an excuse to tear something apart. Would it be me?"
Southern Cultures, Volume 11, Number 3, Fall 2005
A Southern Memory
by Robert Flournoy
“‘Yessir, pretty fine shootin’, especially as it appears these birds were flying upside down.’”
Southern Cultures, Volume 10, Number 1, Spring 2004
"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.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 10, Number 3, Fall 2004
The Last Lap of the Daytona 500
by Adrian Blevins
“…there’s now the death of Dale Earnhardt, Dale Earnhardt, Dale Earnhardt.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 10, Number 3, Fall 2004
Fixin' To Git: One Fan's Love Affair with NASCAR's Winston Cup (review)
by Daniel S. Pierce
“As far as love affairs go, unfortunately, Fixin’ to Git is the equivalent of a one-night stand.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 9, Number 4, Winter 2003
The Dying Art of Deer-Driving in the South Carolina Low-Country
by Ileana Strauch
“These images chronicle a century of tradition.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 8, Number 4, Winter 2002: Ghosts
Learning Strategy at English Field
A poem by Darnell Arnoult
“He is cocky. He’s also cute and a good kisser.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 8, Number 4, Winter 2002: Ghosts
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
The Most Southern Sport on Earth: NASCAR and the Unions
by Daniel S. Pierce
“‘I have a pistol and I know how to use it. I’ve used it before.’”
Southern Cultures, Volume 7, Number 2, Summer 2001
"A Position of Respect": A Basketball Coach Who Resisted Segregation
by John B. McLendon to Pamela Grundy
“One of the best ways to play the game is avoid confrontation. The next is to make the adversary ridiculous.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 7, Number 2, Summer 2001
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.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 7, Number 1, Spring 2001