Women & Gender
Over the last two decades we've published essays and features from a variety of perspectives that have added to broader discussions of Women & Gender. Each of the essays and features we've collected here is accessible through Project Muse by following its direct link below, or you can read each of our most recent essays by clicking on the $0.99 Kindle or Nook download. In celebration of Women's History Month, we've added new online material previously unavailable from our archives, beginning with featured content from Beth Boyd.
FEATURED CONTENT:
Sister Act: Sorority Rush as Feminine Performance
by Beth Boyd
The significance of singing, playacting, schmoozing, and reputation-management.
"Despite the sweltering heat, the melting humidity, and the lack of air conditioning, the atmosphere inside is not one of languidness, but of high anxiety. Here some 665 incoming female students are seated in groups of seventy. They are chattering, they are excited, they are nervous. It's the opening scene of sorority rush, and at the University of Mississippi--known by one and all as "Ole Miss"--rush is serious business. In the next few days these young women (or "girls," as they refer to themselves and each other) will submit to a process of evaluation that will determine the course of their social life for the next four years. For some, the stakes will be for life . . ."
[read more]
Vintage Material Now Available Online
"The Outer Limits of Probability": A Janis Joplin Retrospective
by Gavin James Campbell
"Although Janis Joplin adopted Southern Comfort as her drink of choice, neither whiskey nor the South brought her much comfort."
Southern Cultures, Volume 6, Number 3, Fall 2000
Janet L. Coryell, Martha H. Swain, Sandra Gioia Treadway, and Elizabeth Hayes Turner, editors
Beyond Image and Convention
Explorations in Southern Women's History
Christie Anne Farnham, editor
Women of the American South
A Multicultural Reader
reviewed by Georgina Hickey
Southern Cultures, Volume 6, Number 3, Fall 2000
Killers Real and Imagined
by Doris Betts
Real-life tragedy is the genesis for lasting art when the murder of Medgar Evers sparks the muse of Eudora Welty.
Southern Cultures, Volume 5, Number 4, Winter 1999
Every Man Has Got the Right To Get Killed? The Civil War Narratives of Mary Johnston and Caroline Gordon
by Sarah E. Gardner
The vivid--and graphic--novels of two women authors usher in new views of the War and redefine a genre.
Southern Cultures, Volume 5, Number 4, Winter 1999
Grave Matters
by Elizabeth Robeson
Zora Neale Hurston's correspondence with W. E. B. Du Bois in 1929 reveals her concern about how prominent African Americans of their era were honored after death.
Southern Cultures, Volume 5, Number 3, Fall 1999
"We were the Snopeses": A Writer and Her Piedmont
by Doris Betts
An unexpected kinship with Flannery O'Connor and an exploration of what it means to be a "piedmonter."
Southern Cultures, Volume 5, Number 2, Summer 1999
Reimagining the North-South Reunion: Southern Women Novelists and the Intersectional Romance, 1876-1900
by Jane Turner Censer
Affairs of the heart reunite North and South.
Southern Cultures, Volume 5, Number 2, Summer 1999
Clutching the Chains that Bind: Margaret Mitchell and Gone with the Wind
by Drew Gilpin Faust
Drew Faust has some things to say about Scarlett O'Hara, the South's favorite bad belle. Three other scholars of southern women's literature and history talk back.
Southern Cultures, Volume 5, Number 1, Spring 1999: Scarlett O'Hara
Race and the Cloud of Unknowing in Gone with the Wind
by Patricia Yaeger
Southern Cultures, Volume 5, Number 1, Spring 1999: Scarlett O'Hara
"I Was Tellin It": Race, Gender, and the Puzzle of the Storyteller
by Anne Goodwyn Jones
Southern Cultures, Volume 5, Number 1, Spring 1999: Scarlett O'Hara
"The Prong of Love"
by Jacquelyn Dowd Hall
Southern Cultures, Volume 5, Number 1, Spring 1999: Scarlett O'Hara
"The Vampire That Hovers Over North Carolina": Gender, White Supremacy, and the Wilmington Race Riot of 1898
by Andrea Meryl Kirshenbaum
A provocative look at the manipulation of racial and sexual fears, culminating in a bloody riot a century ago.
Southern Cultures, Volume 4, Number 3, Fall 1998
The Lady Was a Sharecropper: Myrtle Lawrence and the Southern Tenant Farmers' Union
by Elizabeth Anne Payne, with photographs by Louise Boyle
How one woman transcended regional and gender stereotypes in her pursuit of justice for tenant farmers, black and white.
Southern Cultures, Volume 4, Number 2, Summer 1998
Race, Sex, and Reputation: Thomas Jefferson and the Sally Hemings Story
by Robert M. S. McDonald
Did the "truth" about the president's affair with a slave woman matter to his contemporaries? The answer may surprise you.
Southern Cultures, Volume 4, Number 2, Summer 1998
Can the Flower of Southern Womanhood Bloom in the Garden of Southern Politics?
by Sue Tolleson-Rinehart
Southern Cultures, Volume 4, Number 1, Spring 1998: Politics
Bloomers and Beyond: North Carolina Women's Basketball Uniforms, 1901-1994
by Pamela Grundy
Southern Cultures, Volume 3, Number 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, Number 3, Fall 1997: Sports
Columbus Meets Pocahontas in the American South
by Theda Perdue
The author uses two legendary figures to explore sex, culture, and power in the conquest of the South.
Southern Cultures, Volume 3, Number 1, Spring 1997
Aunt Jemima Explained: The Old South, the Absent Mistress, and the Slave in a Box
by Maurice M. Manring
Southern Cultures, Volume 2, Number 1, Fall 1995
The Incredible Shrinking You-Know-What: Southern Women's Humor
by Anne Goodwyn Jones
Southern Cultures, Volume 1, Number 4, Summer 1995: Humor
A Short History of Redneck: The Fashioning of a Southern White Masculine Identity
by Patrick Huber
Southern Cultures, Volume 1, Number 2, Winter 1995
"Millways" Remembered: A Conversation with Kenneth and Margaret Morland
by John Shelton Reed
Southern Cultures, Volume 1, Number 2, Winter 1995
South Polls
Images of Southern Women
by John Shelton Reed
Southern Cultures, Volume 1, Number 1, Fall 1994
Joanne Grant's
Ella Baker: Freedom Bound
reviewed by Edward O. Frantz
Southern Cultures, Volume 6, Number 2, Summer 2000
The Dixie Chicks Fly
by Gavin James Campbell
"For those who wondered whether the Dixie Chicks were a flash in the pan, wonder no more."
Southern Cultures, Volume 6, Number 1, Spring 2000: 5th Anniversary
The Rise of Southern Redneck and White Trash Writers
Featuring the Fiction of Larry Brown, Dorothy Allison, and Tim McLaurin
by Erik Bledsoe
"White trash is no longer something to sweep out the back door."
Southern Cultures, Volume 6, Number 1, Spring 2000: 5th Anniversary
Mojo Productions, in association with Company Carolina and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Department of Communication Studies
Good Ol' Girls, the world premiere
reviewed by Shannon Ravenel
"She'll bring you casseroles and she'll kill you, too."
Southern Cultures, Volume 5, Number 4, Winter 1999
Nancy C. Parrish's
Lee Smith, Annie Dillard, and the Hollins Group: A Genesis of Writers
reviewed by Amy Thompson McCandless
Southern Cultures, Volume 5, Number 4, Winter 1999
Jerry W. Cotten's
Light and Air: The Photography of Bayard Wootten
reviewed by Jessie Poesch
Southern Cultures, Volume 5, Number 3, Fall 1999
Laura F. Edwards's
Gendered Strife and Confusion: The Political Culture of Reconstruction
reviewed by Christopher Waldrep
Southern Cultures, Volume 5, Number 2, Summer 1999
Edward D. C. Cambell Jr. and Kym S. Rice, editors
A Woman's War: Southern Women, Civil War, and the Confederate Legacy
reviewed by LeeAnn Whites
Southern Cultures, Volume 5, Number 1, Spring 1999: Scarlett O'Hara
Elna C. Green's
Southern Strategies: Southern Women and the Woman Suffrage Question
reviewed by Pamela Tyler
Southern Cultures, Volume 5, Number 1, Spring 1999: Scarlett O'Hara
Tenth Conference on Restoring Southern Gardens and Landscapes
The Influence of Women on the Southern Landscape
reviewed by Rachel V. Mills
Southern Cultures, Volume 5, Number 1, Spring 1999: Scarlett O'Hara
LeeAnn Whites's
The Civil War as a Crisis in Gender: Augusta, Georgia, 1860-1890
reviewed by Anne M. Valk
Southern Cultures, Volume 4, Number 4, Winter 1998
Pamela Tyler's
Silk Stockings and Ballot Boxes: Women and Politics in New Orleans, 1920-1963
reviewed by Marjorie Spruill Wheeler
Southern Cultures, Volume 4, Number 4, Winter 1998
Dorothy M. Scura, editor
Ellen Glasgow: New Perspectives
reviewed by Susan V. Donaldson
Southern Cultures, Volume 4, Number 4, Winter 1998
Kenneth S. Greenberg's
Honor and Slavery: Lies, Duels, Noses, Masks, Dressing as a Woman, Gifts, Strangers, Humanitarianism, Death, Slave Rebellions, The Proslavery Argument, Baseball, Hunting and Gambling in the Old South
reviewed by Catherine Clinton
Southern Cultures, Volume 4, Number 3, Fall 1998
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
Drew Gilpin Faust
Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War
reviewed by Elizabeth D. Leonard
Southern Cultures, Volume 4, Number 1, Spring 1998: Politics
Bertram Wyatt-Brown's
The House of Percy: Honor, Melancholy, and Imagination in a Southern Family and
The Literary Percys: Family History, Gender, and the Southern Imagination
reviewed by Tom McHaney
Southern Cultures, Volume 3, Number 4, Winter 1997: Sports
Roland L. Freeman's
A Communion of Spirits: African-American Quilters, Preservers, and Their Stories
reviewed by David Crosby
Southern Cultures, Volume 3, Number 4, Winter 1997: Sports
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: Sports
John E. Cashin, editor
Our Common Affairs: Texts from Women in the Old South
reviewed by Kathryn McKee
Southern Cultures, Volume 3, Number 3, Fall 1997
Sidney R. Bland's
Preserving Charleston's Past, Shaping Its Future: The Life and Times of Susan Pringle Frost
reviewed by W. Fitzhugh Brundage
Southern Cultures, Volume 3, Number 3, Fall 1997
Daughters of Canaan: A Saga of Southern Women
by Margaret Ripley Wolfe
reviewed by Judith E. Funston
Southern Cultures, Volume 3, Number 1, Spring 1997
Woman of Color, Daughter of Privilege: Amanda America Dickson, 1849-1893
by Kent Anderson Leslie
reviewed by Janette Thomas Greenwood
Southern Cultures, Volume 3, Number 1, Spring 1997
An Evening When Alone: Four Journals of Single Women in the South, 1827-67
by Michael O'Brien
reviewed by Christopher Morris
Southern Cultures, Volume 2, Number 2, Winter 1996
Louisiana Women Writers: New Essays and a Comprehensive Biography
by Dorothy H. Brown and Barbara C. Ewell, editors
reviewed by Margaret M. Geddy
Southern Cultures, Volume 1, Number 3, Spring 1995
Daughters of Time: Creating Woman's Voice in Southern Story
by Lucinda H. MacKethan
reviewed by Sarah Gordon
Southern Cultures, Volume 1, Number 2, Winter 1995
The Letters of a Victorian Madwoman
by John, S. Hughes, editor
reviewed by Anastatia Sims
Southern Cultures, Volume 1, Number 2, Winter 1995
Southern Women: Histories and Identities
Virginia Berhnard, Betty Brandon, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, and Theda Perue, editors
reviewed by Kathleen C. Berkeley
Southern Cultures, Volume 1, Number 1, Fall 1994
Unheard Voices: The First Historians of Southern Women
Anne Firor Scott, editor
reviewed by Jacqueline Jones
Southern Cultures, Volume 1, Number 1, Fall 1994
Exiles and Fugitives: The Letters of Jacques and Raîssa Maritain, Allen Tate, and Carolina Gordon
John M. Dunaway, editor
reviewed by Alphonse Vinh
Southern Cultures, Volume 1, Number 1, Fall 1994
Unruly Women: The Politics of Social and Sexual Control in the Old South
by Victoria E. Bynum
reviewed by Suzanne Lebsock
Southern Cultures, Inaugural Issue, 1993
Most Recently Published
"A Mind-Opening Influence of Great Importance"
Arthur Raper at Agnes Scott College
by Clifford M. Kuhn
"He was such an eye-opener to me . . . such a reversal of the whole way you think about life and society."
$0.99 download for Kindle, for Nook, or for Sony Reader
Full Issue for Kindle, for Nook, or for Sony Reader
Southern Cultures, Volume 18, Number 1, Spring 2012
Every Ounce a Man's Whiskey?
Bourbon in the White Masculine South
by Seán S. McKeithan
"The hot bite of the Bourbon sensuously connects the body of the drinker to nation, region, and locale, enjoining his experience with those of imagined, historical bodies, soaking up space and place in the slow burn of what appears an endless southern summertime."
Full Issue for Kindle, for Nook, or for Sony Reader
$0.99 download for Kindle, for Nook, or for Sony Reader (available soon)
Southern Cultures, Volume 18, Number 1, Spring 2012
"Redneck Woman" and the Gendered Poetics of Class Rebellion
by Nadine Hubbs
"In 2004 Gretchen Wilson exploded onto the country music scene with ‘Redneck Woman.' The blockbuster single led to the early release of her first CD and propelled it to triple platinum sales."
$0.99 download for Kindle, for Nook, or for Sony Reader.
Full Issue for Kindle ($4.95 with embedded tracks), for Nook ($4.95, CD shipped separately), or for Sony Reader ($5.88, CD shipped separately)
Southern Cultures Volume 17, Number 4, Winter 2011: Music
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."
$0.99 download for Kindle, for Nook, or for Sony Reader.
Full Issue for Kindle ($4.95 with embedded tracks), for Nook ($4.95, CD shipped separately), or for Sony Reader ($5.88, CD shipped separately)
Southern Cultures Volume 17, Number 4, Winter 2011: Music
Mountain Feminist:
Helen Matthews Lewis, Appalachian Studies, and the Long Women’s Movement
interviewed by Jessica Wilkerson
compiled and introduced by Jessica Wilkerson and David Cline
"A 1966 photograph of the Appalachian historian and activist Helen Matthews Lewis captures much about a woman who has been studying, writing about, and fighting for the people of Appalachia for three-quarters of a century. In the photo, Lewis sits outside of a mine entrance, hair emerging beneath a hard hat, with a big smile and coal-smeared cheeks. It is the portrait of the scholar as coal miner, the worker as scholar, the academic as activist."
$0.99 download for KINDLE, for NOOK, or for SONY LIBRARY READER
Full Issue for Kindle ($3.96), for Nook ($4.15), or for Sony Reader ($4.70)
Southern Cultures, Volume 17, Number 3, Fall 2011: Memory
Alice Walker on Cold Mountain
and
Randall Kenan on Ode to Billie Joe
and
Elizabeth Spencer on Intruder in the Dust and The Reivers
from "Personal in My Memory": The South in Popular Film
$0.99 download includes writing from Walker, Gurganus, Kenan and others for KINDLE, for NOOK, or for SONY LIBRARY READER
Full Issue for Kindle ($3.96), for Nook ($4.15), or for Sony Reader ($4.70)
Southern Cultures, Volume 17, Number 3, Fall 2011: Memory
Heroes of Hell Hole Swamp:
Photographs of South Carolina Midwives by Hansel Mieth and W. Eugene Smith
by Dolores Flamiano
featuring the original Life photographs
(Due to copyright restrictions, the original Life photos are available in the print edition only.)
Two mid-century LIFE photo essays reveal the power of editorial selection to lie--or reveal truth.
$0.99 download for Kindle, for Nook, or for Sony Library Reader
Full Issue for Kindle ($3.96), for Nook ($6.95), or for Sony Reader ($4.70)
Southern Cultures, Volume 17, Number 2, Summer 2011: Photography II
Women Working
photography and interviews by Susan Harbage Page
When Susan Harbage Page worked in the early seventies alongside the women in this photo essay, in addition to friendships she also made a poignant record:"‘Rough. It is rough being a female.'"
$0.99 download for Kindle, for Nook, or for Sony Library Reader
Full Issue for Kindle ($3.96), for Nook ($6.95), or for Sony Reader ($4.70)
Southern Cultures, Volume 17, Number 2, Summer 2011: Photography II
Stereo Propaganda
featuring full-color mixed media by Lynn Marshall-Linnemeier
Old photographs meet new color, creating thoughtful new meanings
$0.99 download for Kindle, for Nook, or for Sony Library Reader.
Full Issue for Kindle ($3.96), for Nook ($6.95), or for Sony Reader ($4.70)
Southern Cultures, Volume 17, Number 2, Summer 2011: Photography II
Tara, the O'Haras, and the Irish Gone With the Wind
by Geraldine Higgins
"For feminist critics, Scarlett succeeds because she overthrows the restrictive conventions of the southern belle and embraces the freedoms of the independent new woman. Yet, as Margaret Mitchell shows, Scarlett is scarcely conscious of her proto-feminism."
Full Issue for Kindle ($6.95), for Nook ($6.95), or for Sony Reader ($6.95)
Southern Cultures, Volume 17, Number 1, Spring 2011: The Irish
Women Dancing With Babies on Their Hips
poetry by Cathy Smith Bowers
Full Issue for Kindle ($7.96), for Nook ($7.96), or for Sony Reader ($9.45)
Southern Cultures, Volume 16, Number 3, Fall 2010: Music IV
“I train the people to do their own talking”: Septima Clark and Women in the Civil Rights Movement
from interviews by Jacquelyn Dowd Hall and Eugene P. Walker
compiled by Katherine Mellen Charron and David P. Cline
introduced by Katherine Mellen Charron
“They don't give the women any of the glory.”
Full Issue for Kindle ($7.96) or for Nook ($8.35)
Southern Cultures, Volume 16, Number 2, Summer 2010: Southern Lives
“My Idol Was Langston Hughes”: The Poet, the Renaissance, and Their Enduring Influence
from a talk delivered by Margaret Walker Alexander
edited and introduced by William R. Ferris
“As a small child in the 1920s, I was very much affected by the Harlem Renaissance. As early as age eleven, I had read poetry by Langston Hughes.”
Full Issue for Kindle ($7.96) or for Nook ($8.35)
Southern Cultures, Volume 16, Number 2, Summer 2010: Southern Lives
Learning from the Long Civil Rights Movement’s First Generation: Virginia Foster Durr
from interviews by M. Sue Thrasher and Jacquelyn Dowd Hall
compiled and introduced by Sarah Thuesen
“So I took each in turn, and they told me why they hated white folks. This took quite a while, because they were extremely articulate about why they hated white folks.”
Full Issue for Kindle ($7.96) or for Nook ($8.35)
Southern Cultures, Volume 16, Number 2, Summer 2010: Southern Lives
The Long Gay Line: Gender and Sexual Orientation at The Citadel
by Steve Estes
“‘I’m going to get a blanket party tonight,’ he thought, fearing an infamous hazing ritual in which one group of cadets holds down a victim in bed, while another group pummels him. ‘Some guys are going to come in here and kick my ass.’”
Full Issue for Kindle ($7.96) or for Nook ($8.35)
Southern Cultures Volume 16, Number 1, Summer 2010: Southern Lives
Canning Tomatoes, Growing “Better and More Perfect Women”: The Girls’ Tomato Club Movement
by Elizabeth Engelhardt
“‘If somebody were to tell you that a group of little country girls who never have been near a big city have built up a business so large and important that papers all over the country are telling about it, you would think it was a new kind of fairy tale.’”
Southern Cultures, Volume 15, Number 4, Winter 2009: Food I
Thanksgiving Ghosts
by Mary Ann Sternberg
“‘Your cookbook,’ she related with obvious pride, ‘was published in 1897.’”
Southern Cultures, Volume 15, Number 4, Winter 2009: Food I
Blues Power in the Tuscarora Homeland: The Music of Pura Fé
by John W. Troutman
“Pura Fé has developed a highly unusual style of weaving a fast-paced and complex, sinewy web of notes to follow and accent her extraordinarily dynamic vocal range. . . a unique and engagingly melodic tour de force.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 15, Number 3, Fall 2009: Music III
Mill Mother’s Lament: Ella May Wiggins and the Gastonia Textile Strike of 1929
by Patrick Huber
“Ella May Wiggins, the ‘poet laureate’ of the Gastonia Textile Strike of 1929, was silenced by a mill thug’s bullet on September 14, 1929.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 15, Number 3, Fall 2009: Music III
Anya Jabour
Scarlett’s Sisters: Young Women in the Old South (review)
reviewed by Katy Simpson Smith
Southern Cultures, Volume 15, Number 1, Spring 2009
How W. E. B. DuBois Won the United Daughters of the Confederacy Essay Contest
by Bruce E. Baker
“Nearly a century ago W. E. B. DuBois won an essay contest sponsored by the United Daughters of the Confederacy—or at least, DuBois’s writing won the contest.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 15, Number 1, Spring 2009
Glimpses of a Nearby Nation: The Making of Catawba Pottery with Georgia Harris and Edith Harris Brown (Photo Essay)
by Lorene B. Harris, with photographs by Thomas J. Blume and with an introduction by Brett H. Riggs
"Like their ancestors for thousands of years, Catawba potters of the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries have continued to adapt their material traditions to ever-changing modern contexts. In the process, they create remarkably contemporary works of visual and tactile art."
Southern Cultures, Volume 14, Number 4, Winter 2008: First Peoples
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
Wendy Reed and Jennifer Horne, Editors
All Out of Faith: Southern Women on Spirituality (review)
reviewed by Barbara Brown Taylor
Southern Cultures, Volume 14, Number 1, Spring 2008
Fiction: Buffalo Gals
a story by Elaine Neil Orr
“A Buffalo Gal would not be bowled over by every little thing that came along.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 14, Number 1, Spring 2008
Gertrude Weil and Her Times
by Anne Firor Scott
"'Who knows? I may live long enough to become a communist!'"
Southern Cultures, Volume 13, Number 1, Spring 2007
Andrew Burstein
Jefferson's Secrets: Death and Desire at Monticello (review)
reviewed by Kristofer Ray
Southern Cultures, Volume 12, Number 2, Summer 2006: Tobacco
A New Cure for Brightleaf Tobacco:
The Origins of the Tobacco Queen during the Great Depression
by Blain Roberts
“‘ All decked out in tobacco leaves,’ the caption read, ‘she might be aptly termed Miss Venus.’”
Southern Cultures, Volume 12, Number 2, Summer 2006: Tobacco
A Valentine for Miss Welty
by Ann Taylor Peden
“Thank you, heart lady.”
Southern Cultures, Volume 11, Number 1, Spring 2005