University of North Carolina Press, 2006 Defining a boundaried and distinctive South has never been easy, and there is a recent tendency for the regional narrative to fragment and blur into national and international trends. Histories of “the American South” are still published, but for college classroom use rather than a large public readership. It »
“Who knows? I may live long enough to become a communist!” North Carolina has been home to many remarkable women, and in this galaxy the name Gertrude Weil shines bright. Born in 1879 into a family that was virtually synonymous with the history of Goldsboro, North Carolina, forty years later she was one of the »
“Owing to the soaring prices of pharmaceuticals, I thought it wise to track down a woman who is known for brewing an old-time, all-purpose Alabama cure-all: cow-manure tea.” Owing to the soaring prices of pharmaceuticals, I thought it wise to track down a woman who is known for brewing that old-time, all-purpose Alabama cure-all, cow-manure »
“Brother Dave Gardner once cracked that ‘the only reason people live in the North is because they have jobs there.’” The southern comedian Brother Dave Gardner once cracked that “the only reason people live in the North is because they have jobs there.” He added, “You never heard of nobody retiring to the North, have »
“I shot primarily under low light, which allowed mystery to sink into each image and space.” The Wilderness Act of 1964 allowed Americans to enter certain lands, but it also urged them to make their visits brief and leave no mark. My photographs represent the relationship between nature and those traces of cultural objects or »
“The devil was in the grocery store yesterday . . .” The first year of graduate school, it was the questionsthat woke me every night at 3 a.m. When will they figure out I’m an impostor, and I can’t do the work?How do I deal with the students in my own class? What can I do »
“The South, of course, is not what it once was.” Many photographers have documented the American South, and the region’s archives reveal scenes of people and places now familiar—rural landscapes, tobacco factories, sharecroppers, the hard-working poor—classic images Marion Post Walcott, Walker Evans, and many others have preserved with powerful lenses. The South, of course, is »
“More of the same is not going to work, because you can only get so many BMWs.” As South Carolina entered the twenty-first century, a growing sense of concern about the effectiveness of the state’s long-standing economic development policy emerged. From 1950 through 1980, South Carolina enjoyed remarkable success in the area of economic development. »
“Against the brutal backdrop of its own history Angola now poses itself as a progressive prison.” When I entered the grounds of Louisiana State Penitentiary, I saw a maze of rawhide belts and purses, paintings reminiscent of a back aisle thrift store, and elaborate wooden objects that evoked the country crafts of my southern childhood. »
“Machelhe Island was, like the river itself, an inescapable daily sight in this old town, a swampy elongation stretching from Camden Way toward us in town, pinching the river at The Narrows and then letting it–maybe making it–spread out to the southeast and quickly widen and become a bay.” One summer day some years ago, »
“In the good old days, I’ll have you know, ‘nostalgia’ was just a fancy term for homesickness.” Southerners, unite. It’s time we put a stop to pernicious innovations. Even nostalgia is not what it used to be. In the good old days, I’ll have you know, “nostalgia” was just a fancy term for homesickness. Nowadays, »
“Until the announcement in 2005 of the rediscovery of the ivory-bill, there had not been a broadly accepted ivory-bill for sixty years.” Among birders in the South, the Ivory-billed Woodpecker is a haunting presence whose status is debated at ornithological meetings, in popular media outlets and leading scientific journals, and on birding web sites such »