“It’s not hard to see how nostalgia could become a southern theme song.” “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” William Faulkner’s most famous line comes up a lot whenever people discuss the American South. The way some people interpret it, the idea seems to be that the future never happens down South; »
“One of the challenges—and, simultaneously, deep pleasures—of studying the South is that the disciplinary walls of the academy neither contain nor constrain the work.” What makes the South a region distinct from its surroundings, and what makes it tick? These sorts of questions are at the heart of Southern Studies, an enterprise unbounded by academic »
“How long could slavery have continued to yield adequate financial returns to owners, putting aside any benefits in terms of non-pecuniary factors, such as the consumption of power, prestige, or the love to domineer?” Although some obscurantist southerners, a century and a half after secession, still believe slavery tangential, if not incidental, to the coming »
“The plantation’s residents were such voracious drinkers that the remains of wine bottles were the most reliable way to date colonial discoveries during excavation of the old fort site.” Visitors to Wormsloe Historic Site near Savannah, Georgia, enter what appears to be an impressively preserved Old South plantation. Guests pass through a massive stone and »
“Little notice has been given to Plaquemines Parish, where few structures escaped damage from Katrina, and where the region south of Port Sulphur looked like a bombed-out war zone. Yet this isolated parish suffered only four deaths and two missing in Katrina, out of a population of 27,000.” Create a place and there will always »
“Many people viewed the extreme disorder after Hurrican Katrina as the failure of a comprehensive system of public works and emergency preparedness they assumed was designed to ensure safety and security. No such system exists.” Many people viewed the extreme disorder after Hurricane Katrina as the failure of a comprehensive system of public works and »
“The New Orleans Times-Picayune argued it was ‘fortunate that being naked in other cities doesn’t produce the same je ne sais quoi as stripping on a Bourbon Street balcony. Otherwise the tourism revenue we count on from Carnival might remain locked in coffers not our own.’” There was not much color in Aggieland—at least not »
Poetry
I didn’t tell the water it was a pitchfork.I believe the water believed it was a tridenton account of the family resemblance.The road had disappeared, the field,the sundial was about to go under, meaning shadowswould have been unable to stay on schedule.When I touched the water with the pitchfork,it stopped rising, and for a week, »
Southern Missouri State University Press, 2006 These are the final lines of Mary Leary’s poem, “New Orleans (Big Stuff),” and they speak well not only for the victims of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, waiting on roofs or in shelters for help during and after the storm, but also for the voices collected here, in Hurricane »
“Bloated corpses bobbing in the streets. Entire communities scoured down to the sand, scarcely one brick atop another. The Superdome and Convention Center, proud symbols of urban greatness, bursting with human misery. Police taking aim at desperate survivors . . .” Bloated corpses bobbing in the streets. Entire communities scoured down to the sand, scarcely »
“How can an almost seventy-year-old film, sensationalizing an event eighty-five years prior, so accurately reflect the details of present-day disaster? The film wasn’t depicting something analogous to Katrina as much as it was almost predicting Katrina.” Consider the following narrative: Just before the disaster hit New Orleans, authorities urged every able citizen to leave at »
“The dooway to Number Five suddenly opened directly onto an ocean writhing in fury. The front rooms no longer existed. The floor of the hallway had been sucked into the surf.” Editor’s Note: Positioned just east of the eye of the storm, Bay St. Louis and Waveland, Mississippi, suffered the brunt of Katrina’s wrath. Winds »