“The narrative that follows is a quintessential American story.” I first met John Henry Martin in the summer of 1978, five years after I had joined the faculty in the School of Public Health of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Our meeting was arranged by a mutual acquaintance, a perceptive public health »
“With virtually each passing year, the South’s representation in the humanities becomes more elusive.” With virtually each passing year, the South’s representation in the humanities becomes more elusive. To be sure, programs in “southern studies” abound, and some scholars continue to specialize in southern history or literature. But the South that figures in their pages »
“Are the days of the southern accent or the southern dialect in fact numbered?” In May of 1986, newspapers throughout the South ran a feature story about a southern linguist who’d been researching the region’s speech. Local papers topped the story with catchy headlines like “Southern Accent Here to Stay,” “Ain’t No Cause fuh Alahm, »
Essay
In light of the events in Charlottesville on Saturday, August 12, we share this excerpted essay from our 1993 inaugural issue. In 1901, the speaker at the dedication of the Olivia Raney Library in Raleigh, North Carolina, compared the city’s landmarks with those of Washington, D.C. In the national capital, “three great architectural monuments” possessed »
As we start to celebrate our 25th year of publication, we look back at the first essay in our inaugural issue. Welcome to the first issue of Southern Cultures, a new quarterly of the American South. As always, the South attracts a considerable share of attention today, from defenders and detractors, reformers and traditionalists, historians, »