Essay
“The phrase ‘abolitionist South’ pulls us back to the region’s traumatic and violent history of slavery and Emancipation but also anchors us in a radical present.” In this issue of Southern Cultures, we examine the abolitionist South. This phrase pulls us back to the region’s traumatic and violent history of slavery and Emancipation—brought to life most »
Essay
“Discovering the North Carolina coast has felt like coming home, and its food and the fishing community who make it possible are at the heart of that homecoming.” We’re going coastal in this issue. Coastal food politics, cultures, and economies have always been a complicated mélange of people competing to utilize changing lands, waters, plants, »
Essay
“My family reaches out of these photographs, pushing through time to remind me of the challenges they faced—of flood, pandemic, racial violence, and debt—the same challenges we face today.” In this moment, when connection remains paramount as our lives have shifted to isolation and virtual interaction, I picture an imaginary gathering of the captivating southern »
“Throughout the nation food strongly defines ethnic and regional identity. But in the South, and especially in the Delta, a region scarred by war, slavery, and the aftermath of reconstruction and segregation, food is especially important.” Mention “The Delta” and vivid images come to mind of a dramatic, flat landscape etched by rows of cotton »
“‘I know your damned photographer’s soul writhes, but to hell with it. Do you think I give a damn about a photographer’s soul with Hitler at our doorstep?’” A vast network of reform spread across the South in the first decades of the twentieth century as an army of progressive southerners, white and black, struggled »
Essay
“My civil engineer grandfather and father dealt with the ill-fated consequences of government programs to control and contain the Mississippi River in their lifetimes.” This issue takes me to the cultural inheritance from my own family and visceral memories of the extensive cropland, impenetrable forests, mysterious swamps, bayous, and waterways of northeastern Arkansas, where I »
Essay
“I witness the ‘absent presence’ of disability evident in the many walkers, canes, hearing aids, caregivers, silences, missing partners, and repetitive stories that fill the hallways and dining room.” “I am perfectly able to care for myself,” my ninety-seven-year-old mother, Huddy, says to me with a deep sigh. I hear the frustration and anger in her »
Essay
“The right to vote remains the most essential key to freedom and choice in all aspects of our lives.” As we move through these fraught days in America, watching with horror the incomprehensible destruction and death in Israel, Gaza, and Ukraine, I ponder if we are living in more historic, troubling times than generations before »
Essay
“I am struck by the deeply physical and emotional engagement with landscape that these scholars, writers, and artists reveal.” Welcome to this special Human/Nature issue of Southern Cultures. We are honored to have historian Andy Horowitz as our guest editor, on the heels of his brilliant new book Katrina: A History, 1915–2015, published in 2020. »
“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.” Along with talent and energy, Elvis brought a sexual charisma into the music business that his colleagues did not possess. Certainly »
Essay
“As we witness their labor and listen to the rising voices of women, we see resolute strength, vigilance, outrage, art, and agency.” On the occasion of this special issue focused on women—thanks to our whip-smart guest editor, historian Jessica Wilkerson—I am grateful for the virtual women’s community I access online in these continued months of »