History

Reading Jack Temple Kirby’s “Media-Made Dixie” (1986)

from Groundwork, the editor’s blog

Historian Jack Temple Kirby’s 1986 book Media-Made Dixie focuses on how the overall image of the South, including the South’s own understanding of itself…

Watching “The Neutral Ground” from POV on PBS

“The Neutral Ground” dives into the complex issue of…

A Road Trip, Southbound: Highway 31

Most folks would stay on the interstate rather than getting off I-65 at Atmore to take Highway 31 to continue south to Baldwin County. Interstate 65 is the main southern route from Alabama’s capitol city Montgomery to its main port city Mobile, but it is also one of…

The Outro: There never was one South.

The South can no more be embodied by Julia Sugarbaker than it can by Joe Christmas, but it also can’t be fully what it is without them…

Melding in McCormick

Republished from “Nobody’s Home,” an essay by Pilar DiPietro

Salt, Nails, and Prayer

Republished from “Nobody’s Home,” an essay by W. Charlene LeBrun

Sports are a major component of Southern culture, and each of them has its own beliefs, myths, and narratives. In the minds of athletes, coaches, and…

Reading “Myth and Southern History,” Volume 2: The New South

from “Groundwork,” the editor’s blog

The Myth and Southern History series jumped right out at me when I was looking for books to read for this project, and it was Volume 2: The…

Five More Historians and Journalists on the Modern South

The infinite variety of Southern mythology could be catalogued and analyzed endlessly. A suggestive list would include the Proslavery South; the Confederate South; the Demagogic South; the States Rights South; the Fighting South…

Reading Stephen A. Smith’s “Myth, Media, and the Southern Mind”

How did the South try to reinvent itself in the 1970s and ‘80s?

1986 was a quite a while ago. It was the era of floppy disks, landline telephones, VCRs…