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Harvard University President Drew Gilpin Faust in 2009.

The Bleak, All But-Forgotten World of Segregated Virginia

Former Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust’s extraordinary memoir recalls painful memories for her--and me.
by Garrett Epps via Washington Monthly on November 8, 2023
Flag of the Confederacy

The United States of Confederate America

Support for Confederate symbols and monuments follows lines of race, religion, and education rather than geography.
by David A. Graham via The Atlantic on October 4, 2022
The author at a Feminary Collective meeting with co-members Eleanor Holland (left) and Helen Langa (center) in Durham. Photo by Elena Freedom.

The Queer South: Where The Past is Not Past, and The Future is Now

Minnie Bruce Pratt shares her own story as a lesbian within the South, and the activism that occurred and the activism still ongoing.
by Minnie Bruce Pratt via Scalawag on January 27, 2020
Sunrise view with a marsh waterfront.

Why My Students Don’t Call Themselves ‘Southern’ Writers

On reckoning with a fraught literary history.
by Katy Simpson Smith via Literary Hub on March 13, 2019

William Ferris: The Man Who Shared Our Voices

An interview with the legendary folklorist, who fundamentally changed America’s understanding of the South.
by Chuck Reece via The Bitter Southerner on May 30, 2018

The Premiere of 'Four Women Artists'

In this 1977 documentary, the spirit of Southern culture is captured through four Mississippi artists who tell their stories.
by Nicole Rudick via The Paris Review on May 29, 2018

Lynyrd Skynyrd: Inside the Band's Complicated History With the South

The Southern-rock group is much different than the one Ronnie Van Zant led in the Seventies.
by Stephen Thomas Erlewine via Rolling Stone on May 15, 2018
Vintage Georgia postcard.

The Un-Pretty History Of Georgia's Iconic Peach

Why are Georgia peaches so iconic? The answer has a lot to do with slavery — its end and a need for the South to rebrand itself.
by Tove Danovich via NPR on July 21, 2017

The Georgia Peach May Be Vanishing, but Its Mythology Is Alive and Well

It's been a tough year for the Georgia peach.
by William Thomas Okie via The Conversation on July 20, 2017

As God Is My Witness

A year-long series of photographs and stories that explain the struggle between the old South and the new.
by Johnathon Kelso via The Bitter Southerner on April 4, 2017
Statute of Robert E. Lee in Richmond, Virginia, with construction hook ready to remove it.
partner

History Shows the Danger of Comparing Trump to Jesus

It’s important to remember why analogies to Jesus should stay out of the political realm. The results are always ugly.
by Laura Brodie via Made By History on March 29, 2024
A photograph of George Washington Cable with Mark Twain.

The Dying Pelican

Romanticism, local color, and nostalgic New Orleans.
by Eleanor Stern via 64 Parishes on February 29, 2024
Collage of African Americans' faces.

Specters of the Mythic South

How plantation fiction fixed ghost stories to Black Americans.
by Alena Pirok via Southern Cultures on January 24, 2024
Shadowy photo of a man making scarecrow out of a plastic bag and can.

What Has Been Will Be Again

A new documentary photography project grapples with manifestations of a problematic past resurfacing in present-day Alabama.
by Jared Ragland, Catherine Wilkins via Southern Cultures on January 24, 2024
An engraving of Mrs. David Meade Randolph by Charle de Saint-Mémin.

Southern Hospitality? The Abstracted Labor of the Whole Pig Roast

Barbecue is a cornerstone of American cuisine, containing all of the contradictions of the country itself.
by Jessica Carbone via Perspectives on History on January 19, 2024
Leaders of the 1963 March on Washington posing in front of the statue of Abraham Lincoln, Lincoln Memorial. August 28, 1963.

How the 1619 Project Distorted History

The 1619 Project claimed to reveal the unknown history of slavery. It ended up helping to distort the real history of slavery and the struggle against it.
by James Oakes via Jacobin on December 27, 2023
A series of headshots of the members of R.E.M..

Was It Cooler Back Then?

A search for the memory of R.E.M. in Athens, Georgia.
by Benjamin Hedin via Oxford American on December 5, 2023
Hank Williams Jr.

Whose Country?

It is impossible to talk about the blues and country without talking about race, authenticity, and contemporary America’s relationship to its past.
by Geoff Mann via New York Review of Books on November 2, 2023
Shelby Foote with a drawing of a Civil War battle superimposed over him.

The South’s Jewish Proust

Shelby Foote, failed novelist and closeted member of the Tribe, turned the Civil War into a masterpiece of American literature.
by Blake Smith via Tablet on September 6, 2023
An illustration of Lucinda Williams in a storm with debris in the air behind her.

Lucinda Williams and the Idea of Louisiana

An exploration of the family stories, Southern territory, and distortions of memory that Lucinda Williams' songwriting evokes.
by Wyatt Williams via The Bitter Southerner on September 5, 2023
Black and white photograph of a man. The main has his hair styled to point upwards, and a tattoo of the word Mississippi on his back.

Where Does the South Begin?

A new history cuts against stereotypes, to show a region constantly changing—and whose future is up for grabs.
by Scott Wasserman Stern via The New Republic on June 26, 2023
A blue sign reads "It's Time to Vote Y'all"

'Y'all,' That Most Southern of Southernisms, is Going Mainstream – And It's About Time

The use of ‘y'all’ has often been seen as vulgar, low-class and uncultured. That’s starting to change.
by David B. Parker via The Conversation on November 29, 2022
Two rosin potatoes sitting on newspaper.

The Elusive Roots of Rosin Potatoes

A talk with family, turpentine workers, historians, chefs, foresters, and beer brewers to get to the root of the rosin potato's origins.
by Caroline Hatchett via The Bitter Southerner on November 22, 2022
Pubs and Bars having colorful lights and decorations in the French Quarter

Sex, Race, and Gender in Bounce Music Culture

Bounce is defined by its “up-tempo, call-and-response, heavy base, ass-shaking music” and by its transgressively liberatory power.
by Hettie Williams via Black Perspectives on October 25, 2022
Map of the United States South from 1857

Imani Perry’s Capacious History of the South

Contrary to popular belief, the South has always been the key to defining the promise and limits of American democracy.
by Robert Greene II via The Nation on September 17, 2022
Charles Chesnutt portrait

The Atlantic Writers Project: Charles Chesnutt

A contemporary Atlantic writer reflects on one of the voices from the magazine's archives who helped shape the publication—and the nation.
by Imani Perry via The Atlantic on July 11, 2022
Stock photo of tomatoes.

The Southern Story of Tomatoes

Tales of the treasured South American-born, Southern-bred vegetable (yes, vegetable).
by Caroline Sanders Clements via Garden & Gun on June 8, 2022
Photo of Union commanders.

The Anti-Lee

George Henry Thomas, southerner in blue.
by Kenly Stewart via Emerging Civil War on September 2, 2021
Cartoon depiction of a confederate statue, its hat falling off as it is lifted off a pedestal covered in graffiti about love and justice

After the Lost Cause

Why are politics so consumed with the past?
by Benjamin Wallace-Wells via The New Yorker on June 24, 2021
Map of the Appalachian mountain range

The Making of Appalachian Mississippi

“Mississippi’s white Appalachians may have owned the earth, but they could never own the past.”
by Justin Randolph via Southern Cultures on May 14, 2021
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