Rethink Stereotypes of the South

Rethink Stereotypes of the South

“Why do so many people think the South is so bad?” one of my international students asked me this winter on the first day of a class I taught about Southern history and culture. “I think it’s pretty great here.” Lacking a good reply, “me too” was all I could muster....
Southern Discomfort

Southern Discomfort

For a century after losing the Civil War, the South was America’s own colonial backwater—“not quite a nation within a nation, but the next thing to it,” W. J. Cash wrote in his classic 1941 study, “The Mind of the South.” From Tyler, Texas, to Roanoke, Virginia,...
Rethink Stereotypes of the South

Guns a Loaded Issue in South

When President Obama said in his State of the Union address that “This time is different,” referring to his push for tighter gun-control laws, he wasn’t just whistling Dixie. Analysts seeking insight into the gun debate need look no further than the land of cotton,...
The Civil War & American Art

The Civil War & American Art

More Americans were killed in the American Civil War than in all the other wars of the 20th century put together. The late great art critic, Robert Hughes, waxed poetic about its impact on American art in his sweeping 1997 work, American Visions. “It swallowed up the...