Southern Cultures: The Fifteenth Anniversary Reader

New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture: Volume 1: Religion

From the very beginning the South was different. The source and significance of this difference has been debated and discussed for over 200 years. In recent decades, the demise of the South as a regional culture has frequently been predicted, although now some scholars and journalists are maintaining that it is proving to be remarkably resilient and is actually having an ever greater influence on the broader American culture. Southern Culture examines the origins and evolution of the region's culture and focuses on six key patterns that have defined it: agrarianism, class relations, race relations, gender and family traditions, evangelical Christianity, and political traditions. Southern Culture also explores the products of the culture with major sections on dialect, painting, architecture, pottery, music, literature, and icons and myths. It concludes with essays by each of the authors in which they reflect on where Southern culture is headed. Professors, to see an annotated list of helpful links to accompany Southern Culture, click here "Three community college instructors combine their long experience in teaching English, history, and sociology in North Carolina (Vance-Granville Community College) to provide an interdisciplinary introductory text well worth adoption. Beck, Frandsen, and Randall meet well the challenge of merging humanities and social science approaches to regional studies by examining six focal areas: race, class, politics, family, religion, and agrarianism. ... Highly recommended." - Choice Magazine ". . . a scholarly resource that also is fun to read." -- Durham Herald Sun

Together, and separately, black and white Baptists created different but intertwined cultures that profoundly shaped the South. Adopting a biracial and bicultural focus, Paul Harvey works to redefine southern religious history, and by extension southern c

The contemporary American South is a region of economic expansion, political sophistication, and, particularly, cultural ferment. Its literature is well-known and celebrated. But what of the popular cultural forms of expression that have done so much to reflect the curious tensions between the traditional South—white-dominated, rural, religous—and contemporary multicultural forms and discourses? This collection offers a wealth of exciting new perspectives on cultural studies in general and of the particular forms of popular Southern culture—from rock and roll to Cajun music to the impact on the South of tourism and the questions of genre and race in contemporary film-making.

The fifth volume of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture explores language and dialect in the South, including English and its numerous regional variants, Native American languages, and other non-English languages spoken over time by the region's immigrant communities. Among the more than sixty entries are eleven on indigenous languages and major essays on French, Spanish, and German. Each of these provides both historical and contemporary perspectives, identifying the language's location, number of speakers, vitality, and sample distinctive features. The book acknowledges the role of immigration in spreading features of Southern English to other regions and countries and in bringing linguistic influences from Europe and Africa to Southern English. The fascinating patchwork of English dialects is also fully presented, from African American English, Gullah, and Cajun English to the English spoken in Appalachia, the Ozarks, the Outer Banks, the Chesapeake Bay Islands, Charleston, and elsewhere. Topical entries discuss ongoing changes in the pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar of English in the increasingly mobile South, as well as naming patterns, storytelling, preaching styles, and politeness, all of which deal with ways language is woven into southern culture.

Still the South.