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Photograph of a dilapidated mall from the rear parking lot.

Mallstalgia

Once derided as cesspools of Reagan-era consumerist excess, the shopping mall somehow became an unlikely sort-of quasi-public space that is now disappearing.
by Jason Tebbe via Tropics of Meta on November 29, 2021
A woman giving a presentation about electric appliances to an audience of men and women.

Refrigerators and Women’s Empowerment

The “peaceful revolution” of rural electrification.
by Maddie Fowler via National Museum of American History on October 20, 2021
Depiction of an agricultural fair with crowds of people gathered around exhibit halls.

Slavery, Technology and the Social Origins of the US Agricultural State

Ariel Ron discusses the rise of the agricultural state in his book, Grassroots Leviathan: Agricultural Reform and the Rural North in the Slaveholding Republic.
by Ariel Ron via Broadstreet on September 3, 2021
Rural Electrification Administration (REA) erects telephone lines in rural areas.

The Legacy of the Rural Electrification Act and the Promise of Rural Broadband

The history of rural electrification demonstrates why vital public utilities cannot be left to the machinations of the market.
by Christopher Ali via LPE Project on July 12, 2021
Building with a currogated tin facade and sign saying "Richard Perkins Contractor"

The Anti-Nostalgia of Walker Evans

A recent biography reveals the many contradictions of the photographer who fastidiously documented postwar American life.
by Rahel Aima via The Nation on June 8, 2021
The plough, the loom and the anvil book drawing

In the Common Interest

How a grassroots movement of farmers laid the foundation for state intervention in the economy, challenging the slaveholding South.
by Nic Johnson, Chris Hong, Robert Manduca via Boston Review on May 18, 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
Pleasant Plains School in Hertford County, North Carolina, active 1920-1950.

How the Rosenwald Schools Shaped a Generation of Black Leaders

Photographer Andrew Feiler documented how the educational institutions shaped a generation of black leaders.
by Michael J. Solender via Smithsonian on March 30, 2021
Deputy sheriff at county fair in Gonzales, Texas.

New Sheriff in Town

Law enforcement and the urban-rural divide.
by Jonathon Booth via The Drift on February 3, 2021
A photo of a gas station.

Our Interminable Election Eve

William Eggleston’s photographs of the South on the eve of the 1976 election captured an eerie quiet.
by Jonah Goldman Kay via The Paris Review on November 5, 2020
A graphic for the Federal Theatre Project.

Can We Save American Theater by Reviving a Bold Idea from the 1930s?

The Federal Theatre Project put dramatic artists to work — and we could do it again.
by Wendy Smith via The National Book Review on November 1, 2020
A violinist and a guitarist play at a square dance in Mcintosh County, Oklahoma.

Government Song Women

The Resettlement Administration was one of the New Deal’s most radical, far-reaching, and highly criticized programs, and it lasted just two years.
by Sheryl Kaskowitz via Humanities on May 1, 2020

Keeping the Country

In southwest Florida, the Myakka River Valley — a place of mystery and myth — is under threat of development.
by Michael Adno via The Bitter Southerner on January 28, 2020

The Broken Road of Peggy Wallace Kennedy

All white Southerners live with the sins of their fathers. But what if your dad was one of the most famous segregationists in history?
by Frye Gaillard via The Bitter Southerner on January 6, 2020
Illustration of WWI soldiers hiking thorugh a field; the painting uses light pastel colors and surrounds the soldiers with mist

On the Sexist Reception of Willa Cather’s World War I Novel

From Hemingway to Mencken, no one thought a woman could write about combat.
by Rebecca Onion via Literary Hub on October 21, 2019

The Commercial Rise of Country Music During the Great Depression

The Depression was the gravitational pull that created country stars and their nationwide universe of listeners.
by Christopher C. Gorham via We're History on October 7, 2019
Street sign for Flatville, surrounded by flat agricultural fields.

The View from the Middle of Everything

Dispatches From Flatville, Illinois.
by Kristin L. Hoganson via Literary Hub on April 25, 2019
Abandoned house surrounded by water.

Chronicling the End Times on Tangier Island

Earl Swift’s Chesapeake Requiem looks at life on a beautiful, vanishing Virginia island in Chesapeake Bay.
by Mickie Meinhardt via The Bitter Southerner on December 4, 2018

California Wildfires Have Been Fought by Prisoners Since World War II

The war had turned forestry work into a form of civil defense, and prisoners a new army on the home front.
by Volker Janssen via HISTORY on November 13, 2018

Confederate Pride and Prejudice

Some white Northerners see a flag rooted in racism as a symbol of patriotism.
by Frances Stead Sellers via Washington Post on October 22, 2018

Living with Dolly Parton

Asking difficult questions often comes at a cost.
by Jessica Wilkerson via Longreads on October 16, 2018

Sears’s ‘Radical’ Past

How mail-order catalogues subverted the racial hierarchy of Jim Crow.
by Antonia Noori Farzan via Washington Post on October 16, 2018

The Body in Poverty

The decline of America’s rural health system and its toll on my family.
by Sarah Smarsh via The Nation on September 26, 2018

The Value of Farmland: Rural Gentrification and the Movement to Stop Sprawl

Rapidly rising metropolitan land value can mean "striking gold" for some landowners while threatening the livelihood of others.
by Angela Hope Stiefbold via The Metropole on September 12, 2018
partner

The Legendary Language of the Appalachian "Holler"

Is the unique dialect a vestige of Elizabethan England? Left over from Scots-Irish immigrants? Or something else altogether?
by Chi Luu via JSTOR Daily on August 8, 2018
Drawing of two laborers in a vast agricultural field with a farmhouse in the background.

A Family From High Plains

Sappony tobacco farmers across generations, and across state borders, when North Carolina and Virginia law diverged on tribal recognition, education, and segregation.
by Nick Martin via Splinter on August 2, 2018
Photo of young woman looking at camera in blue-walled room. Above her an image of Jesus Christ is framed. Through the room's window a shirtless man can be seen on a porch, also facing the camera

Left Behind

J.D. Vance's "Hillbilly Elegy" and Steven Stoll's "Ramp Hollow" both remind us that the history of poor and migratory people in Appalachia is a difficult story to tell.
by Nancy Isenberg via New York Review of Books on June 28, 2018
partner

Susan Fenimore Cooper, Forgotten Naturalist

Susan Fenimore Cooper is now being recognized as one of the nation's first environmentalists.
by Rochelle Johnson, Matthew Wills via JSTOR Daily on May 31, 2018

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

How Congress Used the Post Office to Unite the Nation

Trump says Amazon is scamming the USPS. But its low shipping rates were a game changer for rural America.
by Stephen Mihm via Bloomberg on April 4, 2018
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