The New Southern Studies and Rethinking the Question, “Is There Still a South?”

Abstract

Thinking about the approach and scholarship called the New Southern Studies takes me back to the first years in my position in southern studies and history at the University of Mississippi. When I started that job in 1988, I had a great deal to learn, especially about the recent and contemporary South. So I turned to the best scholarly books I could find, especially those by my fellow historians and also by social scientists, literary scholars, music scholars, and folklorists.