The American South

Listen Up

• When Southerners Leave Home (6:34) is an NPR piece that looks at the particular problems experienced by Hurricane Katrina evacuees due to their being from the South.
• This NPR segment on Southern Identity (15:19) from Talk of the Nation,(10/1/2003) features Harry Watson, Director of the Center for the Study of the American South and bestselling novelist Pat Conroy.
• From WBUR in Boston comes this extended documentary, A Southern State of Mind: Inside Out (51:12). Senior correspondent Michael Goldfarb travels through the region trying to uncover changes in Southern identity as more and more people move into the region.

Write Now

• What regional group do you belong to, and how would you or others describe that group?
• It is hard, maybe impossible, to discuss a topic such as Southern identity (or Midwestern or California identity) without a certain amount of stereotyping. At the same time, we often hear that stereotyping is bad. Does that mean we shouldn’t discuss such an issue?

Read On

• More from Wikipedia on the American South