Take On The South

The story of the South is also the story of Civil Rights.  On this episode of Take on the South, we explore how the Civil Rights Movement has shaped the South and how the story continues to unfold.  Mark Smith is joined by Professor Bobby Donaldson, a professor in the History department and Director of the Center for Civil Rights History and Research, at the University of South Carolina, who shares some remarkable stories about Civil Rights in the American South.

This special episode of Take on the South is a compilation of short segments from the students in the Spring 2024 course Popular Musics of the US South. Each student discusses the history of a particular pop music artist or genre with roots in the South. The students featured in this episode are Brooks Bishop, Josh Browning, Will Byars, Justin Gilbert, Jorden Jeffers, Annie Matson, Chris Nash, Cameran Peake, Logan Rodgers, and Wilson Stokes. 

Emily Allen interviews Dr. Sophia Enríquez, who is the Andrew W. Mellon assistant Professor Music, Latino/a Studies, and Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies at Duke University. They discuss her work with Latino communities in Appalachia, the US South, and Mexico. 

What are the origins of higher education? Who were the key figures in its invention and subsequent entrenchment?  What role did the South play in its emergence?  And where is higher education today? To help answer these questions, Mark Smith is joined by Dr. Michael T. Benson, president and professor of history at Coastal Carolina University who discusses his recently published book, Daniel Coit Gilman and the Birth of the American Research University.

Twenty years ago, Harvard University's Henry Louis Gates, Jr. found, verified, and published what proved to be the first novel written by an African American woman in America: The Bondswoman's Narrative by Hannah Crafts. However, little to nothing was known about Crafts' own life--until now. Mark Smith is joined by Furman University's Gregg Hecimovich, author of The Life and Times of Hannah Crafts: The True Story of The Bondwoman's Narrative, to discuss her remarkable life, the story of his work to piece together Crafts' biography, and the complexity of social interactions in the Old South.

In this episode Ebony Toussaint interviews John Jennings, a Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of California at Riverside. He is also the director of Abrams ComicArts imprint Megascope, which publishes graphic novels focused on hip hop, Afrofuturism, and horror. In this interview we explore Southern folklore, his Mississippi roots, and the phrase Jennings co-created, the Ethnogothic.

Mark Smith is joined by Ed Madden, former poet laureate of Columbia, SC, to talk about the role of poetry in recording the history and exploring the places of Southern cities.

In this episode Emily Allen interviews Burgin Mathews, who is a writer, a radio host, and the founding director of the nonprofit Southern Music Research Center. He also published the book Magic City: How the Birmingham Jazz Tradition Shaped the Sound of America in 2023 with the University of North Carolina Press. 

Two Englishmen, our own Mark Smith and Dr. Clive Webb, Professor of Modern American History at the University of Sussex, sit down to discuss their very British perspectives on writing the history of the American South. What are the differences in American and British approaches to the topic? What challenges face the British academy and how Britons study the South? The two also discuss Dr. Webb's work, including Fight Against Fear: Southern Jews and Black Civil Rights and Rabble Rousers: The American Far Right in the Civil Rights Era.

Emily Allen chats with Marvin McNeill about African American military bands, college marching bands, and brass bands in the South and beyond. McNeill, a Ph.D. candidate in Ethnomusicology at Wesleyan University, is Assistant Professor of Music and African American Studies at the Oxford College of Emory University.  In this conversation, he centers on the brass band Funky Dawgz, the TBC Brass Band, and the Morgan State University marching band.

Mark Smith is joined by Neil Kinghan, author of A Brief Moment in the Sun: Francis Cardozo and Reconstruction in South Carolina to discuss the life and legacy of one of the more fascinating forgotten figures in American history, the Reconstruction-era South Carolina politician and reformer Francis Cardozo.

Mark Smith is joined by Sarah Gardner of Mercer University to talk about the role the English playwright William Shakespeare played in the military, political, and interpersonal life of the American Civil War.

Mark Smith is joined by Rachel Gordin Barnett and Lyssa Kligman Harvey, authors of the new book Kugels and Collards: Stories of Food, Family, and Tradition in Jewish South Carolina to discuss the role of food in situating Jews into the rich story of the South across the generations.

September 22-24th was Family Weekend at the University of South Carolina, and we in Southern Studies held an open house for students, parents, and family members to come in and tell their Southern stories. This episode features highlights from that open house, with reactions to the South from two Iranians, a New Englander parsing what "just Southern enough" means, and a native Carolinian sharing how she fell in love with home after having trouble finding something to eat in Germany.

Mark Smith is joined by Matt Simmons and G.C. Ramey, president of the Gamecock Bourbon Society, for a conversation on bourbon: the regulations that govern it, the history behind it, the stories it tells, how it is produced, the relationship between marketing and storytelling, and the glories of Old Granddad 114.

Mark Smith sits down with James Williams, CEO of Columbia, SC-based Food People Restaurant Group, to discuss the challenges and opportunities of doing business in the South. Along the way, they discuss why struggles with access to capital continue to lead so many Southern entrepreneurs leaving the region and why so many eventually return home. Finally, how does Southern hospitality shape how business is done in the South, and what does the future for entrepreneurship in the region look like?

Mark Smith sits down with Stephanie Melora, owner of Southern Cypress Tattoos in Columbia, SC, to discuss the culture of tattooing in the South and the regulatory environment around tattooing in South Carolina. Find Stephanie on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/s_melora_tattoos/https://www.instagram.com/southerncypress_tattoo Subscribe to our YouTube Channel

Mark Smith is joined by Matt Childs, professor of history at the University of South Carolina, to discuss the longstanding connections between the South, Latin America, and the Caribbean. They discuss shared cultural practices, economic realities, and histories and the idea that, in some ways, the South has always been akin to the more southerly parts of the Americas than the US North. Childs argues that, in order to understand the South as more than simply "the place that is not the North," we need to place the region into hemispheric and global contexts, looking for places of interconnection that transcend national borders.

Jennifer Gunter spoke with the poet, Christian J. Collier. He is a Black, Southern writer, arts organizer, and teaching artist who resides in Chattanooga, Tennessee. His works have appeared in several journals and poetry reviews. A 2015 Loft Spoken Word Immersion Fellow, he is also the winner of the 2020 ProForma Contest and the 2019-2020 Seven Hills Review Poetry Contest. His most recent work The Gleaming of the Blade,  was named the 2021 Frost Place Competition Editors’ Selection.   They discussed the parameters of spoken word and the power of language.  Collier also talked about ways he uses race as a way at getting at a number of other issues such as intimacy and vulnerability. His take on the South is that we exist in a multitude of Souths, some not necessarily evident to all residents.

We're back with another conversation! Just in time for the Kentucky Derby, Mark Smith is joined by Dr. Gabi Kuenzli of the USC history department for a discussion of the role of horse racing in the South. What's the historical background of the sport in the region? How does horse racing point to the ways in which the South has long been a global phenomenon, particularly in its connections with Latin America? Video version of this conversation: https://youtu.be/CFMYmk1u_Gk Subscribe to our YouTube Channel!