The Upland South is a regional band of natural beauty that runs from Virginia and North Carolina west through Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Texas and their bordering states. This book explores the region's character through an analysis of its traditional cultural landscape.

" ÒA woman was sitting on the witness stand, and the lawyer asked her, ÔDid you, or did you not, on the night of June 23rd have sex with a hippie on the back of a motorcycle in a peach orchard?Õ She thought for a few minutes, then said, ÔWhat was that date again?ÕÓÑfrom the book Lawyers have long been known as master storytellers, and those from Kentucky are certainly no exception. Veteran oral historian and folklorist Lynwood Montell has collected tales from dozens of lawyers and judges from throughout the Bluegrass State, ranging from the story about the tough Jackson County judge who fined himself for being late to court to unwelcome dogs in the courtroom. Recorded just as they have been told for generations, these stories are sometimes funny, sometimes sad or frightening, sometimes raw and harrowing, but always remarkable. Far more than collection of lawyer jokes, Tales from Kentucky Lawyers recounts the most insightful, entertaining, and occasionally heartbreaking stories ever told by and about Kentucky lawyers and their clients, covering the spectrum from arson to homicide, domestic disagreements to sexual abuse, and everything in between. Tales from Kentucky Lawyers is a valuable resource for folklorists as well as an entertaining and vivid account of the often-surprising legal world.

In 1929, in a remote county of the Arkansas Ozarks, the gruesome murder of harmonica-playing drifter Connie Franklin and the brutal rape of his teenaged fiancée captured the attention of a nation on the cusp of the Great Depression. National press from coast to coast ran stories of the sensational exploits of night-riding moonshiners, powerful "Barons of the Hills," and a world of feudal oppression in the isolation of the rugged Ozarks. The ensuing arrest of five local men for both crimes and the confusion and superstition surrounding the trial and conviction gave Stone County a dubious and short-lived notoriety. Closely examining how the story and its regional setting were interpreted by the media, Brooks Blevins recounts the gripping events of the murder investigation and trial, where a man claiming to be the murder victim--the "Ghost" of the Ozarks--appeared to testify. Local conditions in Stone County, which had no electricity and only one long-distance telephone line, frustrated the dozen or more reporters who found their way to the rural Ozarks, and the developments following the arrests often prompted reporters' caricatures of the region: accusations of imposture and insanity, revelations of hidden pasts and assumed names, and threats of widespread violence. Locating the past squarely within the major currents of American history, Ghost of the Ozarks: Murder and Memory in the Upland South paints a convincing backdrop to a story that, more than 80 years later, remains riddled with mystery.

"As Theodore Roosevelt's lofty image of frontier whites in the mold of Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett lost its luster, a realistic image of poor, isolated Appalachians rose to the forefront of America's cultural mindset. Hartman traces the disparaging lengths that state governments and various other organizations went to in order to shun the image of poor, racially inferior Appalachia and present (and preserve) a more unified, white Appalachia. Hartman discusses the ideals of masculinity in the age of U.S. imperialism, the career of Oscar McCulloch and the Indiana Solution, sterilization laws in Virginia, and the war on poverty in the mid-twentieth century. Hartman argues that these were all attempts to preserve the racial purity of Appalachian and even Southern white populations and to raise poor whites to a position of power over other races"--

This is a new release of the original 1933 edition.

"Up South in the Ozarks: Dispatches from the Margins is a collection of essays from Brooks Blevins that explore southern history and culture using [the] author's native Ozarks region as a focus. From migrant cotton pickers and fireworks peddlers to country store proprietors and shape-note gospel singers, Blevins leaves few stones unturned in his insightful journeys through a landscape 'wedged betwixt and between the South and the Midwest - and grasping for the West to boot"--

From the Potomac to the Gulf, artists were creating in the South even before it was recognized as a region. The South has contributed to America's cultural heritage with works as diverse as Benjamin Henry Latrobe's architectural plans for the nation's Capitol, the wares of the Newcomb Pottery, and Richard Clague's tonalist Louisiana bayou scenes. This comprehensive volume shows how, through the decades and centuries, the art of the South expanded from mimetic portraiture to sophisticated responses to national and international movements. The essays treat historic and current trends in the visual arts and architecture, major collections and institutions, and biographies of artists themselves. As leading experts on the region's artists and their work, editors Judith H. Bonner and Estill Curtis Pennington frame the volume's contributions with insightful overview essays on the visual arts and architecture in the American South.

Written by the world-renowned pioneer in the field of modern sociolinguistics, this volume examines the cognitive and cultural factors responsible for linguistic change, tracing the life history of these developments, from triggering events to driving forces and endpoints. Explores the major insights obtained by combining sociolinguistics with the results of dialect geography on a large scale Examines the cognitive and cultural influences responsible for linguistic change Demonstrates under what conditions dialects diverge from one another Establishes an essential distinction between transmission within the community and diffusion across communities Completes Labov’s seminal Principles of Linguistic Change trilogy

In Making the Heartland Quilt, Douglas K. Meyer reconstructs the settlement patterns of thirty-three immigrant groups and confirms the emergence of discrete culture regions and regional way stations. Meyer argues that midcontinental Illinois symbolizes a historic test strip of the diverse population origins that unfolded during the Great Migration. Basing his research on the 1850 U.S. manuscript schedules, Meyer dissects the geographical configurations of twenty-three native and ten foreign-born adult male immigrant groups who peopled Illinois. His historical geographical approach leads to the comprehension of a new and clearer map of settlement and migration history in the state. Meyer finds that both cohesive and mixed immigrant settlements were established. Balkan-like immigrant enclaves or islands were interwoven into evolving local, regional, and national settlement networks. The midcontinental location of Illinois, its water and land linkages, and its lengthy north-south axis enhanced cultural diversity. The barrier effect of Lake Michigan contributed to the convergence and mixing of immigrants. Thus, Meyer demonstrates, Illinois epitomizes midwestern dichotomies: northern versus southern; native-born versus foreign-born; rural versus urban; and agricultural versus manufacturing.