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418 books match the query 'Southern States' and 8 start with g

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Games of Property

Law, Race, Gender, and Faulkner's Go Down, Moses

Thadious M. Davis

Duke University Press, 2003

In Games of Property, distinguished critic Thadious M. Davis provides a dazzling new interpretation of William Faulkner’s Go Down, Moses. Davis argues that in its unrelenting attention to issues related to the ownership of land and people, Go Down, Moses ranks among Faulkner’s finest and most accomplished works. Bringing together law, social history, game theory, and feminist critiques, she shows that the book is unified by games—fox hunting, gambling with cards and dice, racing—and, like the law, games are rule-dependent forms of social control and commentary. She illuminates the dual focus in Go Down, Moses on property and ownership on the one hand and on masculine sport and social ritual on the other. Games of Property is a masterful contribution to understandings of Faulkner’s fiction and the power and scope of property law.

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Gardening for Love

The Market Bulletins

Elizabeth A. Lawrence

Duke University Press, 1987

Elizabeth Lawrence occupies a secure place in the pantheon of twentieth-century gardening writers that includes Gertrude Jekyll and Vita Sackville-West of Great Britain and Katherine S. White of the United States. Her books, such as A Southern Garden (1942) and The Little Bulbs (1957), remain in print, continuing to win praise from criticis and to delight an ever-widening circle of readers. In Gardening for Love, Lawrence reveals another world of garden writing, the world of the rural women of the South with whom she corresponded extensively from the late 1950s into the mid-1970s in responce to their advertisements for herbs and ornamental perennials in several market bulletins (published by state departments of agriculture for the benefit of farmers).

It was Eudora Welty who awakened Elizabeth Lawrence's interest in this fascinating topic by putting her name on the mailing list of The Mississippi Market Bulletin, a twice-monthly collection of classified advertisements founded in 1928 and still published today. Lawrence soon discovered market bulletins from the Carolinas and other Southern states, as well as similar bulletins published privately in the North. She began ordering plants from the bulletins, and there ensued a lively exchange of letters wit the women who sold them.

Gardening for Love is Lawrence's exploration of this little-known side of American horticulture and her affectionate tribute to country people who shared her passion for plants. Drawing on the letters she received, sometimes a great many of them from the same persons over many years, she delves into traditional plant lore, herbal remedies, odd and often highly poetic vernacular plant names peculiar to particular regions of the South, and the herb collectors of the mountains of the Carolinas and Georgia. She focuses primarily on the Southeast and the Deep South, but her wide knowledge of both literature and botany gives Gardening for Love a dimension that transcends the category of regional writing.

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Gendered Strife and Confusion

The Political Culture of Reconstruction

Laura F. Edwards

University of Illinois Press, 1997

Exploring the gendered dimension of political conflicts, Laura Edwards links transformations in private and public life in the era following the Civil War. Ideas about men's and women's roles within households shaped the ways groups of southerners—elite and poor, whites and blacks, Democrats and Republicans—envisioned the public arena and their own places in it. By using those on the margins to define the center, Edwards demonstrates that Reconstruction was a complicated process of conflict and negotiation that lasted long beyond 1877 and involved all southerners and every aspect of life.

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Geological Sciences in the Antebellum South

Edited by James X. Corgan

University of Alabama Press, 1982

Tracing the roots of earth science before the Civil War.

Geological Sciences in the Antebellum South by James Corgan offers a rich and revealing examination of the origins and development of geological inquiry in the American South during the decades (1796-1850s) leading up to the Civil War. At a time when scientific disciplines in the United States were still taking shape, Southern scholars, educators, and naturalists played a critical—if often overlooked—role in advancing geological knowledge. Corgan brings this history to life through a careful exploration of the people, institutions, and ideas that defined early earth science in the region.

From the study of mineral resources and soil composition to the broader effort to understand the region’s unique landscapes, geology intersected with agriculture, industry, and economic development in powerful ways. Corgan demonstrates how these scientific endeavors were shaped by—and in turn helped shape—the cultural and intellectual environment of the South. This book also highlights the contributions of key figures and institutions that fostered scientific inquiry, including early universities, state surveys, and learned societies. These networks connected Southern researchers to national and international scientific communities, positioning the region as an active participant in the broader expansion of 19th-century science. At the same time, the book addresses the challenges and limitations faced by Southern scientists, offering a nuanced perspective on how regional identity, resources, and social structures influenced the trajectory of scientific progress.

By situating geology within the broader context of antebellum history, Corgan provides readers with a deeper understanding of how scientific thought developed alongside—and in dialogue with—the political, economic, and cultural forces of the period. The result is a compelling interdisciplinary study that bridges the history of science and Southern history, shedding new light on a formative era in American intellectual life. Geological Sciences in the Antebellum South will appeal to historians, geologists, and scholars of American studies. It is an essential resource for anyone interested in the foundations of scientific inquiry in the United States and the enduring impact of geology on the development of the American South.

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Global Perspectives on Industrial Transformation in the American South

Edited by Susanna Delfino & Michele Gillespie

University of Missouri Press, 2005

Covering the late colonial age to World War I and beyond, this collection of essays places the economic history of the American South in an international light by establishing useful comparisons with the larger Atlantic and world economy. In an attempt to dispel long-lasting myths about the South, the essays analyze the economic evolution of the South since the slave era. From this perspective, the conception of a backward, wholly agricultural antebellum South occupied only by wealthy planters, poor whites, and contented slaves has finally given way to one of economic and social dynamism as well as regional prosperity.

In a coherent and cohesive progression of subjects, these essays show that the South had been deeply enmeshed in the Atlantic economy since the colonial period and, after the Civil War, retained distinctive needs that caused increasing departure from the course northerners adopted on matters of political economy. This comparative approach also helps explain the motivations behind the political choices made by the South as an eminently export-oriented region.

This book shows that the South was not slower to develop with respect to industrialization than either the majority of the northern states, especially in the West, or the countries of Western Europe. In fact, the apparently disappointing performance of the New South’s economy appears to be the result of more pervasive and largely uncontrollable trends that affected the national as well as the international economy. Global Perspectives on Industrial Transformation in the American South makes an important contribution to the economic history of the South and to recent efforts to place American history in a more international context.

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Gone Dollywood

Dolly Parton’s Mountain Dream

Graham Hoppe

Ohio University Press, 2018

Dolly Parton isn’t just a country music superstar. She has built an empire. At the heart of that empire is Dollywood, a 150-acre fantasy land that hosts three million people a year. Parton’s prodigious talent and incredible celebrity have allowed her to turn her hometown into one of the most popular tourist destinations in America. The crux of Dollywood’s allure is its precisely calibrated Appalachian image, itself drawn from Parton’s very real hardscrabble childhood in the mountains of east Tennessee.

What does Dollywood have to offer besides entertainment? What do we find if we take this remarkable place seriously? How does it both confirm and subvert outsiders’ expectations of Appalachia? What does it tell us about the modern South, and in turn what does that tell us about America at large? How is regional identity molded in service of commerce, and what is the interplay of race, gender, and class when that happens?

In Gone Dollywood, Graham Hoppe blends tourism studies, celebrity studies, cultural analysis, folklore, and the acute observations and personal reflections of longform journalism into an unforgettable interrogation of Southern and American identity.

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Governors' Mansions of the South

Ann Liberman & Photos by Alise O'Brien

University of Missouri Press, 2008

From the Greek Revival architecture found in Mississippi to the Queen Anne style of North Carolina, governors’ mansions in the American South convey a passion for antiquity, as well as a regional elegance. Ann Liberman, author of Governors’ Mansions of the Midwest, spent much of her life in Texas and admires the remarkable architecture of the antebellum South—a respect that she now brings to her newest book.

Governors’ Mansions of the South is devoted to the eleven states of the old Confederacy, plus Kentucky and West Virginia, and offers a brick-and-mortar reflection of the region’s rich history. It includes the country’s oldest governor’s mansion in continuous use, in Virginia, plus two built as recently as the 1960s, in Louisiana and Georgia. These mansions reflect an architectural cohesiveness found throughout the South, as Georgian, Federal, and Greek Revival styles imbue antebellum houses with a classical aura, while others built in the first quarter of the twentieth century reflect the monumental eclectic styles of the Beaux Arts era.

Liberman provides readers with a room-by-room guided tour of each of the buildings as she comments on their architecture, symbolism, and lore. She places the mansions in historical context, describing how their locations were chosen, how they were designed and decorated, and how they have been preserved, lost, or transformed over the years. While focusing primarily on the buildings themselves, she also highlights those governors and their wives who played significant roles in the mansions’ maintenance or renovation. Alise O’Brien’s accompanying color photographs capture the lavish interiors and furnishings as well as the dignified exteriors and landscapes.

“Living in the Governor’s Mansion is a remarkable honor,” writes former governor of Florida Jeb Bush in his foreword, “but it is also a constant, humbling reminder that the people who occupy the mansions are, indeed, the public’s servants.” For site visitors or architecture buffs, Governors’ Mansions of the South is an enlightening introduction to these historic executive homes, reminding us that, however opulent, they provide a personal connection between the public and its government—and connect past generations to the present.

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Grayhawk's Native American Folktales

Grayhawk Perkins

University of Alabama Press, 2025

Beloved Houma/Choctaw storyteller Grayhawk Perkins shares age-old wisdom in an unforgettable collection of folktales.

Grayhawk’s Native American Folktales is the eagerly awaited collection of stories by Grayhawk Perkins, a noted Houma storyteller from Louisiana. Drawing on traditional Indigenous tales, Grayhawk transforms these narratives into stories that captivate contemporary readers and audiences.

The collection features universal animal characters such as Deer, Rabbit, Bobcat, Turtle, and Snake that embody a variety of traits. Their adventures and challenges in the natural world reveal human behavior and lessons about how to treat others. Creation stories explain how the world and its inhabitants came to be, including the diligent Crawfish, the origin of skunk stripes, and why opossums are white. Although written for children ages 7 to 12 and their families, all will be charmed by Grayhawk’s contributions to Indigenous literature.

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