Skip to 0 minutes and 8 seconds Hello, and welcome to this course on the History and Culture of the American South. My name is Brian Ward and I’m a Professor in American Studies at Northumbria University. Together with a team of experts on all things Southern, I’ll be your guide for what we hope will be an enjoyable and illuminating exploration of some of the key events, people, movements, and themes connected with the US South. It’s a fascinating, complex region that, as we’ll discover together, has exerted enormous influence on the history, politics and cultures of the United States, and indeed on the rest of the world.
Skip to 0 minutes and 39 seconds In sum then, this course allows you to engage with the history of a region that has been by turns enchanting and exasperating, a source of deep fear and loathing, but also of deep admiration, endless fascination, and no little imitation. It’s a place of enormous poverty, racial intolerance, religious bigotry, ill health, and violence. Yet it’s also a site of tremendous creativity with a well-earned reputation for openness, hospitality, good living, and a deep respect for family, place, god and history. With a course that takes us from Robert E.
Skip to 1 minute and 7 seconds Lee to Harper Lee, from the Ku Klux Klan to the Kings of Leon, from Coca-cola to Kudzu, and from Gone With the Wind to Hurricane Katrina, we can promise you an exhilarating and thought provoking introduction to the enigma that is the American South.
