As conference champtionship season warms up, our new host Emily Allen speaks with musicologist Carrie Allen Tipton about her book From Dixie to Rocky Top: Music and Meaning in Southeastern Conference Football. They discuss the role fight songs and football have had in shaping Southern identity, school spirit, and the various political meanings of Southern higher ed.

Mark Smith sits down with Mercer University professor David A. Davis, author of the new book Driven to the Field: Sharecropping and Southern Literature, to discuss the development of sharecropping, a labor that shaped so much of the rural South, both black and white, for the 100 years after the Civil War, and its representation in Southern literature.

The speaker for the Institute for Southern Studies' 2023 Neuffer Lecturer in Southern Literature is Ron Rash, a bestselling author of some eight novels, seven books of short stories, and three books of poetry. Before the lecture, he joined Matt Simmons in the podcast studio to discuss his life and work.

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.

In another of our series of AI-generated conversations with famous dead Southerners, Mark Smith is joined by USC history professor Kent Germany to discuss the odd understanding ChatGPT has of our 36th president, Lyndon Baines Johnson

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.

In honor of Halloween and in an effort to explore the implications of AI, Take on the South is having a special series of "Southern Seances" in October. Each Monday, we will have ChatGPT write a script for an interview between our host, Mark Smith, and a famous dead Southerner. Mark and a guest will dissect what AI got right about the figure, where it made mistakes, and what the experience can tell us about the utility and limitations of AI. First up: Elvis! Mark is joined by Grant Wong, PhD student in the University of South Carolina's History department. Special music is "Let the Mystery Unfold" by Geoff Harvey.

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 interviews Wendy Homeyer, a native of Greenville, SC, alumna of the University of South Carolina, and former George W. Bush administration staffer about her experience of the fateful day of September 11, 2001 from within the White House.

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?

In the last of our summer repeats, we get y'all ready for football season! Mark Smith is joined by Andy Doyle, Associate Professor of history at Winthrop University to discuss the origins of college football in the South. How did this thoroughly industrialized, northeastern game associated with New England gentry and the Ivy League--which was originally rejected by Southerners as a "Yankee game"--come to dominate the region? It's a fascinating story full of colorful characters that you'll want to share with all of your football-loving friends and family.

How do roads help to shape and define the South? In this episode, we talk particularly about "Malfunction Junction," South Carolina's most notorious highway interchange, the stretch of highway where I-20 and I-26 come together west of Columbia. What's the history of Malfunction Junction and what does that history tell us about the development of South Carolina over the last several generations? More importantly, what is its future as it transforms into "Carolina Crossroads" over the rest of this decade? Mark Smith is joined by Brian Klauk, project manager of the Carolina Crossroad projects, and Pete Poore, the communications director of the South Carolina Department of Transportation, to discuss. https://www.scdotcarolinacrossroads.com/

To say "Southern Rock" is a "Southern" musical genre is a truism--but what, exactly, is it? How does the groovy, swaggering Southern Rock of the 1970s connect to the emergence of jangly College Rock in the 1980s and 90s? How does this music tell the story of Southern identity, and how has that music evolved over the last 50 years as Southern identity itself has evolved? And finally, how has the rise of Spotify and other streaming platforms changed the possibilities for creating and engaging the "Southern" in rock music? Joining Matt Simmons in this lively discussion are Todd Hagstette of the University of South Carolina-Aiken, Jeff Rogers of Gordon State College, and music journalist and critic Robert Dean Lurie, author of the acclaimed Begin the Begin: R.E.M.'s Early Years.

An Englishman, a New Englander, and a Southerner walk into a podcast studio and have...a simply incredible conversation about the South, what ideas we bring to the region, and what we have to unlearn about it to make sense of it and ourselves within it.  Matt Simmons is joined by Mark Smith and Andrew Berns, professor of history at the University of South Carolina, for an electric conversation. We could have gone on for three times as long!

[This is the first of a series of repeats of some of our best episodes during the summer. We will be back with all new episodes with the new academic year!] Professional Wrestling has a rich history in the South, a history that arguably reaches its apogee in the last 25 years of the 20th century. During that time, many of the major wrestling 'territories' of the region came together to form Atlanta-based World Championship Wrestling; throughout the 1980s and 90s, WCW functioned as the #2 wrestling promotion worldwide. Further, with the post-Jim Crow landscape of the South leading to integration of both performers and audiences and WCW's introduction of Mexican-style lucha libre wrestling into the American context, Southern wrasslin' emerged in the 1980s and 90s as a way to tell the story of a changing South to the nation and the world. How was this story told? We are joined by Andre Key and Robert Greene, II of Claflin University and Miles Smith, IV of Hillsdale College to discuss the topic.

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.

Mark Smith talks to Southern Studies alumna Emily Ames (University of South Carolina class of '23) about her senior thesis: an examination of nearly 50 years of recipes in Southern Living magazine. How do these recipes, and their evolution over time, speak to how the South's ideas of itself and the region's place in America?

Mark Smith talks to Southern Studies alumna Emily Ames (University of South Carolina class of '23) about her senior thesis: an examination of nearly 50 years of recipes in Southern Living magazine. How do these recipes, and their evolution over time, speak to how the South's ideas of itself and the region's place in America? Subscribe to our YouTube Channel