Welcome to the American South

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From the course by The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

The American South: Its Stories, Music, and Art

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The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

The American South: Its Stories, Music, and Art

257 ratings

From small farms to urban neighborhoods, from the region itself to the more distant worlds of the southern diaspora, we discover the stories, music, and art of the American South.

From the lesson

Introduction to the American South

Reflecting on geography, the diaspora, the mythic and the global South as ways to approach the contested memory of the region.

Welcome to the American South3:52

The Region, the Diaspora, and the Mythic4:17

Contested Memory and the Global South5:23

Race, Class and Gender5:14

Meet the Instructors

Dr. William Ferris
Joel R. Williamson Eminent Professor of History; Senior Associate Director of CSAS; Adjunct Professor in the Curriculum in Folklore
Department of History

[MUSIC]

Welcome to The American South, its stories, its music and its art.

I'm Bill Ferris.

I teach at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

I grew up on a farm in Mississippi, not far from the Mississippi River.

And my father, who was a farmer, taught me that you can

always learn a lesson from the people you meet as you go through life.

And that inspired me to listen to the stories of the people I met.

And eventually to become a folklorist, and to teach about the stories of the South.

And that's what this course will look at.

How those stories have shaped southern music, southern literature, and

southern people.

As a child, I used to go to a little black church on the farm where I grew up.

It was called Rose Hill Church.

I loved the hymns, the spirituals, the sermons that I heard there.

And we will revisit that church and

meet some of the people who were my teachers growing up.

I often tell my students an African proverb that says,

when an old woman or man dies, a library burns to the ground.

So, it's with a sense of urgency and very important focus

that I, as a folklorist, tried to capture the stories of southerners.

My grandfather grew up in the aftermath of the Civil War.

He lived in a little log cabin, not far from my home on the farm.

And he told me that as a child,

he had been raised on cornbread and recollections.

And I could identify with the stories that shaped both his life and my life.

In this class, we're going to look at the American South.

Geographically, we can think of the south as the upland south,

the mountainous region in the Appalachian chain of mountains.

And we can think of the lowland south, the rich agricultural land

in the lowland areas in places like the Mississippi Delta.

Where large numbers of slaves and later,

of free black families, continue to live to this day.

And it's out of those worlds that

music like the Mississippi Delta Blues was created.

And that the great literature of William Faulkner and Alice Walker was inspired.

So we will look at these places.

We will meet the people.

And we will learn about how they understand the American South.

We will see through their eyes.

The American South, it's stories, it's music, and it's art.

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