Memphis by Hand: Creative Small-Business Advertising
Photo Essay Map of Memphis Neighborhoods (Base Map Data: US Census Bureau) Photographer's Statement While I didn't seek out hand-painted signs, I noticed their emergence as a pattern in my...
Burning bright, Tysons Corner, Virginia, 2009
A Mess of Poke
Essay If some of y’all never been down South too much, I’m gonna tell you a little bit about this, so that you’ll understand what I’m talking about Down there...
Petrochemical America, Petrochemical Addiction
Introduction by Emma Lirette Saltwater Intrusion, Chauvin, Louisiana, 2013. Photograph by Kurt Lirette. Courtesy of photographer. Growing up in Louisiana meant growing up with the men in my family intermittently...
The Same Language: A Memoir by Ben Duncan
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Stormy Banks and Sweet Rivers: A Sacred Harp Geography
Introduction On a warm Saturday in early summer, a crowd gathers at a white-washed church in rural Alabama. As they begin to sing, a sound rises that is overwhelming in...
Goin' to Chicago and African American "Great Migrations"
Introduction Filmed during the 1990s and released on PBS in 2000, Goin’ to Chicago is a sixty minute film about the largest internal movement of people in United States history—the...
Vernacular and Universal Prejudice
Introduction I begin an exploration of the history of prejudice by looking at the process of othering—or social and political distancing—that is a central part of the history of African...
Men at Home: Imagining Liberation in Colonial and Postcolonial India
Prelude: Fragments of Family This book is an essay on men’s existence in the South Asian domestic world, and on their self-contradictory articulation in that world of ideas of freedom,...
Life in a Shatter Zone: Debra Granik's Film Winter's Bone
Review Dolly home, Winter's Bone, 2010. Debra Granik’s film Winter’s Bone (2010) tells the story of seventeen-year-old Ree Dolly, big sister and stand-in parent to two younger siblings. She is...