In the antebellum South, the «plain folk» maintained social norms, ideals of honor, justice, gender, and liberty that were significantly distinct from town an

If, as some suggest, American literature began with Huckleberry Finn, then the humorists of the Old South surely helped us to shape that literature. Twain himse

Since its inception in the early 1830s, southern frontier humor (also known as the humor of the Old Southwest) has had enduring appeal. The onset of the new mil

With contributions by Ted Atkinson, Robert Bray, Patsy J. Daniels, David A. Davis, Taylor Hagood, Lisa Hinrichsen, Suzanne Marrs, Greg O'Brien, Ted Ownby, Ed Pi

From the hard-boiled detective stories of Dashiell Hammett to the novels of Claude McKay, The Word on the Streets examines a group of writers whose experimentat