Nobody’s Home: Modern Southern Folklore is an online anthology of nonfiction works about beliefs, myths, and narratives in Southern culture over the last fifty years, in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.  The anthology has been crafted with teachers in mind. Access to the anthology is free, and works can be easily linked into platforms such as Google Classroom and Schoology. Because Nobody’s Home is an anthology of nonfiction, its works fit with Common Core standards for nonfiction texts in grades 9-10 and grades 11-12. Each work has an accompanying lesson plan that offers standards-based curricular connections.

The editor also invites classroom teachers to submit and share their own lesson plans for works in the anthology or to suggest titles for the reading lists. Please use the form on the Contact page to query the editor first.

Lesson Plans:

Lesson plans are all published and available. They are free to access and include Common Core anchor standards, ready-to-use objectives, and easily modified activities. To find these lesson plans, either visit the Index page and click the link next to the essay title, or scroll to the bottom of the essay and look below the author bio. 

Suggested Reading List
for Teachers and Graduate Students:

The Mind of the South (1941, reprint 1991)
by Wilbur J. Cash

Away Down South: A History of Southern Identity (2007)
by James C. Cobb

The New South Creed: A Study in Southern Mythmaking  (1970, reprint 2003)
by Paul Gaston

Alabama Getaway: The Political Imaginary and the Heart of Dixie (2010)
by Allen Tullos

The Idea of the South: Pursuit of a Central Theme (1964)
edited by Frank E. Vandiver

Suggested Reading List
for Undergraduates and High School Students:

The South of Haunted Dreams: A Ride through Slavery’s Old Backyard (1993)
by Eddy L. Harris

Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War (1998)
by Tony Horwitz

Dixie Lullaby: A Story of Music, Race, and New Beginnings in a New South (2004)
by Mark Kemp

South to a Very Old Place (1971)
by Albert Murray

A Turn in the South (1989)
by V. S. Naipaul

The Editor’s Reading List, a work-in-progress:

(click on the blue, bold titles to read the post about the book)

The Politics of White Rights by Joseph Bagley (2018)

The South Never Plays Itself by Ben Beard (2020)

Navigating Souths, edited by Michele Grigsby Coffey and Jodi Skipper (2020)

Cathedrals of Kudzu by Hal Crowther (2000)

Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State by Andrew Gelman, et al. (2008)

Myth and Southern History, Volume 2: The New South, edited by Patrick Gerster and Nicholas Cords (1989)

Framing the South by Allison Graham (2001)

A Movement of the People by Katie Lamar Jackson (2017)

South to a New Place, edited by Suzanne W. Jones and Sharon Monteith (2002) 

The Countercultural South by Jack Temple Kirby (1995)

Media-Made Dixie by Jack Temple Kirby (1986)

The Two-Party South by Alexander P. Lamis (1984)

Southern Politics in the 1990s by Alexander P. Lamis (1999)

The Silent Majority by Matthew Lassiter (2007)

The Myth of Southern Exceptionalism by Matthew Lassiter and Joseph Crespino (2010)

The South of the Mind by Zachary J. Lechner (2018)

Heritage and Hate by Stephen M. Monroe (2021)

The Omni-Americans by Albert Murray (1970)

Getting Right with God by Mark Newman (2001)

Outside the Southern Myth by Noel Polk (1997)

Forthcoming in June: One South by John Shelton Reed (1982)

The Presence of the Past by Roy Rosenzweig (2001)

Myth, Media, and the Southern Mind by Stephen A. Smith (1986)

In Search of the Silent South by Morton Sosna (1977)

Deep South by Paul Theroux (2015)

Judgment & Grace in Dixie by Charles Reagan Wilson (1995)

Southern documentaries

Click here for a selected list of documentaries about the South.