522 Class, Whiteness, and Southern Literature...

Dale DeBakcsy is an author, illustrator, essayist, instructor, and the creative mind behind the popular Women in Science column. He's also a lifelong fan of romance novels. In this episode, Jacke talks to Dale about his book A History of Romance Novels: From Trembling Innocents t ...  Show more

In 1845, Edgar Allan Poe wrote, in a review of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's work, "Her poetic inspiration is the highest - we can conceive of nothing more august. Her sense of Art is pure in itself." Later that year, he dedicated his collection The Raven and Other Poems to her, c ...  Show more

There was a time when the lower classes of the American South were considered lazy and dimwitted, a stereotype that still somewhat survives today. But this stereotype was rooted in fact. Hookworms, it turns out, were sapping Southerners’ life force. Find out all about it in th ...

Julia McKenzie Munemo’s late father made his living by churning out trashy novels—that was about as much as she was willing to admit. But she had no desire to crack open any of the dusty paperbacks she inherited, until a nationwide reckoning made it clear she had no choice but to ...  Show more

For generations most of the canonical works that detail the lives of poor people have been created by rich or middle-class writers like Charles Dickens, John Steinbeck, or James Agee. This has resulted in overwhelming depictions of poor people as living abject, violent lives in f ...  Show more