About the Contributors

Ranae J. Evenson is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at Vanderbilt University. In addition to her interest in southern identity, her research focuses on the relationship between identity processes and mental health during adolescence.

James O. Farmer holds the June Rainsford Henderson Chair in Southern and Local History at the University of South Carolina, Aiken. He is the author of The Metaphysical Confederacy: James Henley Thornwell and the Synthesis of Southern Values and a co-author of African Americans and the Palmetto State. His recent research topics have included the women's suffrage movement in South Carolina and northern visitors to Aiken.

Larry J. Griffin is the John Shelton Reed Distinguished Professor of Sociology and professor of history at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He is now studying southern whites' memories of the Jim Crow and Civil Rights eras in the South and exploring whether they suggest personal or collective responsibility, shame, and guilt.

Earl Higgins is a retired naval officer and former Assistant Director of Staff Attorneys at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans. His writing has appeared in the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings and the New Orleans Times-Picayune, and since 1980 he has written a column of humor, satire, and commentary for the Delta Sierran, a bimonthly publication of the Sierra Club.

Thorpe Moeckel is the 2004-2005 Kenan Visiting Writer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His poetry has been published in journals including Field, The Southern Review, Poetry, The Antioch Review, Nantahala, and Wild Earth, and his collection Odd Botany won the Gerald Cable Book Award.

Katy Vinroot O'Brien is a native of Charlotte, North Carolina. She has a B.A. in Anthropology and Religious Studies from the University of North Carolina and an M.A. in Southern Studies from the University of Mississippi. She lives in Chapel Hill and works for the University of North Carolina Press.

Ann Taylor Peden is a resident of Star, Idaho, who grew up in Jackson and Clinton, Mississippi. She is a freelance writer and the education programs coordinator for The Peregrine Fund in Boise. She and husband, Eric, celebrated the birth of a future avid reader, baby Sam, in November.

Ashley B. Thompson is a graduate student in sociology at Vanderbilt University. Her dissertation examines the meaning and importance of southern identity for both white and African American residents of the South.