Foodways in the American South: Home
“This is our community. We live and work together, we cook, and then we bring food to share — and we share the recipes with each other also. We never forget about our neighbors, our families, our friends.”
Mama Dip’s Family Cookbook, Mildred Council (2005)
About
As the American South changes, Southern staples of cooking, baking, and preserving stand the test of time while their traditional geographic boundaries become blurred. Historically, Gullah-Geechee, Cajun, Creole, Indigenous, and Appalachian peoples, for example, created subgroups of food traditions that became uniquely associated with those Southern cultures. This research guide provides resources for researching these vast Southern foodways and culinary traditions through archival and secondary materials in the University Libraries.
What is in this guide?
This guide is designed to assist researchers in investigating foodways and culinary traditions in North Carolina and the broader American South. The resources included can be found at UNC's Wilson Special Collections Library and Davis Library. Most archival materials can be found in the Southern Historical Collection, Southern Folklife Collection, and North Carolina Collection. This guide is not a complete list of all resources relating to Southern foodways at UNC-Chapel Hill, but it can be utilized as a starting point for researching Southern foodways within the University Libraries.
- Archival Collections - manuscripts and other archival resources featuring Southern foodways
- Secondary Resources - published resources on Southern foodways
- North Carolina Foodways - resources related specifically to North Carolina foodways
- Frameworks for Research - guidance to help initiate the research process
- Registering and Requesting Materials - details about visiting Wilson Special Collections Library at UNC-Chapel Hill
