Keri Leigh Merritt on Life, Poverty, and Politics in The American South

Today, I'm talking with Dr. Keri Leigh Merritt about her recent piece in Aeon Magazine, entitled "The southern gap." The piece explores the roots of economic underdevelopment in the American South, a problem that still plagues the region. From there, we talk more broadly about the politics of the South and what it means to be a Southerner today.

Keri Leigh Merritt works as a historian and writer in Atlanta, Georgia. She earned her B.A. from Emory University and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Georgia. Her first book, Masterless Men: Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South (Cambridge University Press, 2017), won both the Bennett Wall Award from the Southern Historical Association, honoring the best book in Southern economic or business history published in the previous two years, as well as the President’s Book Award from the Social Science History Association.

Keri's piece at aeon: https://aeon.co/essays/capitalism-and-underdevelopment-in-the-american-south

Keri's website: https://kerileighmerritt.com/