This is by far my favorite class I have taken at UVA. Professor Nelson is a great lecturer--an engaging and witty speaker. This class reframed the entire way I viewed the formation of American culture and the material manifestations of history that we leave behind or that implicitly shape our day-to-day experiences. The class teaches stories that have historically gone unheard or hidden and challenges students to bestow value and dignity to stories other than our own.

If you have any interest in learning about the US South from about 1700 to now, take this class. Lectures are interesting, discussion isn't great but it really wasn't bad either, just sometimes kinda boring. The most annoying part were the reading quizzes, but they were really only annoying because it meant you had to do the readings, but they were also pretty easy to skim, and the quizzes weren't every week. Overall, I enjoyed going to class, and the workload was reasonable.