In “Great Times Down South,” historian Giuliano Santangeli Valenzani investigates promotional materials such as pamphlets, booklets, commercials, and radio and TV advertisements utilized by tourism offices in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, and South Carolina from 1976 to 1981. This duration, referred to as the Carter era, signified “southern style” and economic growth in the Sunbelt.

Readers will discover comprehensive analysis of the tactics, language, imagery, and motifs that were utilized by tourism offices both nationally and globally. The book provides a distinctive perspective into the dominant portrayal of the South as marketed and understood from outside. Notable shifts in southern culture and society during the late 1970s correspond with a remarkable transformation in tourists’ perception of the South.

Although this period is recognized for transforming the image and symbolic significance of the South within American culture, there exists scant research that examines how these transformations affected the region’s promotional representation. Valenzani asserts that the origins of the current, elusive portrayal of the South can be directly traced in the promotional materials crafted to entice visitors throughout the 1970s.

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