BOOKS:
* Creating the Big Easy: New Orleans and the Emergence of Modern Tourism, 1918-1945 (University of Georgia Press, 2006). The book examines the birth of the modern mass tourism industry in New Orleans. As local boosters struggled to adjust to Prohibition and the closure of the Storyville red-light district during the First World War, tourism became a vital crutch to the local leisure economy. The rise of automobile travel further inspired coordinated marketing strategies. Local business leaders soon fostered historic preservation of the French Quarter and the introduction of Carnival throws during Mardi Gras. The onset of the Great Depression further left a cash-strapped city eager to cultivate vital sales taxes linked to the tourism trade.
To purchase, see: Georgia Press / Barnes & Noble / Amazon.
* Dixie Emporium: Consumerism, Tourism, and Foodways in the American South (University Georgia Press, 2008). The collection of essays examines the intersection of consumer practices, travel, and culinary culture within the American South from the early nineteenth century to the present. Top scholars in the field unpack the meanings of various regional attractions and staples. Contributors include Fitzhugh Brundage, Karen Cox, Glenn Eskew, John Giggie, Patrick Huber, Aaron Ketchell, Nicole King, Ted Ownby, Eric Plaag, John Shelton Reed, Mary Rizzo, and Carolyn Thomas. Their essays tackle everything from Krispy Kreme donuts and the Baltimore Hon to the Horny Hillbilly souvenir and South of the Border’s Pedro icon.
To purchase, see: Georgia Press / Barnes & Noble / Amazon.
* Faith in Bikinis: Politics and Leisure in the Coastal South since the Civil War (University of Georgia Press, 2014). The book examines the rise of beach tourism in Virginia Beach (Virginia), Myrtle Beach (South Carolina), Panama City (Florida), Biloxi and Gulfport (Mississippi), and Galveston (Texas). The tourism industries of these beach communities challenged the conservative values and cotton-oriented economies of their various southern states. Chapters include: 1.) Beach Resorts and the Rise of the Sunbelt; 2.) Mosquitoes, Hurricanes, and the Environmental Movement; 3.) Race, Tanning, and the Civil Rights Movement; 4.) Femininity, Religion, and the Sexual Revolution; 5.) Moonshine, Gambling, and the Slow Death of Prohibition. The Florida Historical Society awarded Faith in Bikinis the Rembert Patrick Award for best scholarly book on a Florida-related topic in 2015.
To purchase, see: Georgia Press / Barnes & Noble / Amazon.
* New Orleans Pralines: Plantation Sugar, Louisiana Pecans, and the Marketing of Southern Nostalgia (Louisiana State University Press, 2024). The book traces the origins of the praline to Louisiana’s sugar plantations and the arrival of the confection to New Orleans after the Civil War as emancipated Blacks migrated to the city. During the Jim Crow era, literary and business leaders invented a narrative the the praline came from France, obscuring the role of Black women as makers and sellers of the praline while turning the sweet candy into a dainty souvenir separated from its history as a calorific food meant to power hard-working bodies. The Gulf South Historical Association awarded New Orleans Pralines the Michael V. R. Thomason Award in 2025.
To purchase, see: LSU Press / Barnes & Noble / Amazon.
BOOK CHAPTERS:
*”Time Is the Longest Distance: Tennessee Williams, New Orleans Tourism, and the Long Shadow of the 1930s,” Beyond the Agrarians: The South in the 1930s (Louisiana State University Press, 2018), Karen Cox and Sarah Gardner, ed. The chapter outlines the influence of New Orleans on the works of playwright Tennessee Williams and how his plays promoted tourism to New Orleans.
To purchase, see: Barnes & Noble / Amazon
*”Feast of the Mau Mau: Christianity, Conjure, and the Origins of Soul Food,” Dethroning the Deceitful Pork Chop: Rethinking African American Foodways from Slavery to Obama (University of Arkansas Press, 2015), Jennifer Jensen Wallach, ed. The chapter examines the largely overlooked role of conjure practices and beliefs in influencing African American culinary practices.
To purchase, see: Barnes & Noble / Amazon.
*”Food Tourism,” The Routledge History of American Foodways (Routledge, 2015), Jennifer Jensen Wallach and Michael Wise, ed. The chapter chronicles the rise of food-related tourism in the United States from its beginnings in the nineteenth century to the competitive culinary tours of today.
To purchase, see: Barnes & Noble / Amazon.
*”Dead But Delightful: Tourism and Memory in New Orleans Cemeteries,” Destination Dixie: Tourism and Southern History (University Press of Florida, 2014), Karen Cox, ed. The chapter recounts the development of New Orleans’s famous cemeteries, including St. Louis #1, Metairie Cemetery, and Holt Cemetery, and how these have attracted travelers from the nineteenth century to the present.
To purchase, see: Barnes & Noble / Amazon.
*”No Time for Muses: The Research Excellence Framework and the Pursuit of Mediocrity,” Why Academic Freedom Matters (Civitas, 2016), Joanna Williams and Cheryl Hudson, eds. The chapter unpacks the fundamental problems with the United Kingdom’s Research Excellence Framework and contextualizes this bureaucratic practice within the long history of imperial decline.
To access, click the following link: No Time for Muses.
ARTICLES:
*”Tasting New Orleans: How the Mardi Gras King Cake Came to Represent the Crescent City,” Southern Cultures (2019), vol. 24, no. 4. Co-authored with Rachel Wallace with illustrations by Kristen Solecki. The article surveys the emergence of the king cake during Reconstruction and how it evolved into a symbol of New Orleans. To access please click the link: Tasting New Orleans.
*”The Triumph of Epicure: A History of New Orleans Culinary Tourism,” Southern Quarterly (2009), vol. 46, no.3. The article traces the relationship between tourism and foodways in New Orleans from the nineteenth century to the present. Written in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the article examines manifestations of “New Orleans” cuisine throughout the world and its meanings within the global culinary scene.
*”Through a Purple (Green and Gold) Haze: New Orleans Mardi Gras in the American Imagination,” Southern Cultures (2008), vol. 14, no. 2. The article explores the development of New Orleans Mardi Gras and its influence on popular culture throughout the United States. Written in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the article examines the idea of New Orleans Mardi Gras within the American mind. To access please click the link: Through a Purple (Green and Gold) Haze.
*”‘A Woman of Boundless Energy‘: Elizebeth Werlein and Her Times,” Louisiana History (2005), vol. 46, no. 1. The article is a brief biography of Elizebeth Werlein, the pioneering film censor and preservationist who lived in New Orleans during the interwar period. Born in Michigan, the daughter of a wealthy dynamite manufacturer, Werlein married into the prominent music-publishing family in New Orleans. After her husband died of Influenza in 1917, Werlein became a strong advocate for preserving the French Quarter for future generations and, as a single mother of four children, embraced the independent New Woman of the 1920s.
*”‘Take Him East Where Life Began‘: The Role of Virginia in Shaping the Early Writings of Allen Tate,” Virginia Magazine of History & Biography (2004), vol. 112, no. 1. The article explores the conflicted meanings of Kentucky and Virginia in Allen Tate’s literary imagination and life. Tate believed well into adulthood that he had been born in an idealized Virginia populated by cavalier planters. He eventually learned the truth; he had been born in Kentucky, imagined as a rough, frontier state. This conflict became central to his biographies of Stonewall Jackson: The Good Soldier (1928) and Jefferson Davis: His Rise and Fall (1929).
*”‘Always in Costume and Mask‘: Lyle Saxon and New Orleans Tourism,” Louisiana History (2001), vol. 42, no.1. The article analyzes Lyle Saxon, both as an individual author of such books as Father Mississippi (1927), Fabulous New Orleans (1928), Old Louisiana (1929), and Lafitte the Pirate (1930) as well as the director of the Louisiana Writers Project. In these various roles, Saxon packaged New Orleans and Louisiana for tourists’ consumption during the interwar period, embedding images and tales still prominent in today’s tourism industry.
PODCASTS and VIDEOS:
*“Why does Cracker Barrel Keep Making People So Mad?” on The Sporkful with Dan Pashman. 2025. To access: Sporkful.
* Discussion of New Orleans Pralines with LSU Press, 2024: To access: New Orleans Pralines.
*Conversations on New Orleans History with Dr. Bruce Baker (2020):
1.) New Orleans since Hurricane Katrina. To access: Hurricane Katrina.
2.) Origins of New Orleans Tourism in the 1920s & 1930s. To access: Tourism.
3.) New Orleans Mardi Gras. To access: Mardi Gras.
4.) New Orleans Pralines: To access: Pralines.
Dr. Anthony J. Stanonis 