re: When Was Southern Culture the Most Popular Nationally?

I would say that southernism in the last 5 years has been really hot, specifically southern cuisine, music and food traditions. "Soul" food and blue plate and southern cuisine all got huge in the major metropolitan areas a few years ago, about the same time as craft cocktails and all that jazz. The whole indie-folk music scene was also somewhat southern in its appropriation of rural, agrarian clothing and instrumentation. The advent of Garden and Gun is sort of a testament to the popularity of the South.

I think it's waning quite a bit now, though.