Nashville Tennessee — The Athens of the South

Nashville is often labeled the "Athens of the South" due to the many colleges and universities in the city and metropolitan area.

The colleges and universities in Nashville include American Baptist College, Aquinas College, The Art Institute of Tennessee – Nashville, Belmont University, Daymar Institute, Fisk University, Free Will Baptist Bible College, International Academy of Design and Technology, Lipscomb University, Meharry Medical College, Nashville School of Law, Nashville State Community College, Strayer University, Tennessee State University, Trevecca Nazarene University, Vanderbilt University, and Watkins College of Art, Design & Film.

In her dissertation ―Athens of the South: College Life in Nashville, A New South City, 1897-1917 author Mary Ellen Pethel writes:

The Progressive Era affected the South in different ways from other regions of the United States. Because Southern society was more entrenched in patriarchy and traditional social strictures, Nashville provides an excellent lens in which to assess the vision of a New South city. Known as ―Athens of the South, Nashville legitimized this title with the emergence of several colleges and universities of regional and national prominence in the 1880s and 1890s. In the first two decades of the twentieth century, Nashville universities solidified their status as reputable institutions, with Vanderbilt and Fisk Universities garnering national prominence.

Higher education and urbanization created a dialectic that produced a new generation and a new monied class of young adults who thought and acted differently.