Q&A with Frankie Barrett ’25 PhD

While attending the University of Mississippi for her master’s degree, Frankie Barrett ’25 PhD (American Studies) noticed that even in the most rural, isolated areas of the U.S. South, corporate dollar stores lined the highways. Intrigued, she began asking questions about the retailers’ business models and eventually wrote her master’s thesis on Dollar General. Her advisor encouraged her to continue her research through PhD studies.

In December, her dissertation was among the 40 awarded distinction, an honor given when all readers unanimously recognize the work as outstanding scholarship. The Graduate School conferred 197 PhD degrees in December. 

In a new Q&A, Barrett shares more about her findings, the special relationships she built at Yale, and an unexpected silver lining of the COVID-19 lockdown.
 

Tell me more about your research and key findings.

My dissertation Valuing Cheap provides a new lens for understanding the history of consumerism and the political economy of the U.S. and the U.S. South in the late twentieth century. I trace the history of Dollar General, Family Dollar, and Dollar Tree from their origins in three distinct southern locales into corporate behemoths with more stores than McDonald’s or Walmart. I argue that the rise of these three leading corporate dollar store retailers simultaneously reflects and contributes to the growing wealth disparity in the U.S. over the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. American economic trends of the last forty years—deregulation, cuts to social welfare, the decline of labor rights, and deepening economic inequality—have all served the dollar store business model and facilitated the industry’s expansion. The dollar store industry forms a case study of how “cheapening” goods and shopping experiences for more widely accessible consumption relates to spatialized impoverishment across rural, urban, and suburban locales. My dissertation underscores the intersections of business, consumer, and labor histories, shedding light on the entangled relationships between power, material and cultural production, and consumption.
 

How did you first become interested in this topic?

Before Yale, I earned a master’s degree in Southern Studies from the University of Mississippi. There, I noticed that—even in the most rural, isolated areas of the U.S. South—corporate dollar stores lined the highways. This phenomenon intrigued me and led me to ask questions about the retailers’ business models. 
 
I ended up writing my master’s thesis on Dollar General Corporation’s history, with a particular focus on the firm’s relationship to space and place. That work raised more questions about the history of the corporate dollar store retail sector as a whole. When I went looking for a historical monograph about the subject, I found that one hadn’t yet been written. I set out to write one version of the dollar store industry’s history in the U.S. with my dissertation project. While my research is by no means a definitive, full account of the industry’s past, it offers one lens into understanding the way the three leading corporations—Dollar General, Dollar Tree, and Family Dollar—emerged out of three distinct locales in the U.S. South and grew into retail chains stretching across and beyond the continental U.S.
 
 

What’s one thing you wish that more people knew about your field of study?

One thing that is particularly interesting to me given my interest in place and place-based identity is the fact that Dollar General, Family Dollar, and Dollar Tree all emerged out of places in the U.S. South. Since corporate dollar stores have a uniform, corporate aesthetic that doesn’t explicitly conjure tropes of regionalism, I think consumers sometimes view these stores as almost seeming to transcend place. Whenever you walk into a corporate dollar store, you can have generally the same consumer experience whether you’re in Mississippi or Connecticut. 
 
However, at the same time, the local dollar store can hold so much place-specific meaning to communities. I have talked to individuals who reminisce fondly about the dollar store in their rural outlet, the one place where their neighbors could go to stock up on goods without driving into a more developed area. For others, a local dollar store served as a corporate bodega, an urban corner store where one can grab a forgotten ingredient or buy essential goods. Yet, each of these two sites could mean different things to different community members: for some an essential resource, for others a threat to a healthy, diverse local retail economy.  
 
While I can’t reconcile the divergent meanings of corporate dollar stores in the present, my dissertation examines the importance of local economies in the U.S. South to the success and growth of Dollar General (out of Scottsville, Kentucky), Family Dollar (out of Charlotte, NC), and Dollar Tree (out of Norfolk, Virginia). Drawing from critical regional studies and history, my dissertation points out that—despite the placeless corporate aesthetic—for the dollar store industry, both historically and today, place matters!
 

Any collaborators or important mentor relationships?

I am incredibly lucky to have the most wonderful mentors and colleagues. My master’s thesis advisor, Jessie Wilkerson, continues to be an incredibly generous and encouraging mentor. She helped set me on a path towards earning a PhD, pointing to the many different avenues for future research, connecting me to prospective colleagues, and championing my work. 
 
At Yale, my co-advisors Crystal Feimster and Michael Denning also gave generously of their time and expertise. I began the American Studies program at Yale in Fall 2019 so we went into quarantine lock-down shortly afterward in the Spring of 2020. Both Michael and Crystal initially met, taught, and supported my project over Zoom, committing to act in an advisory role without ever meeting me physically in person. Both have well-earned reputations for being amazing, committed advisors. Crystal provides a whole-body approach to mentorship, offering me useful critiques and feedback on drafts while also reminding me to visit the dentist regularly and get outside. Michael provides an encyclopedic knowledge of many subjects, pulling quotes or facts from one of the several books he is reading simultaneously at any given moment. He is also a deep reader and generous interpreter of new scholars’ work. Often he would point out interventions made in my early drafts that I had not yet fully identified. 
 
Lisa Lowe and Scott Herring rounded out my committee of superb mentors. Lisa was the DGS when I started at Yale. I took a class with her my first semester which strengthened my theoretical muscles and pushed me to ask different, better research questions. She always makes time to meet and think with students and reads with a generous eye. Scott Herring was the first professor I worked with as a TF, and I was blown away by the care and attention he puts into his pedagogy. He brought this same care and attention to his role as a dissertation committee member. 
 
Finally, I am really grateful too for my brilliant and kind cohort of fellow American Studies graduate students. When we began at Yale, some faculty termed our group “the love cohort” because we all worked together and cared for each other so well. I am grateful to call them friends as well as intellectual colleagues. 
 

While at Yale, did you have any opportunities to share your research with broader audiences?

Yes, I had the opportunity to spend one year as a fellow at Yale's Institution for Social and Policy Studies. During the year, I met regularly with a cohort of other Yale graduate students from multiple disciplines, workshopping our ideas and thinking together about the policy implications of our research. In addition to sharing my work in this space and at academic conferences, I have had several opportunities to teach and share my methodological knowledge at Yale. I developed and taught a course about oral history theory and method and later collaborated with my friend Jennifer Coggins at Yale Library to present on oral history and community archiving to the 2023 Gilder Lehrman Center’s Public History Summer Institute. I have also given short talks about how to contribute effectively to public knowledge through Wikipedia editing to several Yale undergraduate courses. 
 

Where did you complete your undergraduate studies?

I began my studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where I studied Women’s and Gender studies. I then continued on to get my master’s in Southern Studies and a PhD in American Studies. So, I have always found my academic home in interdisciplinary fields. 
 

How did you end up at Yale for graduate studies? Where is home?

Although I am from Asheville, North Carolina and my parents and sister still live there, my mom was born and raised in Connecticut. One special perk of attending Yale for me personally was that it allowed me to spend really special quality time with my maternal grandmother before her death in 2022. We were very close and this time was especially precious because of the barriers to normal travel and visits during the COVID-19 lockdowns. I actually dedicated my dissertation to my grandmothers: my late maternal grandmother Marjorie Eagan Tracey and my living paternal grandmother Betty Barrett. I am happy to be living again in North Carolina after completing my degree; however, my time in New Haven enabled me to pursue my academic interests while living nearby and getting to spend regular time with family members who I had previously only visited.
 

What are your career plans?

Since I defended my dissertation last August, I began a two-year postdoctoral fellowship for the Arts and Humanities Grant Studio at UNC-Chapel Hill. It’s an interesting role because—in addition to pursuing my own research—I get to learn about other research projects happening across campus and help researchers find funding to support this work.