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hades Reagan Wilson, head 91"t~eademic program in Southern Studies since 1990, will succeed Bill Ferris as director of the Center. His new .flpOintment will begin July 1, 1998. University Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Gerald Walton echoed the sentiments of Center faculty, staff, and students in a recent comment on Wilson's appointment: "Charles Wilson is a long-time member of the University faculty and is a nationally recognized authority on the South. He will provide outstanding leadership for the Center, and I look forward to working with him." An intellectual and cultural historian, Wilson received a bachelor of arts and a master of arts in history from the University of Texas at EI Paso and a doctorate of philosophy in history from the University of Texas at Austin. After teaching at the University of Wurzburg, the University of Texas at EI Paso, and Texas Tech University, Wilson came to the Center in 1981 to coedit the 1,634page Encyclopedia of Southern Culture and to accept a teaching appointment in Southern Studies and History. Soon after the publication of the Encyclopedia in 1989, Wilson became academic director for the Center. His duties as academic director have included overseeing the admissions process for the Southern Studies Program, preparing analytical reports evaluating the Southern Studies curriculum, and providing academic advising to undergraduate and graduate Southern Studies students.
A native of Tennessee who spent his adolescent years in West Texas, Wilson became seriously interested in studying the South while'working towards his doctoral degree at the University of Texas. Having written his master's thesis on the representation of Native Americans in popular magazines in the 19th century, he hoped to extend this research as a doctoral student but was forced to change his course of study when he discovered that another doctoral student at the Universi-
ty of Texas had already written a dissertation on this topic. Wilson's subsequent decision to study the religion of the South's Lost Cause emerged from his experiences living in and visiting the South as well as his fascination with the turmoil of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Wilson's first book, Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause, 1868-1920, resulted from his continued on page 12
Southe~ulRegisteF Published Quarterly by The Center for the Study of Southern Culture The University of Mississippi Telephone 601-232-5993 Fax: 601-232-5814 E-mail: staff@barnard.cssc.olemiss.edu lmernet: URL http://www.cssc.olemiss.edu
IN THIS ISSUE Spring
1998
1 Wilson Selected as Center Director 2 Director's Column 3 1998 F& Y: Faulkner in America 4 Columbus Forum to Examine American Arts & Crafts Movement 4 Center for the Book to Administer Literacy Program in Southern States 5 Gospel Choir CD 5 Faulkner Posters 5 1998 Tennessee Williams Festival Adds Elderhostel Program 6 Fifth Oxford Conference for the Book 8 President's Initiative on Race
8 Raisin' Cotton Preservation Award 9 Reading the South: Reviews & Notes 11 Latest Mississippi Folklife 12 Notes on Contributors
Director's Column This has been a year of transition for the Center. William Ferris, who had been director since 1979, left in January to become chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. We are proud of Bill and are confident he will be an excellent leader for NEH, which has provided major funding for the Center beginning with a consultants grant of neady $4,000 in 1976. That grant enabled Richard H. Brown of the Newberry Library, during four visits to the campus, to help the planning committee shape our fledgling regional studies center. Chades Reagan Wilson, academic director for the Center, has been selected to replace Bill as director, effective July l. As the interim director for the Center in this time of transition, I'd like to take a moment to ponder the Center's history as I look forward to its promising future. The Center was inaugurated in November 1977 with a three-day Eudora Welty symposium. In addition to listening patiently as friends Charlotte Capers and Reynolds Price praised her work and as Cleanth Brooks and other scholars lectured about it, the author read from her stories, autographed endless copies of her books at the University Museums, where her WPA photographs organized by Patti Carr Black were on exhibition, and saw a production of The Ponder Heart with Jane Reid Petty as guest star in the role of Edna Earl. Bill Ferris was named director in 1978 and assumed the position the next summer, when former NEH chairman Joseph Duffy came to Oxford to announce the Center's three-year grant for its pioneering Southern Studies curriculum. Initially designed for undergraduates, the curriculum was expanded in 1984 to include an M.A. degree. A Ford Foundation grant funded a three-year (1986-89) project to strengthen Southern Studies at the University and other institutions in the region by bringing distinguished visiting faculty and faculty fellows to the campus. NEH and the Ford Foundation also funded the Center's Encyclopedia of Southern Culture (1989), an award-winning, 1,634-page reference work widely hailed as a major contribution to the multidisciplinary study of the South. Among other renowned Center publications are the bimonthly magazine Living Blues (1983-), Lower Pearl River's Piney Woods: Its Land and People (1985), The Blues: A Bibliographical Guide (1986), the five-volume anthology Mississippi Writers: Reflections of Childhood and Youth (1985 -91), The South: A Treasury of Art and Literature (1993), and
Faulkner's World: The Photographs of Martin]' Dain
13 Regional Roundup 13 Southern Studies Students Honored
14 Southern Culture Catalog Items 16 Address Section/Mailing List Form/ Friends Info & Form
REGISTER STAFF Editor: Ann J. Abadie Editorial Assistant: Allison Vise Finch Publications Manager: Mickey McLaurin Graphic Designer: Susan Bauer Lee Mailing List Manager: Raj Betapudi Lithographer: Metroweb
The Center has sponsored or cosponsored important public programs, including the Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference, the Porter L. Fortune Chancellor's History Symposium, the Barnard-Millington Symposium on Science and Medicine in the South, and two national civil rights symposia that brought scores of distinguished journalists and jurists to the University to participate in nationally televised panel discussions. The Oxford Conference for the Book, inaugurated in 1993, has also been a tremendous success. NEH helped fund many of these events and also awarded the Center two challenge grants. One helped establish the University's Blues Archive and endow a fund to enhance library collections in Southern Studies. A second NEH challenge grant helped raise matching funds to preserve Barnard Observatory, an antebellum building that serves as the Center's home. Under Bill Ferris's leadership, the Center raised nearly $12 million dollars to support a variety of programs, only a few of which are mentioned here, and made the University of Mississippi internationally known as a place for studying the South. We thank Bill Ferris for his contributions and welcome Charles Wilson as he leads the Center into its third decade and enhances its reputation for innovative education and research on the American South.
The University complies with all applicable laws regarding affirmative action and equal opportu~ nity in all its activities and does not discriminate against anyone protected by law because of age, creed, color, national
origin,
race, religion,
(1997).
Ann J. Abadie Acting Director
sex,
handicap, veteran or other status.
Page 2
Spring
1998
The Southern Register
The 25th Annual Faulkner & Yoknapatawpha Conference "Faulkner in America" • July 26 ..31, 1998
T
he 1998 Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference will examine the topic "Faulkner and America" through six days of lectures and discussions by literary scholars and critics. In addition to formal lectures, award-winning actresses Alice Berry and Jenny OdIe will dramatize a Joan Williams short story about her relationship with William Faulkner and scenes from the novel Light in August. Other program events will include discussions by Faulkner friends and family; a slide presentation by J. M. Faulkner and Meg Faulkner DuChaine; Voices from Yoknapatawpha, a series of dramatic readings from Faulkner's work; and sessions on "Teaching Faulkner" directed by Robert W. Hamblin, Southeast Missouri State University. The University's John Davis Williams Library will display Faulkner books, manuscripts, photographs, and memorabilia; and the University Press of Mississippi will exhibit Faulkner books published by university presses throughout the United States. Films relating to the author's life and work will be available for viewing during the week. The conference will begin on Sunday, July 26, with a reception followed by an afternoon program during which winners of the ninth Faux Faulkner Contest will be announced. Other events on Sunday will include a buffet supper served at the home of Dr. and Mrs. M. B. Howorth Jr. Tours of North Mississippi are scheduled for Tuesday, and a picnic will be served at Faulkner's home, Rowan Oak, on Wednesday. The conference will end on Friday with a reception at the home of Mr. and Mrs. M. C. Falkner. For more information about the conference, contact Chadene Dye at the Institute for Continuing Studies, P.O. Box 879, The University of Mississippi, University, MS 38677 -0879; telephone 601-232-7282; fax 601-232-5138; email cdye@olemiss.edu.
The Southern Register
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Speakers James Carothers, University of Kansas; author of William Faulkner's Short Stories. Richard Godden, University of Keele; author of Fictions of Labor: William Faulkner and the South's Long Revolution and Fictions of Capital: The American Novel from James to Mailer. Arlie Herron, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga; founder of the Chattanooga Conference on Southern Literature. Catherine Gunther Kodat, Hamilton College; author of essays on Faulkner, Morrison, Hurston, and Lorraine Hansberry. Kathryn Burgess McKee, University of Mississippi; author of essays and papers on such writers as Kaye Gibbons, Bobbie Ann Mason, Sherwood Bonner, and Ellen Glasgow. Peter Nicolaisen, Paedagogische Hochschule, Flenburg, Germany; author of books in German on Edward Taylor, Hemingway, Conrad, Thomas Jefferson, and Faulkner. Charles A. Peek, University of Nebraska at Kearney; coeditor with Robert W. Hamblin of the forthcoming William Faulkner Encyclopedia. Noel Polk, University of Southern Mississippi; author of William Faulkner's "Requiem for a Nun": A Critical Study and Children of the Dark House: Text and Context in Faulkner. Hortense Spillers, Cornell University; author of numerous essays on black feminist critic'ism and coeditor of Conjuring: Black Women, Fiction, and Literary Tradition. Joseph R. Urgo, Bryant College; author of Faulkner's Apocrypha: "A Fable," Snopes, and the Spirit of Rebellion and Novel Frames: Literature as Guide to Race, Sex, and History in American Culture. Linda Wagner-Martin, University of
Spring 1998
The above photograph of William Faulkner, made in 1952 when he addressed the Delta Council in Cleveland, Mississippi, is part of a series featured on the 1998 Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference poster. The photographer is Bern Keating, whose journalistic career carried him to 100 countries and also led to a close friendship with William Faulkner that was renewed at distant points of the globe during both their travels. Bern Keating has won many awards for his work, which includes 27 books and hundreds of articles in National Geographic, Travel and Leisure, Town and Country, Geo, Smithsonian, and other magazines.
North Carolina at Chapel Hill; author of Hemingway and Faulkner: Inventors/ Masters, Dos Passos: Artist as American, Telling Women's Lives: The New Biography, and biographical studies of Ellen Glasgow, Sylvia Plath, and Gertrude Stein. Candace Waid, Northwestern University; author of Edith Warton's Letters from the Underworld: Fictions of Women and Writing and coeditor of Generations: Women in the South. Chades Reagan Wilson, University of Mississippi; coauthor of the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture and author of Judgment and Grace in Dixie: Southern Faiths from Faulkner to Elvis and Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause, 1865-1900.
Page 3
Columbus Decorative Arts & Preservation Forum, Antiques Show & Sale Set for October 22..25, 1998 American Arts and Crafts Movement Is Forum Theme
T
MATERIAL CULTURE Antiques, Oriental Carpets, Art, Crafts, Folk Art
Just off the Square 405 S. Lamar Blvd., Oxford, MS 38655 Store Hours: Monday - Saturday, 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. Phone: (601)234-7055 Fax: (601) 234-7054 E-mail: www.matcult@dixie-net.com
Featuring all things Southern and good, plus ... Nineteenth Century American Furniture (featuring Classical and Southern) .. Antique Persian Carpets .. Southern Fine Crafts .. Quilts - Antique and Modem" Folk Art .. Silver
Folk Art, including original works by Ethel Wright Mohamed" Zelle Manning .. Sultan Rogers .. Elayne Goodman .. Clementine Hunter
Fllle Art, including original works by John McCrady" Ellsworth Woodward .. Glennray Tutor" George Haskey .. Eugene Speicher" Anne Wells Munger" Francis Brown .. Earl Norte" Samuel Brecher" Color Lithographs by Gould, Audubon and Carol Cloar
Contemporary photography, including works by Maude Schuyler Clay" Birney Imes .. Tom Rankin" Roland Freeman
Other Arts and Crafts include Pottery by Pablo Sierra, Jerry Brown and Jim Bozeman .. Glass by Susan Ford" Vintage Ceiling fans
Caroline McIntosh, Interior Design SelVices Dorothy M. Howorth - Proprietor
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he Columbus Historic Foundation announces the 7th annual Decorative Arts and Preservation Forum and the 27th annual Antiques Show and Sale to be held October 22-25, 1998, in Columbus, Mississippi. The weekend features scholarly lectures, gala entertainments, house tours, and retail sales. The American Arts and Crafts movement is the theme of the two-day Forum, which is funded through a grant from the Mississippi Humanities Council and will include four free public lectures. The first, scheduled for the evening of October 23, will be a lecture/performance on "What Is Ragtime?" by Richard Zimmerman, musical director of the Scott Joplin Ragtime Festival of Sedalia, Missouri. The program will cover such topics as the origin and evolution of ragtime, its main styles, composers, and musicians, and its relationship to blues, jazz, and other musical forms. Forum sessions on October 24 will begin with author Ray Stubblebine, a trustee of the Craftsman Farms Foundation, who will discuss the contributions of Gustav Stickley to the Arts and Crafts Style of architecture. Although Stickley is best known for furniture, this presentation will focus on his architectural creativity. Examples of some of Stickley's more than 200 house designs will be shown during the tour of Arts and Crafts structures in Columbus. Next, historian Martha Swain will present a lecture titled "The Political and Social Context of the Bungalow Home, 1890-1930." In the final presentation, John W. Keefe, New Orleans Museum of Art, will explain the origins and the influence of the Arts and Crafts movement and comment on its impact on the decorative arts. For information on free lectures and events, call the Columbus Historic Foundation at 601-329-3533 or the Columbus Convention and Visitors Bureau at 800-327-2686.
Center for the Book to Administer Literacy Program in Southern States The Center for the Book in the Library of Congress has received a three-year grant from the Viburnum Foundation to administer it rural, library-based family literacy program in Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Texas. Sixteen rural libraries in these states currently receive $3,000 grants directly from the Viburnum Foundation as part of the project. The Center for the Book hopes to extend the project to libraries in other states with large rural populations. The libraries currently involved in the Viburnum Family Literacy Project are located in areas with high levels of poverty and illiteracy. The programming that will be implemented as a result of the three-year grant will include parenting classes for adults, adult literacy and ESL instruction in classrooms by tutors, storytelling and reading aloud for children exclusively or for all generations, and bilingual programming for adults and children. The Viburnum Family Literacy Project is fully described in a 60-page report, From Thibodaux to Tucumcari: Family Literacy in Rural Libraries: A Report from the Viburnum Family Literacy Project. Free copies are available from the Center for the Book at Library of Congress, 101 Independence Avenue SE, Washington, DC 20540-4920 or by phone at 202-707-5221.
Spring 1998
The Southern Register
.'
Faulkner Posters
Gospel Choir CD
Flat copies of Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference posters with illustrations by Glennray Tutor (1989-1995) and ~hotographs by Martin Dain (1996), Jack Cofield (1997), and Bern Keating (1998) are available for $10.00 each plus $3.50 postage and handling. Mississippi residents add 7 percent sales tax. Also available are two posters with duo tone photographs of William Faulkner, one made by Martin J. Dain and the other by Colonel J. R. Cofield. Each poster costs $18.95 plus $3.50 postage and handling. Mississippi residents add 7 percent sales tax. Send all orders to the Southern Culture Catalog, 301 Hill Hall, University, MS 38677. Visa or MasterCard account accepted. Credit card orders may be made by calling 800390-3527 or 601-232-5577.
,V Jhen
Peter Slade of Glastonbury, Somerset, came from England to be a Southern Studies graduate studenr, he joined the University of Mississippi Gospel Choir and was astounded by the talent he found surrounding him. Slade asked directors Delbert Collins and Ron Briggs about the choir's past recording and found, to I University of Mississippi his surprise, that, of the Gospel Choir many campus choirs, the UMGC was the only one that had never recorded an album. He approached the Center and was awarded a graduate assistantship to be the producer of the choir's first album. For the first time in its 24-year history, the UMGC will release a CD recording of a live performance. The album features music written by both choir members and professional songwriters. It was recorded at the choir's April 8 concert on the University campus and will be released in the fall of 1998. The concert was made possible by support from Malaco Music Group, the University of Mississippi Sesquicentennial Committee, Alumni Association, Studenr Life Division, and the Center. The recording is a milestone in the history of the choir. "I have researched the choir since it began in 1974 and am hearing stories of how hard the choir has had to work to be taken seriously," said Slade. "I see this recording as a way of recognizing the African American cultural contribution to this university, especially as we are celebrating the Sesquicentennial." The CD is being recorded by Malaco Records and produced by Jerry Masters, who has produced recordings of the Mississippi Mass Choir. The musicians featured on the CD regularly play for O'Landa Draper, a five-time Grammy nominee. The release of the CD is currently set for November 1998. Lauren McDaniel
W
Mississippi Delta Tennessee Williams Festival Adds Elderhostel Program
T
his year, for the first time, a special program for Elderhostel participants will take place during Clarksdale's Mississippi Delta Tennessee Williams Festival. The 6th annual festival is scheduled for October 15-17,1998, with the Elderhostel program set for October 13-18. In addition to learning about Tennessee Williams in the playwright's boyhood home and taking part in festival events, Elderhostel registrants will study cotton culture and blues music. The cost, including meals and lodging, is $415, double occupancy. For information about Elderhostel sessions, contact Ronald Gorsegner, Carnegie Public Library/Delta Blues Museum, 114 Delta Avenue, Clarksdale, MS 38614; telephone 601-627-7341; fax 601-627-4344. Two other special events include paper and acting com pet i-
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tions. Scholars are invited to submit papers for possible presentation at the festival. The deadline for submission of papers is August 15,1998. To enter, send a completed paper (7-8 pages) or an abstract (250 words) to Colby Kullman, Department of English, The University of Mississippi, University, MS 38677. High school students in Mississippi are invited to enter an acting competition that includes two categories, monologues and scenes. All material must be drawn from the plays of Tennessee Williams. Cash prizes are given for winning monologues and scenes, which will be performed for the festival audience. For information on the 1998 festival and drama competition, write Tennessee Williams Festival, P.O. Box 1565, Clarksdale, MS 38614-1565; telephone 601-627-7337.
Spring 1998
Page 5
1998 Oxford Conference for the Book T
he Oxford Conference for the Book, inaugurated in 1993 and held annually through 1996, was suspended last year and resumed with great success this spring. In fact, many participants judged the 1998 conference as the best ever. The meeting was held in the Baxter Room of Williams Library, giving participants opportunities between sessions to look at displays in the Mississippi Hall of Writers and the Department of Archives and Special Collections. The program began on March 13 with two sessions moderated by Randall Kenan, this year's Renee and John Grisham Southern Writer in Residence at the University of Mississippi. Participants in the sessions, which considered writing, being published, and reaching an audience, were Alane Mason, an editor at W. W. Norton; Oxford native and widely praised author Larry Brown, who is currently teaching writing at the University; Jere Hoar, an emeritus professor of journalism at the University and author of the story collection Body Parts; poet and critic Fredric Koeppel, of the Memphis Commercial Appeal; and Daniel Woodrell, an Ozark native and author of five acclaimed novels. In an afternoon lecture on "Writing the Wilderness" Thomas P. Slaughter drew on his work as author of The Natures ofJohn and William Bartram and editor of William Bartram: Travels and Other Writings. Next, book designer and packager Bea Jackson moderated the panel "Bookmaking in the 21st Century: Technology, Creativity, and Design." Joining in discussion of this topic were Wylene Dunbar, an Oxford attorney whose first novel, Margaret Cape, was recently published; Michael Farmer, vice president, director of design and production for Harcourt Brace; and Claire
Bradley Ong, a production director at Alfred P. Knopf. On Friday evening Wylene Dunbar read from Margaret Cape and Daniel Woodrell read from his most recent novel, Give Us a Kiss. Readings were great attractions on Saturday evening, too. Rick Bragg, correspondent for the New York Times, Atlanta Bureau, read from his recently published memoir, All Over Author Wylene Dunbar (at podium) moderated the popular sesBut the Shoutin'. Eliza- sion '''It Was Really My Idea"': Spouses of Writers Speak Out." beth Spencer, whose fic- With her are panelists (from left) Mary Annie Brown, wife of tion includes The Light Larry Brown; Elizabeth Spencer's husband, John Rusher; Katie in the Piazza and Other Estill, wife of Daniel Woodrell; and Susan Hannah, Barry Iwlian Tales and The Hannah's wife. Voice at the Back Door, read from her latest work, Landscapes of the Heart: A Memoir. On this occasion, Chancellor Robert C. Khayat presented flowers to Spencer and officially declared her as the University of Mississippi's first writer in residence when she taught creative writing here 50 years ago. Saturday's program offered four panels, beginning with Wylene Dunbar moderating the popular session "'It Was Really My Idea': Spouses of Writers Speak Out." Providing insights into their lives as writers' helpmates were panelists Mary Annie Brown, wife of Larry Brown; Elizabeth Spencer's husband, John Rusher; Katie Estill, wife of Daniel Woodrell; and Susan Hannah, Barry Hannah's wife. The second session on Saturday mornWilliam Steig'sdrawing Zeke Pippin and His Family illustrates the official poster and Ting was moderated by Elaine H. Scott, shirt for the 1998 Oxford Conference for former chair of the Arkansas State Board the Book. Steig, who is 90 years old, has of Education, a volunteer for the Reading published drawings in the New Yorker since 1930 . He is also the creator of 28 books for The 1998 Oxford Conference for' children, including Sylvester and the Magic the Book wassponsoredby the Pebble (winner of the 1970 Caldecott Center for the Study of Southern Medal), The Amazing Bone (a Caldecott Culture and Square Bookswith Honor Book), Abel's Island (a Newbery supportfrom the OxfordJunior Honor Book), Doctor De Soto (a Newbery Honor Book), and more recently, Zeke Auxiliary.The project waspartially Pippin, The Toy Brother, and Grown-ups fundedby the University of Mississippiand through a grant by the City of Oxford.The InstiGet to Do AU the Driving. Flat posters, suittute of Continuing Studiescoordinated the event. For visitor information,contact the Oxford able for framing, and T-shirts are available TourismCouncil, Po. Box 965, Oxford, MS 38655; telephone 800-758-9177 or 601-234from the Center. See pages 14-15 for details. 4680; fax 601-234-0355.
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Spring 1998
The Southern Register
Is Fundamental program since 1974, and recipient of the RIF Leader for Literacy Award in April 1994. Participants in the "Readers in the Year 2004" session were Nancy Van Laan, author of Possum Come
a Knockin', With a Whoop and a Holler-A Bushel of Lore from Way Down South, and other books for children; Scott Cook, a native ofJackson, Mississippi, and illustrator of With a Whoop and a Holler and five other children's books; and Jack Gantos, the author of the Rotten Ralph picture book series and the award-winning Jack books for middle grade readers. Also serving on the panel was Barbara Bonds Thomas, owner of Toad Hall, the famous children's bookstore in Austin, Texas, and president of the American Booksellers Association. After the lunch break, during which authors signed books at Square Books in downtown Oxford, conference attendees gathered for a panel titled "Wieners and Rebels: Writing from the Trenches of Southern Culture." Charles Reagan Wilson, cultural historian and newly appointed director of the Center, moderated the continued on
page
14
•
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Spring 1998
Page 7
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BLUE RIDGE FOLKLIFE By Ted Okon An appreciation of the rich and distinctive folklife in one of the earliest settled regions in southern Appalachia $45 cloth. $18 paper
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INVENTING SOUTHERN LITERATURE By Michael Kreyling A skeptical view of the way the mainstream has defined and studied southern literature $45 unlacketed cloth. $ 17 paper
Page 8
Center Participates in the President's Initiative on Race
S
outhern Studies faculty and students assisted in leading and organizing the dialogue groups that were held in conjunction with a visit to Oxford by members of President Clinton's Initiative on Race Advisory Board. "The President's Initiative on Race and Community in North Mississippi" was held March 16-17, 1998, on the campus of the University of Mississippi. The town meeting style event included a keynote address by distinguished historian John Hope Franklin, a public discussion forum, and reports of 10 dialogue groups that been discussing race relations for six weeks prior to the event. These dialogue groups discussed race as it affects the arts, business, education, environment, government, housing, health care, labor, community organizations, and religion. Former Mississippi governor William Winter, who serves on the President's Advisory Board, participated in the public forum along with John Hope Franklin, chair of the group, and members Reverend Suzan Johnson Cook of New York City and Bob Thomas, a business executive from St. Petersburg, Florida. Winter described the Oxford event as "the best meeting we've had. This is what the Initiative intended all along." Sites for previous meetings included Akron, Ohio; Fairfax, Virginia; Phoenix, Arizona; and San Diego, California. Southern Studies master's alumna Susan Glisson, who currently works as a research associate and assistant coordinator of graduate studies at the Center, served as the chairman for the University's Special Committee on Race that organized and led the 10 dialogue groups. Southern Studies master's students Charlene Dye, John T. Edge, Caroline Herring, Peter Slade, and Marsha Watson served as discussion leaders for the dialogue groups as did Southern Studies alumni Ron Nurnberg, Lynn McKnight, and Eunice Benton; Robbie Ethridge, assistant professor of Anthropology and Southern Studies; law professor Larry Bush; and Tracy Dace and Michaela King, graduate students at the University. In essence, the committee tried to foster an active dialogue on race among OxfordLafayette County residents, who then met with members of the President's Advisory Board during their visit. Glisson's hope is that this dialogue will continue after the event: "The unglamourous work will come in the day-to-day working to improve race relations-what we do after the cameras are gone. I think we should be proactive on race. We have to be honest about it and confront it if we're going to do anything about it." Allison Vise Finch
Raisin' Cotton Given Preservation Award The Women's Film Preservation Fund recently chose Center-distributed film Raisin' Cotton for a preservation award. The monies from the award will allow the Southern Media Archive to transfer the 8mm film to 16mm. Emma Knowlton Lytle of Bolivar County, Mississippi, donated her edited silent footage of life on her family's plantation to the Archive in 1994. Karen Glynn, assistant director of the Southern Media Archive, recently added Lytle's commentary to the film as a sound track. Raisin' Cotton is available through the Southern Culture Catalog at the cost of $25 plus shipping. To order a copy of Raisin' Cotton, call 800-390-3527.
Spring 1998
The Southern Register
,Reading the Bout Reading the South: Book Reviews and Notes by Faculty, of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture
Weary Feet, Rested Souls: A Guided History of the Civil Rights Movement. By Townsend Davis. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1998.448 pages. $27.50. W EAR Y Scholars have been calling FEE T, for several years for histories that recognize the diverse and RES TED local roots of the civil rights movement. This unique volSOU L S ume-one part history, two l.~ G U , D E 0 HIS TOR Y 0 F THE parts travelogue-allows anyone to follow the paths of well known and not so famous events in the movement. I feared at first that such a goal would be impossible, given our current belief that civil rights movements took place all over the South. But Townsend Davis does an admirable job combining the heroic, the tragic, the fascinating, and the everyday in describing and locating the sites of civil rights activism in the South in the 1950s and 1960s. One finds descriptions and the locations of the stop in Montgomery where Rosa Parks got on the bus, the lodge hall in McComb where Robert Moses taught the first voter registration class for the SNCC, the sites of Fannie Lou Hamer's home and Aaron Henry's drug store, the Woolworth's in Greensboro where the North Carolina A& T students protested discrimination, and the precise locations of student protest and counterprotest at Jackson State University, South Carolina State University, and the University of Mississippi. Numerous homes of protest figures, courthouses and jails, and even more numerous churches give specific location to movement events and individuals. The volume includes a few museums and commemorative sites, but it emphasizes the places where civil rights workers lived, organized, protested, and met resistance. It says something about the public effects of the movement that 11 sites are located on streets now named for Martin Luther King Jr. It would be simple to criticize such a book for its om is- ' sions. Mississippi and Alabama sites dominate the work, with Georgia a distant third. Residents of and visitors to Louisiana and florida will likely be surprised to find no sites in these states. But this work should be a great help in allowing tourists, students, and all other history-seekers to walk in the footsteps of people involved in extraordinary events. Ted Ownby
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Students,
and Friends
Writing the South: Ideas of an American Region. With a new Afterword. By Richard Gray, Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Uni~ versity Press, 1997.368 pages. $14.95 paper. This revised edition of a work published by Cambridge University Press in 1986 remains a vital and challenging interpretation of the changing literary meanings of the South. Gray has written a new afterword that brings the work to the present and challenges some of his previous conclusions. The cast of literary characters in the book is largely but not completely familiar. He begins with Virginians from the first boosters and settlers to Thomas Jefferson and John Taylor, proceeds to various antebellum conservatives like John C. Calhoun, William Gilmore Sims, and the Southwestern humorists, moves on to the troubled concerns of postbellum writers like Joel Chandler Harris and especially Mark Twain, before moving into long analyses of the Vanderbilt Agrarians, William Faulkner, Eudora Welty, and Walker Percy. Gray adds much complexity and comparison to how such authors dealt with the Big Themes: natural Eden, aristocracy, independent farming, the organic society, defeat and nostalgia, militancy, facing the past, the significance of family, and race. A consistent theme is that no individual or group seems very secure in their identities and thus they all show the recurring desire to construct a region---or to "write the South" This may explain the concentration on mostly conservative, mostly male authors, who often wanted to claim the South as their own. Gray does not deal in depth with the many authors who wrote against the various conservative visions of the region. The entire analysis is complex and valuable, but the final complete chapter and the new afterword should be required reading for all analysts of the contemporary South. Gray wonders if the great changes in the South-the rise of consumer culture, urban and suburban growth, and twoparty, biracial politics at the expense of agriculture, rural poverty, and traditional expressions of white supremacyhave left anything of the South for writers to write about with any excitement and regional meaning. Using Eudora Welty and Walker Percy, who once said, "Well, the so-called Southern thing is over and done with I think," Gray first concludes that the writers seem to be "finishing a story that began four hundred years ago." Twelve years later, however, For these and other books call 800-648-4001 or fax 601-234-9630. 160 Courthouse
Spring 1998
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Page 9
,Reading the South he has decided he was too quick to make that conclusion, and suggests that perhaps survival or decline are the only two choices. Perhaps, he hints, the recent surge of new and exciting writing by Southerners shows not that change will bring an end to Southern literature, but that change will enliven the region with some new voices, new worries, and new Souths to write. Ted Ownby
With A Hammer for My Heart. By George Ella Lyon.
her mind long after returning Lyon's succinct novel to the shelf. With a Hammer for My Heart is the story of Lawanda Ingle, a teenage gid who is both devoted to home and family and impatient to leave them for college beyond the mountains she knows. Selling magazines to provide the money necessary for her proposed escape, Lawanda ventures into the broken world of an eccentric and aging hermit, Amos Gadand. Simply "Gadand" to Lawanda, the recluse is a World War II veteran who found it impossible upon his celebrated return to re-enter the wodd he left behind. He retreated to two decrepit buses parked on a hillside; from that vantage point he has surveyed the world for many years, and found it sorely lacking. Living a life still rent by hallucinations of the horrors of war, Garland has driven away his family, lost his teaching position, and earned a reputation for being potentially dangerous. Lawanda's disarmingly forthright personality penetrates Gadand's brittle shell, and the two form a friendship based on a "1"_1 I mutual love of learning and an admiration for the personality and intellect of one another. They are both, in fact, out of step with the world surrounding them, and they fashion for themselves a hillside haven among Garland's buses, his books, and his maps. Yet the reader senses almost immediately that Lawand~ has ventured into an experience from which she cannot emerge unchanged. The discovery of Garland's journals opens his mind to the reader as his monologues never have and reveal Lawanda's troubling role in the distorted landscape of his sometimes dreamlike existence. Gadand's written words boil the plot to a rapid series of events that test the love of two men for
New York: OK Publishing, Inc., 1997. 213 pages. $21.95. I"'r~---------";"'. With a Hammer for My Heart initially appears to be something different for George Ella Lyon. Adding to her well-established reputation as an author of children's books and as a poet, Lyon offers here her first novel for adults. Admirers of her earlier work will not be disappointed, however, because they will find themselves on familiar ground. With a Hammer for My Heart is set in Lyon's native Eastern Kentucky, the location that has lent so much of her writing its authentic sense of place. Again, readers hear the people of Appalachia speaking for themselves, this time in a series of chapters written from easily distinguishable and powerfully rendered points of view. Perhaps most intriguing among them is Lawanda's Mamaw, marked by her unconventional notions, among them her conviction, based on a vision, that Jesus is female~ In deceptively simple prose, these voices unite to tell a complex tale about love's incredibly exacting price, a story that the reader will turn over and over in
Page 10
Spring 1998
Lawanda: Gadand and her well-intentioned father, whose actions finally threaten this community of voices with the flames that recur as one of the novel's several unifying images. Lyon consistently reveals in her work an ability to render the particularities of the people and the places she knows best, while at the same time exploring concerns that lend her stories and poems universal appeal. The same is true of With a Hammer for My Heart, a powerful first novel that catapults Lyon into the ranks of other well-respected contemporary novelists. Her characters come alive through their storytelling, blending humor and sadness, much as Lee Smith's do, while the raw edge of Lyon's narrative reminds the reader of Larry Brown's unflinching realism. But Lyon's people and her voices are finally their own, emerging from a unique situation and a part of the South that will capture the imaginations of readers, maybe even haunt them. Kathryn McKee
Along the River Road: Past and Present on Louisiana's Historic Byway. By Mary
Ann Sternberg. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1996. 294 pages. $16.95 cloth. In Along the River Road Mary Ann Sternberg has created a portable reference guide for travelers along Louisiana Routes 1 and 18 and U.S. Route 90 between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, Louisiana. Beginning with a briefhistorical time line of the byway, she then explains local terms, analysesthe interaction between man and the river in settling along the route, and provides a brief overview of the agriculture, industry,and architecture indigenous to the communities located on the byway. These introductory chapters provide sufficient background for the bulk of the textSternberg's mile-by-mile tour of the interesting places, past and present, upriver along the east bank and downriver along the west bank. Allison Vise Finch
The Southern Register
Latest Mississippi Folklife Emphasizes Food Culture T
he most recent issue of Mississippi Folklife, a journal published by the Center in conjunction with the Mississippi Folklore Society, gives special emphasis to Mississippi's traditional food culture, reflecting the research efforts of Southern Studies professor Tom Rankin and special issue guest editor and Southern Studies graduate student John T. Edge. "My desire was to publish a special issue on the traditional food culture of this state," said Rankin, associate professor of Art and Southern Studies and editor of Mississippi Folklife. A photographer, filmmaker, and folklorist, Rankin has been documenting and interpreting the folk culture of the South for more than a decade. "We hope this issue will give readers a glimpse of the richness, diversity, and continuity of the food culture in 1930s and '40s Mississippi, and by extension, of our contemporary food traditions," he said. Guest-edited by Edge, with assistance from former Southern Studies graduate student Sarah Torian, the issue includes previously unpublished essays from the Depression-era Federal Writer's Project, as well as a previously unpublished piece by Mississippi author Eudora Welty. "The Federal Writer's Projectalong with sister projects devoted to the arts, theater, and music-was first conceived as a means of work relief for unemployed writers and journalists as part of the New Deal program," said Edge, who worked on all facets of the issue. "Between 1935 and 1942, the federal government employed hundreds of white-collar workers as folklore fieldworkers whose task as writers and journalists included a book-length survey of American foodways. Squirreled away at the Department of Archives and History in Jackson since the premature end of the project in 1942, the works included in this issue are unique in their concentration upon food events." Along with the Federal Writer's Project food materials found at the Department of Archives and History, Rankin discovered a remarkable unpublished cookbook manuscript titled "Possum and Pomegranate." He also discovered an unpublished Eudora Welty manuscript in one of the many boxes of papers he surveyed. "It is truly a privilege for us to offer this Welty piece," said Rankin. "Written years ago, Miss Welty's artful essay provides a native's view of the foodways of the period that is imbued with a delicate understanding of Mississippi culinary traditions." "Welty compiled recipes for the Mississippi Advertising Commission during her time as a WPA employee," said Torian, now a member of the Southern Regional Council staff in Atlanta. Along with the recipes-including jellied apples, okra gumbo, and beaten biscuits-Welty presents the sources, traditions, myths, and meanings of many Mississippi foods. Mississippi Folklife publishes articles, photographic essays, and reviews biannually about the diversity of folklife and culture in Mississippi and adjoining regions. To subscribe or for more information, contact Center Publications at 601-232-5577. Linda Peal White
The Southern Register
Spring 1998
THE CHILDREN BOB MOSES LED
A fascinating story that needed to be told. -Robert Stone The novel is wonderfully instructive it has a great deal of moral energy, and li tells an Important story sensitively, carefully, thoughtfully. -Robert Coles An absorbing look at one of America's darkest and most courageous moments. - Kirkus Heath's book is important history, but it is also art. -Toby Olson Engaging and suspenseful, this is contemporary fiction at ItS best, and is sure to find its way' into college courses on the 60s and the civil rights movement. -Dayton Daily News An emotional journey through a part of our history that win leave the reader shaken but enriched. - Dorothy Cotton The blend of fact and fiction is so brilliantly written, the reader is completely absorbed into the unfolding drama.... The ChiICJrenBob Moses Led could 5e used in the classroom to bring understanding of what happened in MississipPI during that remarkable summer .... - Small Press Review An important and timely book. I am grateful that The Children Bob Moses Led provided me with this re-introduction to an important Rart of my own history. -James A. McPherson Mention Freedom Summer these days and you're likely to get a blank stare. Heath s book should help to remedy that. The author clearly' knows his subject and can evoke a scene, ana one is drawn Into the action and compelled by the events themselves. - The Washington Post William Heath will be signin!i copies of The Children Bob Moses Led arS~uare Books, Oxford, MS, at 5:00 on June 24 .
The Children Bob Moses Led by William Heath 317 pages hardback, $21.95j quality paperback, $12.95 ISBN 1-57131-00808 Milkweed Editions 430 First Avenue North, Suite 400 Minneapolis, MN 55401 Phone (612) 332-~192; (800) 520-6455 www. mllkweed.org
Page 11
continued from page 1
dissertation. He is also the author of Judgment and Grace in Dixie: Southern Faiths from Faulkner to Elvis (1995), as well as the editor of Religion in the South (1985) and The New Regionalism (1997). Wilson plans to continue work on his latest book-an analysis of the emergence of a Southern identity-while serving as Center director. In fact, he says that continuing to be a publishing scholar is an important part of the position: "I think the director of the Center needs to be a publishing scholar. This is an important symbol, and I think it is important to include scholarship among the other activities in which the Center director engages. I'm pretty far along in this study of the Southern way of life, so it is the first project that I want to finish in terms of scholarship." Wilson describes his study of the Southern way of life as "an attempt to write a history of how Southerners became Southerners" and to answer key questions: When did the idea of a Southern way of life develop? When did a Southern identity develop? And how did that identity evolve and develop over the years? "I think there is a tendency when we talk about Southern culture," he said, "to freeze it into stereotypical images of the South's past. What I'm interested in is how these images developed, how Southerners saw themselves, and how non-Southerners saw them in different time periods. I want to develop a narrative from the beginning of the Colonial period up until the dramatic changes that occurred in the last 30 years in the South. Overall, I'm trying to analyze the different meanings that the South has had for its many different inhabitants from the planter to the sharecropper to the plain white farmers to the textile workers." Wilson readily admits that he will bring his long-standing interest in Southern religion to the director's chair: "I think the director of the Center alwaysgives the Center a certain character because of the interests that person pursues. I'm interested in working on collaborative projects with other institutions and seeking funding for projects that will advance the study of religion in the South as part of Southern culture. We are in a wonderful
Page 12
Wilson Selected As Director spot in Mississippi in the 1990s to still be able to observe aspects of the traditional culture that are rooted in rural and small town lifewhile at the same time Mississippi is in the throes of social change regarding race relations and economic development. I think it is a wonderful time and this is an excellent place to be documenting and studying a vital form of Southern culture like religion." Yet Wilson also plans to further Center interests other than religion. Acknowledging the Center's long tradition of studying a variety of topics, such as Southern literature, music, and race relations, Wilson plans to further these projects while seeking new opportunities for Center research. "I think the Center has many resources in terms of faculty and students and in terms of archival material like the Blues Archive and the Southern Media Archive. This is a good time to look and see the connections between faculty and student interests and our resources and to bring them together for future Center projects," Wilson said. Strengthening off-campus connections is also part of Wilson's plans. In addition to continuing academic exchanges with Western Kentucky and the College of William and Mary, he hopes to establish stronger relationships between the Center and other institutions with similar interests, such as the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina, the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, and the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama.
In regard to his plans for extending the Center's parallel focuses of teaching/research and service/outreach, Wilson feels that his background as academic director will influence his decisions. "I've always looked at the Center from the viewpoint of academics more than anything else. The work of the Center involves research, service to the community, and teaching. I think I will always be especially attuned to the importance of academics as part of those missions. I recognize that those missions intertwine in many ways and that there is a lot of overlapping between the academic work and the broader work of the Center, yet I am interested in making the academic program even more central to the identity of the Center than it has been." Already Wilson has decided to spend a good portion of his first year as director soliciting suggestions from Center faculty, staff, students, and alumni to incorporate into long-range plans for the Center. In fact, he and interim director Ann Abadie hosted three forums this past April for those involved with the Center to offer ideas for future plans and provide counsel in regard to the Center's mission. With the ideas gleaned from these forums and his own expertise as a Southern Studies professor and Center academic director, Wilson is sure to lead the Center and the Southern Studies program into a successful future composed of new opportunities and thoughtful continuance of existing programs. Allison Vise Finch
Notes on Contributors Allison Vise Finch is a Southern Studies graduate student who holds a B.A. in English from Baylor University. Lauren McDaniel is a sophomore who is majoring in English and minoring in Southern Studies. Her hometown is Oak Ridge, Louisiana. Kathryn McKee isJames M. And Madeleine McMullan Assistant Professor of Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi. She also holds a joint appointment in English. Ted Ownby, author of Subduing Satan: Religion, Recreation, and Manhood in the Rural South, 1865-1920, holds a joint appointment in Southern Studies and History. Linda Peal White, an accomplished editor and author, is a writer for the public relations and marketing department at the University of Mississippi.
Spring 1998
The Southern Register
North Carolina Literary Review recently announced a call for papers for its upcoming issue on "The Civil War in North Carolina." Suggested submissions include critical analyses of neglected 19th-century fiction by North Carolina writers set during the Civil War, transcriptions from letters and diaries of the Civil War period, critical analyses of contemporary Civil War literature and histories, and Civil War-related fiction, art, and photographs. All submissions are due by September 15, 1998, and must relate to the issue's theme. The Review's mailihg address is English Department, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC 278584353; telephone 919-328-1537.
~ Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama, will host a Summer Institute of Christian Spirituality comprised of biblical, historical, pastoral, and moral courses led by faculty from its division of philosophy and theology. Session 1 will be held May 31 to June 6 while Session 2 will be June 7-13. Course titles include "Hopkins: Poet and Priest," "Spirituality, Psychology, and Healing," and "Ignatius of Loyola." For more information contact Pat Warren, coordinator of the Institute, at 334380-4672.
The editors of a proposed book on Southern women playwrights invite submissions that explore the sources and causes of the traditional neglect of Southern women's drama, as well as thematic and generic topics related to Southern women playwrights. Send inquiries, completed papers, or proposals by June 1, 1998, to Robert L. McDonald, Department of English and Fine Arts, Virginia Military Institute, Lexington, VA 24450 (mcdonaldrl@vmi.edu).
~ Exploring Wild Georgia: Photographs of the Bartram Trail by Brad Sanders will be on display at the Columbus Museum of Columbus, Georgia, until August 30, 1998. Sanders's contemporary color photographs trace the travels of 18th-century naturalist William Bartram from the Carolinas to Florida. For more information, contact the museum at 706-649-0713.
The Southern Register
The 25th annual Pilgrimage Garden Club Antiques Forum will be held in Natchez, Mississippi, November 4-6, 1998. Lecture topics include American and European silver, Old Paris porcelain, time for clocks, documented furniture in Natchez collections, and the historic interiors of Melrose and the William Johnson house. An American furniture workshop will also be conducted by Sotheby's department head Leslie Keno and Leigh Keno of Leigh Keno American Antiques. For more information contact Mrs. Richard T. Harriss III at 601-442- 7234 or write to The Antiques Forum at P.O. Box 1776, Natchez, MS 39121; telephone 800-64 7-6742.
A permanent exhibition, Louisiana: Spirit of Creativity, opened March 7 at the
Alexandria Museum of Art in Alexandria, Louisiana, to coincide with the reopening of the museum in a new 21,000 square foot facility. The exhibition showcases 53 objects, including works by turnof-the-century Newcomb Pottery potters, North Louisiana folk artists, outsider artists, and contemporary masters who live in Louisiana. For more information on the permanent exhibition or on upcoming exhibitions at the museum, contact Mark Tullos, museum director, at 318-443-3458 or see the museum's website at www.themuseum.org.
~ The Fourth Annual Southern Writers, Southern Writing Graduate Student Conference will be held at the University of Mississippi July 24 and 25, 1998. Creative and critical readings will address various topics on or about the South and will be categorized into panels of similar topics. General topics will include Southern identities, Southern community, teaching composition in the South, Southern history, politics, or economics. For more information on the conference, visit the conference website at http://www.olemiss.edu/conf/swsw or write to Southern Writers, Southern Writing, Department of English, 307 Bishop Hall, The University of Mississippi, University, MS 38677.
Southern Studies Students Honored Angela Griffin, graduate student in Southern Studies, has won the Lucy Somerville Howorth Award given by the University of Mississippi's Sarah Isom Center for Women Studies for the best graduate paper on women written in 199697. Students in any university graduate program are eligible for the award, which includes a $100 cash prize and recognition on a plaque displayed at the Center for Women's Studies. Griffin's award-winning paper is titled "Granny Midwives' Unique Ways of Knowing: The Exploration of a Dying Profession." Southern Studies undergraduate student Franklin Ridgway is the recipient of the Gray award for his paper "Outward and Visible Signs: The Sacred Symbolism of Walker Percy's Fiction." The Gray award, established by Colonel and Mrs. Homer Gray of Oxford, includes a $100 prize and is designated for a paper that analyzes aspects of the Southern experience. Tamika McCullar's paper "Richard Wright: A Treacherous Journey to Manhood" garnered her the Coterie Award for an outstanding research paper on Southern culture. McCullar, an undergraduate in Southern Studies, also received a $100 prize with her award. The Center congratulates these outstanding students, who were recognized during the University's Honors Day ceremonies on April 2. Also recognized on this occasion was Teresa Parker, winner of the first Lucille and Motee Daniels Award in Southern Studies. (See Southern Register, Winter 1998.)
Spring 1998
Page 13
continued from page 7
1998 Conference for the Book session in which historian Jerry E. Strahan and journalist Tony Horwitz talked about their new books. Strahan's book, Managing Ignatius: The Lunacy of Lucky Dogs and Life in the Quarter, describes the author's experiences as manager of Lucky Dogs Inc. in New Odeans. Horwitz, in Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War, looks at the practice and implications of current Civil War reenactors. Barry Hannah moderated the day's fourth panel, "Skeletons in the Closet: Writing about the Family." Joining him in this discussion were Rick Bragg, Elizabeth Spencer, and Daniel Woodrell. A final panel took place on Sunday, with J ere Hoar moderating "Presidential Scandal, the Press, and Print." Historian John E Marszalek began with a presentation based on his book The Petticoat Affair: Manners, Mutiny, and Sex in Andrew Jackson's White House. Joining Hoar and Marszalek in discussing the topic as related to current affairs were Tony Horwitz, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the Wall Street Journal, and Rick Bragg, winner of a Pulitzer Prize in 1996 for his "elegantly written stories on contemporary America." In another session on Sunday, author Jack Gantos entertained the audience with his talk on "Making a Living Writing Autobiographical Fiction and Getting Away with Telling Your Family Secrets." Gantos also visited local schools for the Young Authors Fair, a special event the Oxford Junior Auxiliary sponsored in conjunction with the conference. The day and the conference ended with a performance of the song cycle Fair and Tender Ladies during which singer/songwriters Tom House, Karren Pell, and Tommy Goldsmith presented their evocative musical settings of Lee Smith's novel Fair and Tender Ladies. The piece was commissioned by the Alabama Shakespeare Festival and will receive a full theatrical staging at the Montgomery theater during its 1998-99 season. The Oxford Conference for the Book was indeed successfully revived this year and will be continued, by popular demand. The 1999 conference will be held April 9-11.
Page 14
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