"
-IIII: 1':\IVI RSlll
01- ~IISSISSIPPI
Living Blues: Ever Living, Ever Growing iving Blues, a magazine that has long served as a forum for the voices of blues artists, has a story of its own to tell. An exhibition chronicling the Center-published magazine's 30-year history is currently on display in the Barnard Observatory Gallery through November 22. Founded in Chicago in 1970 by a group of young blues enthusiasts, Living
Blues has witnessed many dramatic changes over the past three decades, including a move from Chicago to Mississippi following its acquisition by the Center in 1983. While the face of the magazine has changed greatly over the years, its initial commitment to Susan Lloyd McClamroch, curator, consults with Scott Barretta, editor of Living Blues, about the exhidocumenting African American bition celebrating the magazine's 30th anniversary. blues as a living tradition has Kimbrough's juke joint in Chulahoma, Mississippi, by the noted remained steadfast. blues photographer Bill Steber. Junior's was a popular Sunday Just as Living Blues views the blues as an ever-evolving art form, night excursion for Oxford residents until it burned to the curator Susan Lloyd McClamroch sees the exhibition as a paean ground last April, and the essay provides many local residents to an ever-evolving magazine. McClamroch, a former gallery a visual tour of their shared past. owner who has curated other Center exhibits, views the magazine While much of the exhibition documents the look and general as "not just about documenting the blues, but an agent in the life direction of the magazine, several other features focus on topics of the blues." In constructing the exhibition, she pored over 153 covered by the magazine over the years. One is blues festivals, and issues of the magazine to find the articles and photos that she felt another is the magazine's long-time coverage of blues legend best illustrated the magazine's accomplishments over the years, Robert Johnson. The enigmatic bluesman gained widespread popand with this "graphic evidence" let the magazine speak for itself. The exhibition follows Living Blues from Chicago to Mississippi, spotlighting the magazine's coverage of all facets of blues music-acoustic, electric, country, urban-while chronicling the life of the magazine. The structure of the exhibitionthree display stations organized by decade-highlights the changing style of the magazine from its early typewritten and largely textual features to the highly charged, colorful layouts of the last decade. Illustrating inclusion, in its entirety,
this change most dramatically is the of a recent photo essay of Junior
ularity with the release of his complete recordings in the early 1990s, but Living Blues has long served as platform for cutting edge research on the bluesman. One of the most interesting parts of this exhibition is a police sketch artist's rendering of Johnson, solicited by the magazine prior to the discovery of photographs of Johnson. The breadth of the magazine, indeed blues music, is suggested by the juxtaposition of photos of artists as diverse as the provocative soul-blues performer Bobby Rush and the Reverend Dwight (continued on page 3)
Director's Column
Southerdtlit@o----- "
The Southern Media Archive
Published Quarterly by The Center for the Study of Southern Culture
and staff went to Vicksburg for the premiere showing at the Southern Cultural Heritage
The University of Mississippi Telephone 662-915-5993
Fax: 662-915-5814 E-mail: cssc@olemiss.edu Internet: http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/south
IN
THIS
ISSUE
Fall 2000
work, and we are particularly Foundation
of an important
has long been a vital part of the Center's
proud of recent developments. Archive
In August, Center faculty
A Mississippi Portrait:
project,
Farm Security
Administration Photographs, 1935 -1940. This CD-Rom contains over 1,230 photographs from the Library of Congress, designed as a tool for teaching and research. The CD-Rom photographs
is not just a collection
of photographs
can be searched by photographer,
Supporting
curriculum
but an educational
tool. The
county, subject, and negative number.
materials assist teachers in adapting
it to the classroom. Karen
Glynn, visual resources curator of the Archive, and her assistants did much research, as
1 Living Blues: Ever Living
well, to verify information in captions and to clarify unresolved issues. The Archive has also launched a new Web site, A Hundred Years at Perthshire, which
2 Director's Column
enables visitors to the site to view photographs,
3 Deep South Humanities Initiative:
views, and watch clips of home movies. It is a striking documentary
Progress Report
read correspondence,
listen to inter-
work. The plan is to
include many modules dealing with different aspects of life at Perthshire,
4 NEH Meeting in Helena, Arkansas
Delta plantation
5 Elderhostel for Faulkner Fans 5 2001 F&Y Call for Papers
for glimpses of both white and black society. These projects are two dramatic examples
6 Faulkner in the 21st Century
Archive.
6 Center Executive Council Meets
from all walks of life and uses them as the basis for creative documentary
7 First Faulkner Fringe Festival
Archive contains, among other material, studio photography
that has been well documented
It collects photographs,
of the work of the Southern
film footage, and audio recordings
7 New MississiPPi Folklife
in the Cofield Collection Collection
8 Southern Film Festival
mately 160,000 negatives from Vic Howard, who documented
9 Keating Exhibition and Collection
County,
Kentucky,
The Howard Collection
from the 1940s through
11 2001 Oxford Conference for the Book
Family Movies as Local History." Karen Glynn came to the Center as a Southern
13 Center Role in New Orleans Event
has approxi-
everyday life in Harlan
the early 1970s. The Home
Collection
13 Summer Institute at Mount Vernon
projects. The
from Oxford, Mississippi, and the more than 100,000 Gladin from Helena, Arkansas.
10 Grisham Writer: Claude Wilkinson 12 Brown Bag Schedule - Spring 2001
Media
of Southerners
such as the 12,000 images
8 Barnard Observatory Exhibitions
photographs
a Mississippi
for a century and provides rich material
Movie
has about 60 sets of film footage from the ongoing project "Picturing Home: Studies graduate student and wrote
one of my favorite theses-on mule racing in the Mississippi Delta. Having discovered home movies of mule racing, she used those, plus interviews, photographs, and other
14 Celebrating A Mississippi Portrait
sources to analyze the society of the Delta. Her interest
15 Reading the South: Reviews & Notes
make them a primary resource of the Archive,
18 Photographer Talks about Delta Land
the National
19 Southern Foodways Alliance News
Film Preservation
Foundation
in home movies has helped
and she recently received a grant from to preserve
one of the most significant
21 Southern Studies Report
home movie collections in the state, that of Emma Knowlton Lytle. The Archive's projects are an important facet of Center work. One of the Center's
23 Southern Studies Internships
strengths has always been in documentary
24 Southern Studies Seminar 25 Marge Baroni: Extraordinary Life
such as David Wharton, director of documentary projects at the Center; staff such as Daniel Sherman, imaging technologies coordinator; and graduate students who work
26 Regional Roundup
with Karen. Students in Southern Studies, art, history, anthropology,
26 Notes on Contributors
nalism also make use of Archive material in research and teaching. The Archive provides
studies, and the Archive draws from faculty
27 Southern Culture Catalog Items
as well a connection
to the broader communities
28 Address Section/Mailing List Form/
Mississippi
for example,
Friends Information and Form
REGISTER STAFF Editor: Ann J. Abadie Graphic Designer: Bea Jackson, Ivy Pages
Portrait,
Lithographer:
RR Donnelley Magazine Group
The University complies with all applicable laws regarding affirmative action and equal opportunity in all its activities and does not discriminate against anyone protected by law because of age, creed, color, national origin, race, religion, sex, handicap, veteran or other status.
Page 2
the Center serves. The premiere of A
took place at the Southern
Cultural
Heritage
Foundation in Vicksburg, which has often worked with the Center on public programs. The Southern Media Archive has undergone an important relocation. It is now safely anchored
in the John Davis Williams
Library at the University,
Department
of Archives and Special Collections.
collection,
through
through association plans to continue
a part of its
This move has secured the Archive's
more space, easier access, and opportunities
for preservation
with the Library. We look forward to a close working relationship
with Dean John Meador and University Mailing List Manager: Mary Hartwell Howorth
sociology, and jour-
Archivist
Thomas
M. Verich. The Center
supporting the Archive through the position of imaging technologies
coordinator, graduate assistants, and development efforts. We regret to say goodbye to a key member of the Archive, Daniel Sherman. He and his wife, Bea Jackson, who was formerly graphic designer for Living Blues, have made many contributions
to Center work, and we will miss them. CHARLES
Fall 2000
REAGAN
WILSON
The Southern Register
• Ul
ALABAMA
ARKANSAS
MISSISSIPPI.
h
d
DEEP SOUTH
Ul
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HUMANITIES
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CENTER
: The fall season brings with it a flurry of activity for the Deep South Humanities Initiative. This new endeavor, an attempt for the Center to gain designa-
History Department at the University of Southern Mississippi, this meeting will
Ul
similarly seek to address the concerns from those in the Pine Hills/Gulf Coast
:2
tion as one of ten regional centers to be funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, is currently in the planning stage funded by an NEH grant. As part of this initial phase, the Center is holding a series of planning meetings
region. The Center is grateful to Carolyn Ware for the use of the Pine Hills Culture Program's Walthall school facilities. The third planning meeting is scheduled for November 16 and will convene at the Selma-Dallas County Library in
throughout the Deep South. The first of these was a successful gathering at the Delta Cultural Center in Helena, Arkansas, on September 12. (See photographs on page 4.) Representatives from educational and cultural institutions met to discuss the prospects of a regional humanities hub. After a morning session
Selma, Alabama. The Selma meeting will focus on the Black Belt/Pine Belt region. Future planning sessions are scheduled for Mountain View, Arkansas, Nashville, Tennessee; and Lafayette, Louisiana. Information and on-line registration for these meetings can be accessed at the Deep South Humanities
in which the attendees introduced themselves and discussed their particular interests, they were treated to some home style Helena cooking straight from Cora Bullock's soul food cafe. The afternoon
Initiative Web site (www.olemiss.edu/ depts/south/rhc). All are welcome at these events, especially those from educational institutions, libraries, museums, arts and historical societies, and other
session provided an opportunity for frank discussion about the region's needs and the ways a new humanities center could serve the Deep South. Those assembled in Helena have provided the nucleus for what we hope will be an informative
cultural organizations. Other activities related to the planning grant include an October 2 gathering of representatives from Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) on the campus of the
planning phase. The next planning
University of Mississippi. The purpose of this meeting was to introduce the idea of
address is Center Southern Culture,
a sabbatical project that would enable faculty at HBCUs to develop curriculum
Mississippi, P.O. Box 1848, University,
session is sched-
uled for October 18 in Hattiesburg. Hosted by Charles Bolton and the
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THE
CENTER
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Moore, who left a successful career in blues for the
ministry back in the 1940s. Several other features demonstrate the magazine's outreach to the blues community. The Living Blues Awards are presented annually, while the Living Blues Directory is issued every other year, a highly valued resource in the blues community. Spotlighted in the exhibition is the directory's 1993-1994 edition, which won a Bronze Ozzie award, for excellence in magazine cover design; the cover shows the smoldering ruins of a recently burned blues club with the sign in the foreground ironically reading "The Sizzlin' Hot Lounge." Living Blues holds a commanding presence as the most respected blues magazine in the world. From its humble beginnings as a counterculture blues fanzine in Chicago, to its present location at the Center, Living Blues has remained steadfast in its commitment
The Southern Register
OF
OF MISSIS~I:::
VNVISlnOl
llSSlNNll
•
or research projects. The sabbatical project would be one of many proposals funded by the Regional Humanities Center endowment. This initial discussion will be continued in meetings to be scheduled on HBCU campuses throughout the Deep South region. For more information about the planning meetings or the Deep South Humanities Initiative, contact planning grant coordinator Andy Harper by telephone (662-915-5993) or bye-mail (acharper@olemiss.edu). The mailing for the Study The University
of of
MS 38677-1848.
Living Blues: Ever Living, Ever Growing "Gatemouth"
FOR
Ul
(continuedfrompagel)
to portraying the blues as a vibrant entity and not a precursor to jazz or rock and roll. This policy is evidenced in the exhibition with the inclusion of a list of original blues songs covered by popular rock 'n' roll and soul artists. Viewers can revel in the knowledge that some of their favorite recordings were once blues standards. The exhibition is an effort of the Center to bring more national and local recognition to the magazine. Many people in Lafayette County may not even know about the vast wealth of information available on the blues in their community. Scott Barretta, current Living Blues editor, is pleased with the exhibition. "Too often, people do not realize what surrounds them," says Barretta. "This exhibit shows the tong, proud history of Living Blues, and we hope it will bring more recognition to the magazine from the local community."
Fall 2000
EVAN HATCH
Page 3
Center Director Charles Reagan Wilson chats with Delta State President David Potter and Teach for America's Ron Nurnberg.
Luther Brown, director of the Delta Center for Culture and Learning at Delta State, addresses the crowd.
Page 4
Fall 2000
The Southern Register
Elderhostel for Faulkner Fans "The Faulkner Elderhostel program was excellent!" "Great week! Please reserve places for us to return next year!" "1 love Faulkner. There is no one to discuss him with at home in Boston. And now here 1 am dropped into a place where 300 people talk about Faulkner. For a week, 1 died and went to Heaven. Thanks for the experience of a lifetime." :'1want to come back next summer!" Such evaluations
by 28 older students
registered
Again,
through
Elderhostel for the Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference in July 2000 were overwhelmingly positive, according to Carolyn Vance Smith of Natchez, president of Educational Travel Associates Inc. Smith, former Mississippi/Arkansas
Regional
Elderhostel
director and a longtime college educator, coordinated
program will include all conference
occupancy) at the Triplett Alumni Center Hotel on the Ole Miss campus, all meals from supper July 22 through lunch July 27, field trip transportation, handouts, and souvenirs. A limited number of single rooms are available at an extra charge. Program registration, which opens in February 2001, may be made by calling toll-free, 1-877-426-8056, and using the program
the group's
activities during the Faulkner week at Ole Miss. "We had many people attending their very first Elderhostel program during the Faulkner Conference," Smith said. "The experienced Elderhostelers told them, 'This program is so special and wonderful. They're not all like this!'" "Everyone praised Ole Miss, the speakers, the hospitality, the
number, 24225-072201-01. Information about the program is available from Smith by telephone (601-446-1208) or bye-mail (carolyn.smith@
campus and especially the local people who were so kind to them." With that success behind her, Smith is planning a second
colin.cc.ms. us).
Elderhostel Faulkner program during the 28th annual Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference, July 22-27, 2001.
CALL FOR PAPERS
the Elderhostel
lectures, field trips, meals, and other activities and will also provide special Elderhostel-only sessions with Faulkner experts. Anyone 55 or older (or accompanying someone 55 or older) is eligible to register for the Elderhostel program. Cost is $713, which includes the conference registration fee, lodging (double
There were three wars at work in the mind of William Faulkner: the American
Civil War, World
War I, and World War II. He did not fight in any of them, yet they are all there, in novels, short stories, essays, and letters. The aim of the 28th annual Faulkner
and Yoknapatawpha
Conference
THE 28TH
against a backdrop of wars going on or recently ended or in the volatile years between-or, ANNUAL FAULKNER
perhaps
most significant of all, the backdrop of the war that ended 32 years before he was born.
&
YOKNAPATAWPHA
Some of the issues that might be raised: What engagement:
is the nature
of Faulkner's
treatment
of military
the kinds of episodes he tends to emphasize, the behavior of people in the midst of war?
How does he describe the behavior and attitudes of those who, like himself, were not combatants, CONFERENCE
"Faulkner and War"
tors of race, class, and gender affected by the action of war or its remembrance?
What role do women
play in Faulkner's
implications
Faulkner's
wars? What
long maintained
are the psychological
masquerade
and perhaps
University of Mississippi 22,27,2001
The Southern Register
registration
in action?
of war, influenced by the Vietnam experience
Authors whose papers are selected for presentation conference
aesthetic
as a World War I fighter pilot, wounded
conception
recent conflicts, affect our reading of Faulkner's treatments
elk
but
who seem to have a deep, at times obsessive, concern with the wars they did not fight? How are the fac-
how does our contemporary
July
is to
explore the role that war played in the life and work of a writer whose career seems forever poised
behind Finally,
as well as more
of war?
at the conference
fee, (2) lodging at the University
Alumni
will receive (1) a waiver of the House from Saturday, July 21,
through Friday, July 27, and (3) reimbursement
of up to $500 in travel expenses within the continen-
tal United States ($.31 per mile by automobile
or tourist class airfare). Papers presented at the confer-
ence will be published by the University The 14th edition of the University manuscripts
Press of Mississippi.
of Chicago Manual of Style should be used as a guide in preparing
(3,000 to 6,000 words). Three copies of manuscripts
2001. Notification
must be submitted
of selection will be made by March 1, 2001. Manuscripts
should be addressed to Donald Kartiganer, Department Box 1848, University, MS 38677-1848.
Telephone:
Fall 2000
and inquiries about papers
of English, The University
662-915-5793.
by January 15,
of Mississippi, P.O.
E-Mail: dkartiga@olemiss.edu.
Page 5
Faulkner in the 21st Century the year 2000 signalled the end of one century or the Whether beginning of another, it seemed appropriate that the 27th annual Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference should turn itself toward the future: what lies ahead in the reading of Faulkner? The hope for "Faulkner in the 21st Century"-July 23-28, 2000-was to open new possibilities as well as engage in some creative retrospect, offering new ways of reading Faulkner as well as reexamining some of the traditional ways we have read him. On the one hand to determine how the very conditions of the new century may have an impact on how we receive Faulknerthat is, to see how readings
may change
because
the situation
and needs of readers change. And on the other hand to continue to respond to the inherent power of the texts-assuming there is a power independent of our situation as readers-to try to see what may be there that we have not seen, to find the Faulkner that is not so much behind us as out in front, waiting for us to catch up with him. Among the papers attempting to widen the contexts of our reading Faulkner were those by Deborah N. Cohn and Barbara Ladd, exploring Spanish American and Creole history and literature as a way of identifying not only influence but parallel concerns; Annette Trefzer, examining some of Faulkner's Native American stories in terms of such issues as the destruction of the land, slavery, and colonialism; and Theresa Towner, considering the many
characters
that
constitute
the "marginality"
of
Faulkner's fiction. Some themes looked familiar enough: the past, repetition, memory, the frontier, race, discussed in papers by Leigh Ann Duck, Patrick O'Donnell, Robert W. Hamblin, and Walter Benn Michaels-although always with an awareness of how our readings
of these topics shift in accordance with present concerns. At one end, there was Michael Kreyling's reading of late Faulkner as an attempt to get out from under the weight of contemporary criticism, as if to establish a "Faulkner" still to be read, and at the other, Karl Zender's return to the Lucas Beauchamp of Go Down, Moses as the image of an African American
who always had more choices
than a skeptical current criticism has been willing to allow. In addition to the formal papers, Oxford writer Larry Brown gave a reading from his fiction; the Forrest Brothers, a gospel choir from Winona, Mississippi, sang a selection of songs; Ross Spears presented and discussed the making of his film, Tell about
the South: 1915-1940; Catherine Dupree read her winning entry in the 11th annual Faux Faulkner Contest, "Delta Drive-Thru"; and Colby Kullman moderated the first "Faulkner on the Fringe" open-mike session at Milly Moorhead's Southside Gallery. Other events included presentations by members of Faulkner's family and friends, guided tours of North Mississippi, and a closing party at the home of Will and Patty Lewis. A highlight of the conference continued to be the special "Teaching Faulkner" sessions conducted
by James B. Carothers,
Robert W. Hamblin,
Arlie E.
Herron, and Charles A. Peek. For the second year, 30 high-school teachers, the recipients of fellowships funded by a grant from Saks Incorporated, on behalf of McRae's, Profitt's, and Parisian Department Stores, attended the conference.
Also attending
were an Elderhostel
group led by
Carolyn Vance Smith and an Interhostel group led by Lynne Geller. Judging from the reception of the registrants Faulkner's future for the moment looks secure, even if, as the papers insisted, the reasons keep changing. DONALD
M.
KARTIGANER
Members of the Center Executive Council met in Oxford on July 22 in conjunction with the annual Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference. Those in attendance were, seated from left, Frances Patterson, Byron Seward, Pat Stevens, Carol Daily, Lynn Gammill, and Leila Wynn. Standing, from left, are Cameron Seward, Charles Reagan Wilson, Ann Abadie, Henry Brevard, Dorothy Lee Tatum, Gerald Walton, Jack McLarty, Lynn and Holt McMillan, Phineas Stevens, Vasser Bishop, and Ruth Ellen Calhoun.
Page 6
Fall 2000
The Southern Register
First Faulkner Fringe Festival Every summer, the Edinburgh Fringe Festi val hosts over 1,000 dramatic productions that are shown all over the city in bakeries and bistros, bookstores and restaurants, church basements and theatre auditoriums. Nicholas Papademetriou of Sydney, Australia, says of the program, "It's really weird. It's not selective; if you pay your money, get there on time, and get a venue, you're in" (New York, August 21,2000, p. 72). London's Fringe Theatre provides an alternative to West End, high profile theatrical productions. It parallels the Off-Off Broadway theatre movement that was started in the late 1950s and early 1960s at La MaMa, the Living Theatre, and the Open Theatre by such theatrical legends as Joseph Chaikin, Jack Gelber, Ellen Claude van ltallie.
Stewart, and JeanThis past August,
New York City hosted its fourth Fringe Festival, with 180 selections that were performed in a hectic 11 days on the Lower East Side. On July 24th, Yoknapatawpha
the 27th Faulkner and Conference gave its
blessing to the first Faulkner Fringe Festival, which was cohosted by Milly Moorhead and Colby Kullman at Southside Gallery on Oxford's Square. Marianne Steinsvik, who comes to the conference every July from Sweden by way of Spain, is the Founding Mother of the Fringe program. A self-styled "silent, solitary Faulkner fan," she told the Fringe audience, "Nobody introduced me to Faulkner. I had been looking for the human condition in Spanish literature, but there was something missing. At that time, I was doing all my reading in Spanish. That's how I found him, and I read his books in translation." Eventually hooked on Faulkner, she went to New York, bought the books in English, and started all over. In her presentation, "Faulkner and I at the Roman Outpost," Steinsvik explained, "There is so much hidden independence in the word 'fan.' There were no compulsive page-turnings, no exams, no questions asked. Somebody said that 'there's no substitute for close reading'-so I took my time. Great writing
Special Offer for New Mississippi
Fish"; Shirley H. Perry's theatrical tation
presenof her story "The Spot"; Kimberly
M. King and C. Robert Miller's dramatic compilation of "readings" taken from the tombstones in St. Peter's Cemetery and titled "Simon's Cemetery"; and Steve Cheseborough's comic afterpiece called "Things Left on Faulkner's Grave." Standing with Marianne Steinsvik, at the Roman Outpost, the participants in the first Faulkner Fringe Festival join her in concluding, "And to you, Mr. Faulkner, thank you for letting us hold your Tyrrhenean Vase." COLBY
H.
KULLMAN
Folklife Subscribers
photo essay brings to life First Monday Trade Day in Ripley, where long traditions of barter and making goods at home continue today. The buying and selling of home-made crafts,
subscribers to MississiPPi Folklife will receive a past issue from their choice of the special issues on Folklife and Vernacular Architecture, Folklife and the Civil Rights Movement,
home-raised animals, fruits and vegetables, and all sorts of old and new goods combine in a carnival atmosphere that may be as important as the buying and selling. Bonnie J. Krause describes the life of Mississippi folklorist Arthur P. Hudson, who spent much of his career collecting and writing about Mississippi folk songs and humor and was
and the Woods.
Subscriptions to this twice-yearly magazine cost $10 per year. Issue 32, Number 1 of MississiPPi Folklife shows the variety of approaches and topics that. come under the heading of folklife scholarship. Dennis Frate's interview with a Mississippian who continues the practice of eating dirt to supplement her diet reveals both the best and the worst of Mississippi. The best is the warmth and openness she shows in the interview and her creativity in the face of poor economic conditions; the worst is the poverty that makes such a choice necessary. The author finds that the practice of eating dirt has declined in the past 25 years, but it lives on in the habits of a few people, and in memory. David Wharton's
Register
Janet Nosek's enthusiastic reading from her new commonplace reader of William Faulkner's fiction titled "My Mother Is a
Along with a new issue of Mississippi Folklife comes a special offer for people new to the journal. New
Mississippi Foodways, Folklife of the Piney
The Southern
makes us feel less alone, and Faulkner gave me a cosmos of my own. My reading was highly self-gratifying. Did I get stuck? Of course I did. MY MOTHER IS A FISH .... " Designed to give everyone a voice, 15 minutes at the microphone, "15 minutes of fame" (thanks, Andy Warhol), the first Faulkner Fringe Festival was honored by
crucial in starting the Mississippi Folklore Society. Norman Mellin's interview with fiddler Charles T. Smith documents where, how, and with whom Smith learned to play old-time music. The article on the play of boys in the Mississippi Delta by folklore scholar Abbott T. Ferriss describes some games that current readers may find familiar, and many games they will not. The "Rereading a Classic" feature examines Richard Wright's 1941 book, 12 Million Black Voices: A Folk History of the Negro in the United States. Future special issues of the journal will consider folklife and religion in Mississippi and folklife and the environment. New subscribers or scholars with articles or ideas for articles should contact Ted Ownby, editor of the journal, at hsownby@olemiss.edu, or at Barnard Observatory, Center for the Study of Southern
Fall 2000
Culture,
University,
MS 38677.
Page 7
Barnard Observatory Gallery EXHIBITION
SCHEDULE SEPTEMBER
4- NOVEMBER
of "Living Blues"
Thirty Years NOVEMBER
22, 2000
27,2000
- JANUARY
12, 2001
lunkyard Adam Shemper JANUARY
The Sleep
17 - MARCH
of Reason:
23, 2001
Mardi Gras Photographs
Lyle Bonge MARCH
28 - MAY 31,2001
Yoknapatawpha 2000: The Changing Face
of Lafayette
County
Southern Studies Documentary Photography Students JUNE 4 - AUGUST
15, 2001
After Reading Faulkner: His Myriad World Arlie E. Heron Barnard Observatory
is open Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m., except for University holidays. Telephone: 662-915-5993.
Indie Memphis
is seeking short and feature-length
films made in the South, Southern
the South,
or by Southerners.
film festival
of Southern
and competition
Film Showcase,
which
culture, themes, and sensibilities
Page 8
last year attracted
through
March
Culture.
16, 200l.
Entry
Early deadline: guidelines
or from Natalie
Memphis,
Madison Avenue,
PMB #632,1910
Fall 2000
February
Gildea,
on the
the art of film-
by the Center for
16, 200l.
available
Executive
Memphis,
is
of 1,500. The Soul of
cosponsored
and forms
(www.indiememphis.com)
Tennessee,
Indie Memphis Delta
an audience
Film Festival will feature a conference
the Study of Southern line:
The Soul of
to focus exclusively
making. The festival has evolved from the three-year-old
Southern
and narrative
Film Festival, to be held June 14-17, 2001, in Memphis,
the first national expression
about
documentaries
Late dead-
on the Web Director,
Indie
TN 38104.
The Southern Register
Bern and Franke Keating's
Words and Photographs OH HEAVENSNO, don't think that this past summer's retrospective exhibition meant that Bern and Franke Keating,
Greenville,
Mississippi's dynamic travel
writing-photojournalist duo, have packed up the cameras and computer! It only meant that ... This past May, the Keatings graciously allowed the Center for the Study of Southern Culture to pack up a sizable chunk of their life's work-thousands of photographs of the American South-for new digs at the University of Mississippi's Southern Media Archive. Which meant that the Barnard Observatory Gallery had a grand
time showing off our new photographic collection and its creators with an exhibition that credited the range of publications illustrated by Keating photographs and chronicled the 50 years that Southern faces and Southern places captured by Keating cameras have appeared, nationally and internationally, in print media. Now we're telling everybody how pleased we are to pack off our exhibition for a showing at Greenville Art Council's Wetherbee House. SUSAN LLOYD MCCLAMROCH
Top: Walker Percy, from left: Shelby Foote, Hodding Carter, and Eudora Welty
is curator of the exhibition Words Bern and Franke Keating, shown at Barnard
Susan Lloyd McClamroch
and Photographs:
Observatory during the summer preparation for the exhibition, year collecting and organizing American South that Bern and
and in Greenville this fall. In McClamroch spent the past thousands of images of the Franke Keating captured on
photographic-film media over the course of a marriage and a professional partnership spanning more than half of the 20th century. The Keatings recently donated their collection to the University's Southern Media Archive, where it will be cared for, cataloged, and made available for research and educational purposes. From left: Bern Keating, Franke Keating, and Susan McClamroch at Barnard Observatory Gallery.
The Southern Register
Fall 2000
Page 9
Grisham Endowment Brings Poet to Teach at Ole Miss "I really like his class," said Max B. Hipp, a graduate student in English who is from Oxford. "He loves poetry and
WHETHER PLUMBING"the depths of human illogic"or assaying the ways of a garden slug, the poetry of Claude Wilkinson has stirred interest among literary circles and, now, among University of Mississippi students, as well. An acclaimed poet and literary critic, Wilkinson began teaching at Ole Miss this fall as part of the Southern Writer in Residence Program. He is the first writer primarily of poetry to be awarded the post, which was established in 1993 with funds from best-selling author John Grisham and his wife, Renee. A 1981 graduate of Ole Miss and resident of Nesbit, Mississippi, Wilkinson returns to the Oxford campus to teach creative writing and to work with undergraduate and graduate students in writing. He already has begun conducting public readings and participating in conferences and seminars as part of his year-long residency. Also an accomplished
visual artist,
Wilkinson is adept at creating mental images, using words and language to paint pictures and stimulate the soul, said Dan Williams, professor of English and a member of the Southern Writer in Residence selection committee. "As a poet and a painter, Claude Wilkinson brings a remarkably extensive range of talents to share with Ole Miss students," Williams said. "He is particularly gifted and appropriate for the post not only because he is a Mississippi native and a graduate of Ole Miss, but also because he is a highly creative artist and an outstanding addition to our campus."
Page 10
he's helping me to love it, too." Wilkinson said he feels fortunate to be selected to the post. "I remember my freshman composition instructor telling our class that she was William Faulkner's niece, which meant nothing to me at the time," he said. "Now, I'm living only a couple hundred yards from his home, Rowan Oak. And I recently discovered that John Grisham and I were at the same high school during the early '70s. Such coincidence makes my appointment serendipitous." Excerpt from "Way of Life," BY CLAUDE WILKINSON
Fallen power lines and glacial debris would again make the news' rundown of disasters, perhaps leave those elsewhere, under the warm sunbow of their morning, wondering how we could cope. What we share in this world are the beautiful depths of human illogic that would have us trade places with a suffering lover, cause us to momentarily forget that going on is seldom, if ever, the result of'happiness returning, anything more than hope. We rise for what we have left: swatches of buntings perched and preening, stars of embers that need to be stirred, gardens of brilliant drooping, some brave soul's template of tracks.
Fall 2000
The Southern Writer in Residence Program brings notable writers to campus to be a resource to students and to teach in the English department. The Renee and John Grisham Fund pays the salary and living expenses for the writer, who is chosen for the position by a fourmember committee. Since its inception, the program has hosted such award-winning writers as Mary Hood, author of the short story collection How Far She Went and the novel Familiar Heat; and Mark Richard, author of the novel Fishboy; as well as T. R. Pearson, Tim Gautreaux, Darcey Steinke, and Randall Kenan. Wilkinson is working on a new collection of poems and several critical essays. "Usually my poems explore, or attempt to make more obvious, the fusion between a natural and spiritual realm, between loss and memory, between suffering and consequent change," he said. Wilkinson's collection, Reading the
Earth, won the Naomi Long Madgett Poetry Award. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Atlanta Review, the Southern Review, and numerous other journals. In 1999, he was awarded a Walter E. Dakin Fellowship in Poetry from the Sewanee Writers' Conference. He also has published criticism on the work of Chinua Achebe, Italo Calvino, and John Cheever. No stranger to teaching, Wilkinson has taught in the English departments at several colleges and universities. He holds a bachelor's degree from Ole Miss and a master's from the University of Memphis. His drawings and paintings have been exhibited in many invitational, juried, and solo shows, and are in the permanent collections of CottonlandiaMuseum, Deposit Guaranty National Bank, and other private collections nationwide. ADRIANAUMEN
The Southern Register
7he
eighth Oxford Conference for the Book is set for March 30-April1,
2001. As
always, a large and varied collection of writers, scholars, and industry insiders will converge on Oxford for readings, lectures, and discussions (and don't forget parties) on current issues affecting book culture. There will also be a book signing featuring all the conference authors on Saturday night. The 2001 conference is dedicated to Richard Wright (1908-1960), with a keynote presentation about this great writer's work. His many books include Native Son (1940), 12 Million Black Voices (1941), Black Boy (1945), White Men, Listen! (1957), and The Long Dream (1958). Born near Natchez, Wright attended school in Jackson and left Mississippi as a young man, moving to Memphis, then to Chicago, then New York, and finally in 1946 to Paris, where he lived until his death.
Richard Wright
Other special events of this year's conference will be a commemoration of the 50th anniversary of Grove Press, the celebrated company that published many literary iconoclasts and writers of the avant-garde, such as Eugene Ionesco, Samuel Beckett, Henry Miller, Harold Pinter, and Tom Stoppard. Morgan Entrekin, president and publisher of Grove/Atlantic, Inc., plans for established and new authors of the company to take part in the conference. Wright's Birthplace,
Natchez,
Mississippi
For reserving
lodging
at a
SPECIAL
For further information
RATE,
see page
26.
or to register, contact
Center for the Study of Southern Culture THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSISSIPPI Univecsity, MS 38677 • phone 662·915·5993 • fax 662·915·5814 • Email cssc@olemiss.edu
Oxford Tourislll Council po. Box 965, Oxford, MS 38655 phone 800·758·9177,
662·234·4680 fax 662·234·0355
• www.olemiss.edu/depts/south
Square Bool~s 160 Courthouse Square, Oxford, MS 38655 phone 800.648.4001, 662·236·2262 fax 662·234·9630 www.squarebooksocom
Center for the Study of., Southern Culture THE
UNIVERSITY
THE BROWN
OF
BAG LUNCH
JANUARY 10 "Faullmer in Russia: Attitudes, Influences, Confluences" Nicolai Anastasiev, Professor of Philology Moscow State University Moscow, Russia 17
"'The Sleep of Reason': Mardi Gras Photographs," Lyle Bonge, Photographer BJoxi, Mississippi
24
"Prollloting Geography in Mississippi's Schools: The Mississippi Geography Alliance" Taylor E. Mack Assistant Professor of Geosciences Mississippi State University
31
"Covering the South [TOlllthe Boston Globe" Curtis Willzie,Journalist New Orleans, Louisiana
FEBRUARY 7 "The Voting Rights Museulll" Joanne Bland, Director of the Voting Rights Museulll Selma, Alaballla
~lISSISSIPPI
AND LECTURE
SERIES
MARCH 14 "What a Bright, Educated, Witty, Lively, Snappy Young WOlllan Can Say on a Variety of Topics: The Writings of Sherwood Bonner" Anne Gowdy, Assistant Professor of English Tennessee Wesleyan College Athens, Tennessee 21
"Southern Environlllental History: What's That All About?" Andy Harper, Coordinator Deep South HUlllanities Initiative Center for the Study of Southern Culture The University of Mississippi
28
"Heritage Tourislll" John Matthews, Director, Delta Cultural Center Helena, Arlzansas
APRIL 4 "Face, Race, and Place: A Short History of Photography in the South" Katherine Henninger, Assistant Professor of English and Southern Studies The University of Mississippi
14
"Delta Studies Center" PeggyWright, Director of the Delta Studies Center Arbansas State University
11
"The Nature of Sound" Claude Wilbinson, John and Renee Grisham Southern Writer in Residence The University of Mississippi
21
"The First Reenactlllent: The Citadel and the Civil War" Robin Morris, Southern Studies Graduate Student Atlanta, Georgia
18
"Love Letters of 'Bob' and 'Sissy': The Courtship Correspondence of Walter Anderson and Agnes Grinstead" Mary Anderson Piclzard Ocean Springs, Mississippi
27
"Preaching the Blues: The Gospel According to Muddy Waters" Edward Komara, Blues Archivist The University of Mississippi
25
"Yolmapatawpha 2000: The Changing Face of Lafayette County" Southern Studies Doculllentary Photography Students The University of Mississippi
The Brown Bag Luncheon
Page 12
Series takes place each Wednesday
at noon in the Barnard
Fall 2000
Observatory
Lecture
Hail during tbe regular academic year.
The Southern Register
Mississippi and Massachusetts Teachers Attend Summer Institute at George Washington's Mount Vernon Twelve teachers from Mississippi and five from Massachusetts spent a week this summer attending the second annual George
tion, met with Mount Vernon historians, curators, and educators, visited related sites in the surrounding area, and attended
Washington Scholars Institute at his Mount Vernon Estate. Joining the teachers for this intensive week of study were the
workshops about archaeology, slavery, and historic role playing. The teachers returned home to prepare a lesson plan on George Washington that will be published and distnbuted to teachers across the nation in cooperation with the National Honor Society.
Center's associate director, Ann Abadie, Mississippi Department of Education Social Studies Specialist Wendy Clemons, and Lynn Crosby Gammill, of Hattiesburg, a member of the Center's executive council and Vice Regent for Mississippi on the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association, the oldest historical
preser-
Participating in the closing event of this summer's George Washington Scholars Institute at Mount Vernon are, from left, Senator Thad Cochran of Mississippi, who presented certificates to participating teachers; Lynn Gammill, Vice Regent for Mississippi on the Mount Vernon Ladies' Association; Lucy Bartlett, who teaches at Arlington Heights Elementary School in Pascagoula, Mississippi; and C. Thompson Wacaster, executive director of the Phil Hardin Foundation, which provided funding for Mississippi teachers to attend the institute.
Participants are also conducting in-service training in their home school districts. Funding for the annual George Washington Scholars Institute is provided separately for each state through foundation support. Mississippi teachers receive funding for the program through the Phil Hardin Foundation of Meridian,
vation organization in the country. The institute covered topics ranging from Washington's life as a surveyor, military man, president, and farmer to images of him in art over two centuries. Speakers included such noted Washington scholars as General Dave Palmer, author
are funded through an anonymous endowment. The institute will again be offered in the summer of 200 1. Teachers
of First in War, and Dorothy Twohig, former editor of The Papers of George Washington. Participants lived on the 500-acre estate and had full access to Mount Vernon's extensive library collec-
interested in participating should contact Wendy Clemons of the Mississippi Department of Education at 601-359-3778 or Deborah Walker of the Massachusetts Department of Education at 781-338-3347.
and Massachusetts
teachers
Center Role in New Orleans Literary Event In
The Center's Southern Foodways Alliance hosted two events, including a luncheon panel on "The Creolization of
September, the Center acted as a supporting sponsor for Words and Music: A Literary Feast in New Orleans, an annual event sponsored by the Pirate's Alley
American Cusine and Culture" with Jason Berry, Leah Chase, Lois Elie, Rudy
Faulkner Society. On Thursday, September 21, Center Director Charles Reagan Wilson hosted a luncheon panel at Antoine's. Among the featured panelists were Hal Crowther, author of The Cathedrals of Kudzu; Rosemary Daniell, author of Fatal Flowers; foodways historian Jessica Harris;
Lombard, and Paul Prudhomme. The grandest of all, however, may have been the gala late night supper held on September 22 at the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts.
~ Ui ~
-< and journalist Curtis Wilkie. Leah Chase, of Dooky Chase restaurant in New The Soul of the South: Its Words & Orleans, was honored at this year's Words & Music, a cocktail party given in honor of Music celebration.
the late Willie Morris, was staged Thursday evening at the venerable Napoleon House
party, which featured
in the French Quarter. Proceeds from the
Henry Gray, benefited the Center.
The Southern Register
blues piano great
Fall 2000
Chefs John Folse, Austin Leslie, Joe Randall, Ken Smith, and Leon West paid homage to New Orleans restauranteur and Southern Foodways Alliance board president Leah Chase with a feast of, among other dishes, Shrimp Creole and Duck Etoufee.
Page 13
Celebrating A MississiPPi Portrait PHOTOS BY DANIEL LEE SHERMAN
M
ore than one hundred people traveled to Vicksburg's Southern Cultural Heritage Center from Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Mississippi to celebrate the release of A Mississippi Portrait: Farm Security Administration Photographs, 1935-1940, a CD-Rom created by the staff at the Center's Southern Media Archive. They came to see photographs of places that have changed dramatically, or vanished entirely, in the course of the past six decades. They also came to these places-farms, plantations, factories, towns-to learn about them from people who lived there when the photographs were made and people living there now. A number of teachers attended the event and discussed ways of using A Mississippi Portrait in
them were meeting for the first time since the 1930s, so they held a spontaneous reunion on the spot. Roger Helms actually recognized himself as a child in one of the photographs (a claim backed by his brother Bailey, also in attendance). A number of others addressed the gathering also, discussing photographs from Natchez, Vicksburg, Port Gibson, and Mound Bayou. The Southern Cultural Heritage Center generously hosted the event, providing tables of refreshments for people to mingle at and exchange stories around. The Heritage Center's lovely old auditorium was alive that warm Saturday afternoon with vitality, good will, and a sense of renewed opportunity, as people talked about ways of incorporating A Mississippi Portrait into their classrooms and communities.
the classroom. Teachers received a complimentary copy of the CD-Rom and sample lesson plans to tryout in their classrooms. Several former residents of the Delta Cooperative Farm in Bolivar County interpreted a group of 1936 photographs made at the Cooperative by FSA photographer Dorothea Lange. Most of
A MississiPPi Portrait: Farm Security Administration Photographs, 1935-1940 costs $20 plus $3.50 shipping and handling. It can be ordered at www.southfilm.com or by calling the Southern Culture Catalog at 800-390-3527.
From left: Natchez residents Helen Rayne, Ozelle Fisher, and Willie Fisher identify scenes of their hometown made by SFA photographers.
Collecting curriculum materials for A Mississippi Portrait are, from left, Monica Micou, an elementary school teacher in Shelby, with teacher Joanne Brown and principal Jackie Lucas, both of JFK High School in Mound Bayou.
Richard Crowe (left), director of the Mound Bayou Youth Focused Community Policing Initiative, talks with Tom Rankin, director of the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University and producer of
From left: Karen Glynn, curator of visual collections and producer of A Mississippi Portrait, with Bailey Helms and Robert Allen Helms, residents of the Delta Cooperative Farm in the late 1930s.
KAREN GLYNN
A Mississippi Portrait.
Page 14
Fall 2000
The Southern Register
Readin the South A Delicious Journey black, you develop an ability to notice things like that, same as a dog in the wild develops teeth to protect itself." The ability to notice and relate such undercurrents, shadows, tantalizing clues, and delicious details is what makes Edge and his book such extraor-
Southern Belly: The Ultimate Food Lover's Companion to the South. By John T. Edge. Pen and ink illustrations by Blair Hobbs. Athens, Georgia: Hill Street Press, 2000. 270 pages. $24.95. Enter
the
Southern
Belly
dinary companions-either on the road or in the living room. Cover and illustrations by Oxford's Blair Hobbs are another of the fine small pleasures that make this book a treasure. Her jumping catfish on page 131 is worth
with
Georgia-born John T. Edge and you will get a short history of the Greek influence in Dixie's restaurants; hear the arguable contention that Texas is not a Southern state gastronomically; take the bitter of racism with the sweet of meat alchemized over hardwood coals at Ollie's Barbecue in Birmingham; reminisce over the days when carhops really hopped; salivate at the "jiggling core of custard" at the heart of Mattie Johnson's Big Bob Gibson coconut pie; discover why most Southern cafeterias, unlike their Northern counterparts, have servers carrying trays for the patrons; and make the acquaintance of Mobile's Eugene Walter, author of the classic American Cooking: Southern Style, novelist, poet, essayist,
Time-Life
actor, raconteur, bon vivant, and artist who painted, among other things, a portrait of "The Devil's dear Grandmother pondering what menu to serve when she invites Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and Jesse Helms to dine in Hell with Hitler and Mussolini." You will then be on page 13. Given that this survey of Southern eateries runs to 270 pages including three indexes (places, people, and a "general" category that is primarily food) you may feel the urge here for a glass of sweet about would makes
tea. Given that this is a book hunger enticingly assayed, it not be surprising if that urge later you decide to drive a few hundred
the price of admission alone. RONNI LUND!
miles for a taste of central Kentucky's beer cheese or a piece of Gus's Famous Fried Chicken in Mason, Tennessee. But hunger is never a simple matter in the South, and unlike other road food books, this one is not only concerned with what's on the plate, but also with the how and why and by whose grace it got there. Most mortals would be content to sit in Martin's of Montgomery, Alabama, savoring a slightly spicy drumstick and marveling at the integrated clientele that fills a place that was once the favored meeting/eating ground of George Wallace. Edge is the deceptively sweet-faced guy who turns to the black man at the next table and asks when all this integration happened. For his reward, and our on-going education, he is told that the times, they are still a'changing. The most recent development, his neighbor says, is the presence of black waitresses. Up until 1996 or
1997, the black staff was confined to the kitchen and servers were all white. "Nowadays, no one pays much attention to it," the man tells Edge. "When you're
Book Reviews and Notes by Faculty, Staff, Students, and Friends of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture
The Southern Register
Catching Memories in a Box: P1wtographic Work by Students of Coffeeville, Alabama. Edited by Andrew Goetz. Foreword by Jack Shelton. Tuscaloosa, Alabama: Program for Rural Services and Research, 2000. 52 pages, 37 black and white photographs.
A collaborative effort between elementary school children in Coffeeville, Alabama, and photographer Andrew Goetz of the University of Alabama's Program for Rural Services and Research, Catching Memories in a Box features 37 black and white photographs taken by 24 different students. After teaching
they lived in America, they should take pictures of whatever they darn well pleased. They didn't come back with many surprises, though: the book shows us images of the students' homes, their families, and one another, usually mugging for the camera. We learn a little about Coffeeville and its people in the process, though often only incidentally.
For these and other books call 800-648-4001 160 Courthouse Square'
Fall 2000
them how to use their
cameras, Goetz sent the students out to photograph. He told them that since
or fax 601-234-9630. Oxford, Mississippi 38655
~~ Page 15
Reading the South continued
My Mississippi By Willie Morris Photographs
by
David Rae Morris t
A father and s<ÂŁn'seloquent evocations of molJ.~rnMississippi $37.00 cloth. $loo.let limited edhlon
A number
of such projects
have
Wendy Ewald among several school districts in southeastern Kentucky. It
easily imagine, such therapies were often fatal. And, finally, these frontier
includes some intense, even frightening, images of hardscrabble Appalachian life from a child's point of view. More recent are volumes 1 and 2 of Seeing
medical applications give voice to the three existing cultures and point to a route of intersection among these cultures, which were more mutually beneficial than some of the other known
World: The Photographs and of the Children of Tutwiler, Mississippi, under the guidance of the Writings
Center's own Dan Sherman. These publications provide a gracefully broad view of life in a small Mississippi Delta town, and the viewer comes away with a palpable sense of the students' homes and families helping to keep Tutwiler bound together. Making the photographs for Catching Memories in a Box was no doubt a highly rewarding experience for the children of Coffeeville. One wishes the book could have been equally as rewarding for its readers. DAVID WHARTON
Southern Folk Medicine, 1750~1820. By Kay K. Moss. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1999.275 pages, 16 halftones. $29.95. Using over a dozen commonplace books penned by both women and men of the early American frontier South, Kay K. Moss in Southern Folk Medicine, 1750-1820 provides insights into the use of herbs and other medical procedures employed by yeomen, physicians, housewives, and slaves. To be sure, some of these procedures are not for the faint of heart; for example, the pages that describe the act of phlebotomy, with handsome illustrations. While many of us may not want to
-1.. e
.. o 2!
j
1 ~
!
-.. ~
2-
C Page 16
The So.uth and '\@ik,_ the CariB~ Edited b uglass Sullivan-G Charles Reagan VMillson $35.00 cloth
concerning
the maintenance of good health and the general therapies used, including bleeding, sweating, purging, and blistering of patients in hopes of curing them. As Moss notes and as one can
Our
E
to the level of uncertainty
been carried out in recent years. Among the first (and better known) was Portraits and Dreams: Photographs and Stories by Children of the Appalachians (1985), coordinated by
know of such practices, these detailed pages point to several facts. First, Moss is thorough in her research on healing practices and provides minute details on backyard cures, as well as those touted by the leading physicians of the day. Second, these medical facts point
Fall 2000
routes of intersection. One excellent example this is the noted case of the enslaved African who was granted his freedom via the South Carolina General Assembly, and paid a pension for life, for what is known as Caesar's Cure, a treatment for poison and snake bites. So noted was this remedy that some 50 years after its discovery, when its early mention appeared in a 1750 publication, it still carried Caesar's name and its original ingredients of roots of plantain and hoarhound. This remedy was seen as so effective that an 1816 almanac reported that, after treatment, should a patient not exhibit signs of improvement, then either the patient was not poisoned or it was such a poison that "Caesar's antidote will not remedy." Nonetheless, people were far more willing to abandon
the patient
than to
abandon Caesar's Cure. The unpublished commonplace journals of Southerners' medical notes, filled with typical to exotic cures, are offset with the more widely used printed manuscripts such as John Quincy's 1736 Pharmacopoeia Officinalis; William Buchan's 1774 Domestic Medicine, and Nicholas Culpeper's 1770 The English Physician Enlarged. Moss has skillfully employed these reference guides as historical markers in "tracing the traditions followed by Southern domestic practitioners." Moss's goal in writing this work was not to validate the actual healing receipts found with in the pages of the commonplace books, but it was more to elucidate these early frontier practices. This book thus serves as a floodlight on early Southern culture. PHOENIX SAVAGE
The Southern Register
Reading the South continued
The White Image in the Black Mind: African-American Ideas about White People, 18301925.
WHITE IMAGE IN THE BLACK MIND THE
Written in the Bricks: A Visual and Historical Tour of Fifteen Mississippi Hometowns.
By Mia Bay. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000. 288 pages.
Text by Mary Carol Miller. Photographs by Mary Rose Carter. Brandon, Mississippi: Quail Ridge
$19.95 paper.
Press, 1999.232 photographs.
In the past several years, the idea that race is a social construction has become extremely influential among scholars. A fascinating contribution to the field of
pages, over 100 color
$39.95.
Author Mary Carol Miller and photographer Mary Rose Carter portray the history of Mississippi through images and
African American thinkers attributed to race, blackness, and whiteness from the 1830s into the 1920s. An intriguing blend of intellectual history, folklore, science, and religion, the book discusses well-known intellectual leaders as well as
Narratives. Less theoretical in nature, those sources made two main points. First, African Americans in the 1930s remembered slavery as an effort by
stories of historic buildings in communities throughout the state. The book covers Oxford and Holly Springs in the north; Ocean Springs and Pass Christian on the Gulf Coast; Natchez and Vicksburg on the Mississippi River; Carrollton, Greenwood, and Yazoo City in the Delta; Columbus and Tupelo in
more obscure thinkers, always depicting how their ideas were part of broad arguments about power, identity, and respect. A powerful first section on antebellum intellectual leaders displays the key
slave owners to blur the lines between human and animal. One after another, former slaves recalled African Americans' efforts in words and actions to resist that attempt. Secondly, the
the east. Also included are Brookhaven, Jackson, Hattiesburg, and Meridian. Written in the Bricks will appeal to travelers, those who go on the road and those who stay home in the armchair to explore
dilemmas for African Americans thinking about race. African American intel-
WPA sources reveal considerable cussion of religious themes-whites
the places described and pictured here.
lectuals wrote to reject concepts, many of them Thomas Jefferson's, of the inherent inferiority of blacks. But most African American contributors to the field of ethnology-the study of the origins and characters of different groups-
something approaching devils, heaven as a place without whites. A third section, again studying intellectualleaders, brings the topic into the 1920s. For a brief period, ideas about evolution, especially social
Country Music Annual
argued against those ideas without rejecting the concept of race. Instead, many used the concept to argue for African superiority. Addressing issues of science, history, and theology, African American intellectual leaders placed "emphasis on two not always compati-
Darwinism, replaced ethnology as a key to thinking about race. Much stronger among African American intellectuals was a movement among cultural anthropologists to study all groups without using ideas of inferior or superior, primitive or civilized, back-
press.com. Edited by Charles K. Wolfe (Middle Tennessee State University) and James E. Akenson (Tennessee Technological University), Country Music Annual 2000 contains a diverse set of articles on topics ranging from
ble themes: human sameness and racial distinctions" (54). Some, Bay finds, developed ideas of African Americans as a "Redeemer Race," with special qualities of kindness and respect for jus-
ward or advanced. Intellectual leaders like W. E. B. DuBois used anthropological theory to reject ideas of race while continuing to emphasize strengths of African and African American culture.
tice, in contrast to what some called "Angry Saxons," who had tastes for violence and domination. Frederick Douglass, who rejected all ideas of race, stands out in this section of the book as a bit of an exception. An intriguing second section analyzes folk thinking about race, white-
This readable book studies ideas as explanations and tools. Taking seriously ideas and the thinkers who developed them, it helps clarify a complex and controversial concept. Just as importantly, it adds new details to our understanding of the long and difficult career of the idea of race.
Los Angeles gay community. Editors Wolfe and Akenson invite scholars doing research in all aspects of the history and contemporary status of country music to submit manuscripts for consideration. Country music is very broadly defined to
race-thinking, Mia Bay's important new book analyzes the range of meanings
ness, and blackness in the WPA Slave
The Southern Register
disas
Country Music Annual 2000, published by the University Press of Kentucky, is now available in bookstores and on-line at www.kentucky-
Minnie Pearl to country music in the
include musical styles which share common historical, cultural, and demographic roots. Inquiries should be directed to Charles K. Wolfe at CWolfe@frank.mtsu.edu or James E. Akenson at JAkenson@tntech.edu.
TED OWNBY
Fall 2000
Page 17
Photographer Talks about New Book Delta Land. Photographs by Maude Schuyler Clay. Introductory
Essay by Lewis Nordan. Jackson: University
Press of Mississippi, 1999. $35.00.
After spending 12 years in New York City working as a photographer, Maude Schuyler Clay returned home to Mississippi and began photographing the places where she grew up. Following are excerpts from an interview in which Steven B. Yates, of the University Press of Mississippi, asks about her work and the recently published Delta Land, a book with 75 black and white images taken by Clay between 1993 and 1998. (lots of great storytellers!) of my family and the community .... What special challenges did you face in photographing a landscape that is not, on its surface, very photogenic?
Tell me about your family's connection to the Delta, to Sumner and its history. My maternal great-great grandfather, Cullen McMullen, born in 1794, came from Carroll County, Tennessee, to the then-wilderness of Tallahatchie County, Mississippi, in 1839. The McMullen cotton farm was at Graball Landing on the Tallahatchie River. (Everything in those days was transported by steamboat.) After a great cyclone in the 1890s swept away both the family house and commis-
For several years before the Delta Land project, I had tried to take color photographs which I hoped would reveal the natural beauty of the Delta landscape. For me-unlike, say, for Bill Eggleston-I simply couldn't make the color photographs work. Then, in late
:;:" ~
g :t
1993, I received a commission (which, sary (and, as legend goes, all the water S\ initially, I refused), to photograph the from Bonnette Lake!), his son, Nathan §« Delta landscape, the stipulation being James McMullen, and family moved to ::< that the photographs had to be made in Sumner, about 10 miles north of Graball. Dog in the Fog, Cassidy Bayou, Sumner, Mississippi black and white. Around this time, I You were in New York working as a came into possession of a Mamiya 645, a medium-format camera photographer for 12 years. What was your primary subject which has almost the exact proportions as a 35mm camera. This matter in New York and where did your work appear? My primary subject matter was the color portrait work I was doing on frequent visits back home to the Mississippi Delta. Some of the photographic portraits I did as an "exile" in NYC appeared in such publications as Esquire, Vanity Fair, and the New York Times. I guess what I am trying to say is that, even while residing in what is probably one of the most photographed cities in the world, the work I considered the most important to
turned out to be the perfect vehicle for the landscape project; with this camera, I began to "see" in black and white, and what I had erroneously viewed as a limitation became an exciting challenge. Once I got started on this project, I couldn't stop! It seemed that the stark beauty of this landscape was meant to be photographed in the somber contrast of black and white .... How did this project evolve? What made you realize it was
me was always tied to the South, and especially to the Delta. In New York, what did you learn about photography that can only be absorbed in a high- powered work environment like that? As an employee of the LIGHT Gallery, which was one of the very few galleries in 1976 to exclusively exhibit and sell contemporary photographs, I got what might be considered a "crash
worth a photo essay or a book? In late 1997, after I had worked on this project for almost five years, I had a gut (call it hopeful) feeling that it would make a great book. I sent the pictures to JoAnne Prichard Morris at the University Press of Mississippi, whom I had always wanted to have as my publisher because of the commitment UPM had demonstrat-
course" in the history of photography .... All the photographers, curators, critics, and dealers who were involved in the world of
ed in supporting both photography and Southern authors. After the book was accepted, we cast about for a contemporary fiction author who was familiar with the Delta: Lewis Nordan, a native of the Delta hamlet of Itta Bena. "Buddy" Nordan and I had met in 1992, when he received the Fiction Award and I received the Photography Award that year from the Mississippi Institute of Arts
photography came through there. Later, as a photo editor at Vanity Fair, Esquire, and Fortune, I learned about photojournalism and the world of magazine photography (which, although it paid more, was a lot less lofty). It was a wonderful experience working with photographers in New York, but again, it only made me realize.I had my own mission: to somehow capture the essence of the place I knew and loved best-the Mississippi Delta. When you returned to your home place, what changes struck you? What changes made you sad, or alarmed you? On a purely photographic level, the changes I saw that saddened me were the disappearance, a kind of natural erosion, of the "old" Delta's structures: commissaries, mule barns, cypress sheds, signs, advertising murals, etc. On a personal level, I experienced the sadness of the deaths of many of the older members
Page 18
and Letters. MIAL also does a terrific job in supporting the writers and artists in this state. I am indeed honored that he magnanimously agreed to write the eloquent and heartfelt foreword to Delta
Land. His voice is a petfect "match" for the photographs. You do such a remarkable job of taking what could have been cliche-old barns, rustic fences-and making the subject matter fierce or isolated or even serene in its nearly vanquished state. How did you erase the sentimental and bring out the astonishing
Fall 2000
in so many of these photos ••• ?
(continued on page 25)
The Southern Register
Southern ~oodwavsRe~ister &ENTER
FOR
THE
STUDY
OF
SOUTHERN
THE
CULTURE
UNIVERSITY
OF
MISSISSIPPI
2000 Southern Foodways Symposium A Success he third annual Southern Foodways Symposium was held October 20- 22. Thanks to the strong support of sponsors Southern Comfort and the Catfish Instituteas well as Bottletree Bakery, Fat Possum Records, the Oxford Tourism Council,
and Viking
Range-the gathering was a financial and critical success, drawing a sell-out crowd to the University of Mississippi
fect barbecue sandwiches capped with slaw, to an appreciative crowd that same evening. Saturday lunch, served from the splendid Viking kitchen erected under a tent in the Grove, featured Creole gumbo from Leah Chase, SFA board president; pepperpot gumbo from Fritz Blank of the restaurant Deux Cheminees in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Cajun gumbo
Streetlournal. This year's theme was Travelin' On,
from Johnny Faulk, bass player for the Hackberry Ramblers band. The Saturday evening meal, held in the bucolic village of Taylor nine miles south of Oxford, offered registrants a taste of catfish past, present,
an examination of what happens when Southerners-and Southern foods-travel north, and west, and across the Atlantic. Among the highlights were author Joe Dabney's ruminations on the Hillbilly Highway; Nathalie Dupree's observations on
and future, with dishes from Karen Carrier of Automatic Slim's Tonga Club in Memphis, Tennessee; Jimmy Kennedy of the River Run Cafe in Plainfield, Vermont; and Louis Osteen of Louis's in Charleston, South Carolina. Afterward, Lynn
how the media has marketed the idea of Southern food; cultural geographer Richard Pillsbury's talk, "Grits Lines, Barbecue Belts, and Authentic Chicago-Style Delta Ribs: Geography and Southern Foodways"; Seattle attorney Peter McKee's rumination, "It's
fiddler catfish, rolled in spiced meal and fried to a turn. Sunday lunch marked the close of the conference, with a Dinner on the Grounds featuring duck hash piled atop a homemade biscuit, served by Paige Osborne of
campus and garnering positive media coverage in publications ranging from Cooking Light magazine to the Wall
S
Y
M
PO
OCTOBER:
c.
venerated pitmaster J. Hardaway of the Big S Grill in Memphis, Tennessee, received the first Keeper of the Flame Award. Both awards are sponsored by the Southern Foodways Alliance. Lunch and dinner offerings expanded this year. Neal Langerman of Georgia Brown's in Washington, D.C., wowed Friday luncheon guests with modern fillips on traditional Lowcountry cuisine, while pitmaster J. Hardaway of the Big S Grill in Memphis-with an assist from Randy Yates of Ajax Diner in Oxford-served pluperThe Southern Register
20~22,
I
2000
Storey
the 'Cue: The Life-Altering Impact of Southern Food on One Unsuspecting Yankee"; writer Roy Blount Jr.'s take on eating Southern in the Big Apple; and journalist William Rice's lecture, "The Life and Legacy of Craig Claiborne." In addition, two awards were presented. Leah Chase, of the fabled Dooky Chase's restaurant in New Orleans, Louisiana, received the SFA's second Lifetime Achievement Award, while
c.
5
of Taylor Catfish
served up
Oxford's own Yocona River Inn. New this year were a variety of musical performances, from blues man Robert Belfour, who played songs from his new album, What's Wrong with You, and, of course, the Grammy-nominated Hackberry Ramblers, who brought down the house on Saturday night with their Western Swing-inflected Cajun music. For those who were unable to attend, audiotapes of the proceedings are available. Please call 504-892-1157 to request an order form. Based upon the success of the annual symposium, the SFA is in the throes of planning similar events in North Carolina and Kentucky. Look for details in the coming months. And, yes, plans are already taking shape for the 2001 symposium, slated for October. Conference-goers will be invited to explore the historical connections
Fall 2000
between the farm and the table in the South. JOHN
T. EDGE
Page 19
2000 Carolina Gold Rice Harvest Dinner Announced On the afternoon of November 12, Anson Restaurant in Charleston, South Carolina, will host a four-course dinner, augmented by a series of lectures on Southern food ways and a tasting of Champagne and Madeira. Featured speakers include Dr. Richard Schultz of Turnbridge Plantation in Bluffton, South Carolina, the first grower to produce a crop of Carolina Gold rice since commercial farming of it ceased in the 1920s. Dr. Schulze's rice is grown with the traditional Carolina dike and trunk method and is processed in an antique "flail" mill. Among others on the program will be Chef Michael Lata of Anson, and David Graham, a professor of horticulture at Clemson University. Tickets, priced at $65 per person, are in limited supply and can be obtained by calling 843-577 -055l. For a short history of Carolina Gold rice and some recipes, see the Web site of Lowcountry Foods (www.carolinagoldrice.com). Lowcountry Foods is particularly interested in "Carolina rice kitchen" cooking, a term that applies to recipes that were developed back into
A proud grower amid a field of Carolina Gold
the 18th century.
Food for the Soul. By Monique Y. Wells. Seattle: Elton-Wolf Publishing, 2000. 190 pages. $44.95. When
Food for the Soul was originally
the idea of a cookbook written by an expatriate black Southerner now living in Paris. That was back in 1999. Late this summer, Elton-Wolf Publishing of Seattle, Washington, released an English transla-
to pay tribute not
tion of the original. More than just a curiosity, Food for the Soul explores the role that foodways play in group identity and in reconstructing the idea of home far from one's place of birth. The recipes ring true. The prose is direct
only to the generations of blacks who suffered slavery, but also to the evolution of the mentality that allowed their descendants to ennoble a cuisine initially created to permit people to survive." It also helped that the international press deemed novel
and well written. But most interesting of all for those of us on this side of the Atlantic may well be the sidebars chockfull of advice on how expatriate Southerners replicate the dishes of their youth while on a sojourn in France.
published in France under the title La Cuisine Noire Americaine, it caused a bit of a stir, in part because French super-chef Alain Ducasse was enlisted to write a brief preface, wherein he praised "the initiative taken in this publication
With Wells as our guide, we learn that, though collards are rarely if ever available in Paris, chou nouveau or chou vert pointua cabbage found in late winter and early spring-will do in a pinch. What's more, Wells recommends that if you wish to make Theda Holmes Wilson's macaroni and cheese casserole, topped with crumbled Ritz crackers, and are confronted with a paucity of genuine Ritz, the best possible substitute
for those
golden
wafers is a
French snack cracker called TUC. Wells was one of the featured speakers at the third annual Southern Foodways Symposium, held October 20-22. JOHN
T. EDGE
Southern foodways Alliance Membership
•
•
name
__
company ,,
_
address
_
city
state
telephone FOR FURTHER
INFORMATION,
VISIT US AT OUR WEB SITE,
www.alemiss.edu/depts/sauth/faadways or call John T. Edge, SFA Director, at 662.915.5993 or via email atjohnt@dixie~net.com
zip
_
lax
_
--------------------------------------
o
$50 indiiidual 0 $200 non-profit institution
0 $500 corporation
Please make checks payable to the Southern Foodways Alliance and mail them to the Center for the Study of Southern Culture,University,
MS 38677.
Southern Studies Report Southern Studies, an undergraduate major inaugurated at Ole Miss since 1979, has evolved over time to include a master's program course of studies as well. Nearly one hundred students have majored in Southern Studies over the past two decades, with approximately an additional one hundred graduate students completing the advanced degree program since the M.A. began to be offered in 1986. The majority of Southern Studies majors are working in such fields as writing and publishing, nonprofit administration and/or program development, museums or public history venues, events and festival planning, state humanities and arts councils, and all levels of the teaching profession. Five Southern Studies students
from Ole Miss have gone on to complete
College of William and Mary, Southwestern News of some our former M.A. graduates
Louisiana,
the University
doctoral programs elsewhere,
of Texas/Austin,
Thesis: "Estranged Fruit: Making and Unmaking in Mississippi's Jails" Gildea served as researcher for the film
The People vs. Larry Flynt and was communications
manager
for Mayor Willie
Herenton of Memphis, Tennessee, before becoming director of research for the Memphis Shelby Crime Commission, a job that enables him to explore society's ills and serve the public. In addition to compiling information and writing the commission's Best Practice crime reports, Gildea is involved in advocacy and has assisted with projects like the first Memphis meeting of the National Campaign Against Youth Violence, a White House initiative to bring together citizens, businesses, and government in stronger and more effective partnerships. When he is not helping community leaders solve crime problems, Gildea does volunteer work with his church, Idlewild Presbyterian, where he is a deacon, and with the Evergreen Historic Association, where he is chairman of neighborhood strategic planning. Gildea's wife, Natalie, whom he met in Southern Studies classes at the Center, is also involved with these activities and with helping keep up with their two-year-old
son, Liam.
SUSAN GLISSON (M.A., May 1994)
SCOTT McCRAW (M.A., December 1995)
Thesis: "Life and Scorn of the Consequences: Clarence Jordan and the Roots of Radicalism in the Southern Baptist Convention"
Non-Thesis Option McCraw is assistant director of the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, a private, state-supported branch of the National Endowment for the Humanities. He is responsible for
Reconciliation, a Center-supported project that seeks to promote racial harmony in local communities. "This work represents an exciting opportunity for the Center to expand and extend its public outreach. working
For example, we're presently in Rome, Mississippi, in
LEH's General Grants and Media Grants programs and works on the magazine published by LEH, Louisiana Cultural Vistas. LEH grants nearly one million dollars yearly for cultural programming in Louisiana and is the state's largest supporter of documentary films.
Sunflower County in the Delta, providing community development assistance to local residents. I believe that the health of Mississippi overall ultimately resides in the health of rural communities like Rome." On campus, Glisson works with Southern Studies graduate students and also serves as faculty advisor to SEED, an activist student group dedicated to eradicating racism, sexism, and elitism, through a grassroots political justice agenda. Before returning to the University campus full time, Glisson left for a few years,
PATRICK McINTYRE (M.A., August 1995) Non-Thesis
Option
long enough to pursue and complete her doctoral degree at the College of William and Mary in Virginia. Her Ph.D. dissertation (August 2000), "Neither Bedecked nor Bebosomed: Lucy Randolph Mason,
Patrick McIntyre is Endangered Properties Coordinator for the Alabama Historical Commission, the state historic preservation agency. "My job is to find strategies to save threatened historic
Ella Baker and Women's Leadership and Organizing in the Struggle for Freedom," is presently under contract, soon to be published by the University Press of Kentucky. She credits the Center for much of her success, and says that "if you have initiative
resources throughout the state by working closely with local individuals and organizations," Mcintyre says, adding "It is very challenging and sometimes frustrating, but the knowledge that I have an active role in helping keep these distinctive and irreplaceable buildings and sites
and a vision for yourself and the work you wish to do as a scholar, the Center and its staff are there to support you and help you achieve your dreams."
The Southern Register
the
of Munich.
follows.
Glisson is currently back on the Ole Miss campus, serving as the interim director for the Institute for Racial
BARRY GILDEA (M.A., May 1995)
from Auburn University,
and the University
Fall 2000
from being
lost forever
gives me a real
sense of accomplishment." serves as a vice president
Mcintyre also of the Alabama
Page 21
Preservation Alliance, the statewide nonprofit preservation advocacy group,
This position involves overseeing the Council's Traditional Arts Apprenticeship
and is a member of the Secretary of the Interior's Advisory Council for the
Program and Folklife Project grants program; conducting fieldwork on various
Selma-Montgomery Historic Trail.
aspects of Georgia music, foodways, material crafts, religious traditions, and occupational traditions; and managing an archive of the materials gathered from fieldwork. Schmidt gives technical assistance to organizations and individuals interested in folklore.
March
National
States and an
interdisciplinary course called Mississippi Crossroads to academically talented high school juniors and seniors from across the state. He is active in civic and cultural organizations, serving on the board of directors of Mississippi Humanities
DAVID NELSON (M.A., July 1990) Thesis: "Trouble in Mind: Black and White Musical Exchange in the American South" Nelson lives in Snow Camp, North Carolina. In addition to freelance editing and writing, he's been working temporarily as an editor at UNC-Chapel Hill's Southern Oral History Program. He still writes regularly for Living Blues, which he edited at the Center from 1992 to 1999.
LYNN WILKINS ADAMS (M.A., May 1996) Thesis: "Fannye Mae's Beauty Salon: The Old-Time Beauty Shop and a Community of Women in Jackson, Mississippi" Wilkins is community development specialist for the Mississippi Arts Commission, where she has worked since July of 1994. This past January, she moved back to Oxford with her husband, Will, and opened MAC's first-ever branch office (located in Barnard Observatory itself!). From this field
AIMEE SCHMIDT (M.A., May 1994) Thesis: "Down around Biloxi: Culture and Identity in the Biloxi Seafood Industry" Schmidt has been working in the public sector in folklore since completing graduate degree. For three years worked for the Alabama Center Traditional Culture, a division of Alabama State Council on the Arts, then she did a brief stint at
Studies. He teaches United History, American Government,
her she for the and the
Smithsonian for the Festival of American Folklife before settling in for two years with the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. Since July 1999 she has been employed by the Georgia Council for the Arts as director of the Folklife Program.
Council and the Mississippi Historical Society, on the teachers advisory committee for Rowan Oak, and on the steering committee for the Columbus Decorative Arts and Preservation Forum. Yarborough also stays busy helping his wife, Leigh, with their two daughters, India and Laurel, and son, Sam.
ANGEL YSAGUIRRE (M.A., May 1996) Thesis: "Movement
toward Continuity:
The Body's Ordeal in the Novels of Harry Crews"
office, she manages several statewide initiatives that use the arts to address com-
Ysaguirre works for the Illinois Humanities Council in Chicago, Illinois, as the director of Community Programs. He manages the grants program and develops programs for people who are typically underserved in the humanities: public aid
munity needs such as juvenile justice and adult literacy. She also provides technical assistance to communities and organizations in north Mississippi. Lynn finished her graduate course work in 1991, taught at Hinds Community College, and
recipients, inner city youth, and people in their 20s and 30s of any socioeconomic bracket. One of his projects is the collegelevel Clemente Course, for which he hires professors to teach the University of Chicago's Introduction to Humanities
worked in production before joining MAC.
course to women on welfare. For this project he also works with social service agen-
at Mississippi ETV
CHARLES YARBOROUGH (M.A., May 1995) Thesis: "A Way Out of No Way: African American Culture and Empowerment of the Ichauway Plantation Baseball Diamond and Store." Chuck Yarborough has taught at the Mississippi School for Math and Science in Columbus, Mississippi, since completing his graduate degree in Southern
cies that provide screening, child care, transportation, and counseling for students enrolled in the course. Another of Ysaguirre's projects is a dinner series for young professionals. For each of these programs IHC hosts a dinner and discussion led by a humanities scholar on films that use food as a metaphor. In addition to his IHC work, Ysaguirre teaches Love in Literature and other special classes at the Newberry Library.
Thanks to John Semien for his article on Barry Gildea in the Commercial Appeal (B1-2, Sunday, April 9, 2000) and to Anne Evans (M.A., May 1999) for research on Scott McCraw, Aimee Schmidt, Chuck Yarborough, and Angel Ysaguirre.
Page 22
Fall 2000
The Southern Register
Southern Studies M.A. Candidates Participate in a Variety of Internships It was a defining moment for me. I was nearing completion
of
my undergraduate degree; I had no career plans. I visited Mama at work and found her talking with Sarah Moseley, a long-time educator known for her sometimes truculent honesty. I told her my state of affairs; she put her hands on her hips and said very gravely, "Now that you've got your bucket of shit, what are you gonna do with it!" I did not yet, in fact, have my proverbial bucket,
but her point
was
well taken. I t's easy to forget the diverse employment opportunities that are available to those of us devoted to the humanities. Six Southern
lection of documents, photographs, and artifacts donated by the Sisters of Mercy. I was also able to participate in the monthly Humanities Lecture Series, the debut event for the CD-Rom A Mississippi Portrait: Farm Security Administration Photographs, 1935-1940, a truly spectacular quilting exhibit, and a photography exhibition. My favorite duty was guiding tours through the impressive buildings now owned and operated by the SCHF and that once composed the St. Francis Xavier Convent and Academy. The people that I worked with were incredible, and the experience has convinced me that my studies have not been in vain. Sarah Petrides worked for the Hampton Roads Naval Museum, "the official area museum of the US Navy."
Studies M.A. candidates, however, worked internships in the year 2000, amply reminding us that both unpaid resume building positions and paid positions are
Sarah wrote to the museum inquiring about the possibili-
ty of employment. Though available. they did not offer an internI spent six weeks in ship, Sarah convinced the Vicksburg, Mississippi, durmuseum to create one for ing July and August, workher. She "did a lot of differSouthern Studies interns, from left, Vanessa Bliss, Sally Walburn, Josh ing with the folks at the Haynes, and Donna Buzzard ent things" during her internSouthern Cultural Heritage ship. She wrote articles for Foundation. Sarah Petrides the museum's newsletter, taught school children, attended area spent her spring semester in Norfolk, Virginia, working with the museum forums, edited display texts, helped construct displays, Hampton Roads Naval Museum. Sally Walburn spent two and did a lot of research on local history. Sarah has also paved the months of her summer in Atlanta, Georgia, working for the way for future interns by proposing to the museum's board that her Southern Arts Federation. Donna Buzzard earned an internship impromptu, unpaid internship be converted to an annual, paid with the National Archives and Records Administration in internship. I asked Sarah to sum up her internship: "I think it was Washington, D.C. Kenneth Sallis is just beginning an interna great experience. In addition, I made a lot of local connections." ship this fall semester working with Oxford historic preservation activist Susie Marshall. Vanessa Bliss is currently doing an internship with Ralph Nader's campaign as the Green Party's Presidential candidate. Such projects provide interns a variety of tasks that are both professionally productive and personally rewarding. Internships also help us extend our professional networks through working with people and organizations that are committed to researching and interpreting Southern culture. I obtained my position at the Southern Cultural Heritage Foundation (SCHF) through Susan Glisson, who coordinates the Center's internship program. The SCHF and the Center have had a close, mutually beneficial relationship since the SCHF was founded in 1994. During my six weeks at SCHF, I participated in several activities. My primary duty was to construct a collections policy that will allow the SCHF to utilize volunteers in formally cataloging and accessioning the wonderful col-
The Southern Register
Sally Walburn's two month, unpaid internship with the Southern Arts Federation helped her strengthen her organizational skills, allowed her to help coordinate table displays for the Southern Arts Exchange event, meet and visit with several well-known folk artists in north Georgia, and work with Southern Visions Museum Exhibits. Sally, too, had the opportunity to strengthen her professional connections. She gained focus from her experience: "As a result of my internship with the Southern Arts Federation, I am quite interested in pursuing a career as a folklorist. Teresa Hollingsworth is a great boss, and her enthusiasm for the material has everything to do with my having had an educational and positive experience." Donna Buzzard used her summer both to gain professional experience
Fa1l2ClOO
and to further her thesis research by working at the (continued on page 24)
Page 23
Graduate students in Ted Ownby's Southern Studies 601 seminar recently gathered for a photograph on the steps of Barnard Observatory. They are, left to right, front row: Evan Hatch, Kay Walraven, Rana Wallace, Molly Boland, Sally Walburn; second row: Lakenji Hastings, Mary Beth Lassiter, Brian Fisher, Joseph Biagio1i;row three: Vanessa Bliss, Patricia Reis, Sally Monroe.
Southern Studies M.A. Candidates Participate in a Variety of Internships (continuedfrompage23) National
Archives and Records Administration
in Washington,
D.C. The position was unpaid and required 160 hours of work. Donna, like Sarah, earned this prestigious internship through persistently, persuasively communicating directly with the National Archives. She was assigned to the Old Military and Civil Records Department and spent most of her time working with Bureau of Indian Affairs records. She also researched land purchase records from regarding establishment INS project categorizing century. Donna found internship worth while. Kenneth Sallis is just
Western states, responded to inquiries of post offices, and assisted with a huge immigration papers from the turn of the her coworkers very supportive and the beginning an exciting, unpaid internship
that will last throughout the Fall 2000 semester. Kenneth learned of the position from Susan Glisson. Working with local historic
Page 24
preservation
activist Susie Marshall, Kenneth
photography and film to document African American and cemeteries in Lafayette County.
churches
Vanessa Bliss is managing a very high-energy local campaign for Presidential candidate Ralph Nader. Her position is paid, and her duties include fundraising, coordinating volunteers, organizing local groups around the state, acting as liaison for headquarters and Mississippi volunteers. Vanessa is very positive about her internship: "I love it. It's great experience, and I'm working for something I really believe in." Southern Studies M.A. candidates worked internships that reflect only a small portion of the diverse professional opportunities available to us: cultural resources management, a variety of museum work, archives work, and documentary work. We also managed to maintain and expand the wide network of collaborative relationships enjoyed by ourselves and the Center.
will use
Fall 2000
JOSH HAYNES
The Southern Register
MARJORIE BARONI An Ordinary Person's Extraordinary Life: Researcher Susan Sullivan Presents Her Research to Barnard Audience bond
The popular Wednesday Brown Bag forums in the lecture hall at Barnard Observatory benefited on October 4 from a richly observed, deeply passionate presentation by freelance writer and researcher Susan Sullivan. Sullivan's work, supported by a grant from the
She
life dedicated to a search for human rights for all. Before she died in 1986 at the age of 61, Marge Baroni completed college (a B.A. from USMNatchez in 1982) and was at work on a master's degree as well. The
in University archives. Louis Baroni, Marjorie's husband, approved the establishment of the Baroni files at the University Marge and Louis Baroni. COURTESY OF THE BARONI FAMILY through the urging of Sullivan. civil rights struggle in her community. Louis and members of the Baroni family Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the were in the audience for the Sullivan's Baroni house became a refuge for local lecture at Barnard Observatory. Marge Baroni, according to Sullivan, was a sharecropper's daughter from Natchez who left her Baptist faith to convert to Catholicism as a young married woman in the 1950s. Lacking a high school diploma, Marge read and wrote
activists, black and white, which led to the family's ostracism and harassment in Natchez. Marge personally brought supplies to one of Natchez's Freedom Schools and helped integrate the white library of her town. She joined the
continually and over a wide range of subjects, eventually concluding that she had to become significantly involved in the
Mississippi Council on Human Relations and served jail time after she lobbied for the release of a black man whose posted
thing
Well, I'm not completely sure I did erase the sentimental. These "cliches" were a very big part of my (and the five preceding generations') vision growing up here. That vision was colored by a plethora of fantastical-some comic, some tragic, all interesting-stories. Just about every patch of ground I've photographed in Delta Land either belonged to a family that I knyw, or knew of. As you are well aware, some of the history here is very dark; I am thinking especially of the shameful and tragic Emmett Till story, which was the most publicized, though certainly, by far, not the only lynching to happen in Tallahatchie County .... Now that it is a book and you're able to the view the project between two covers, what does it express to you as a cycle of What surprised
quality of her mind, and her activism, however, far outpaced her formal education and degrees. This Southern woman was anybut "ordinary," and Sullivan's
research into her life has just begun. "There are boxes and boxes of materials to review, to make sense of, and I've given you all just a glimpse of Marge today." The Baroni family's gift of Marge's papers is a legacy of Southern courage, and the Center and Ole Miss
are grateful to Sullivan, and to the Baroni family, for their placement in University archives.
Photographer Talks about New Book
The Southern Register
ignored.
belief in the dignity of people led her to practice, on a daily basis, a
National Endowment for the Humanities through the Mississippi Humanities Council, has resulted in a gift to Ole Missthe permanent placement of Marjorie Baroni's personal papers
photographs, as a statement? gathering of your work?
was being
worked for 10 years for the first black mayor of Fayette (the first time a black man was elected as a mayor of a biracial Mississippi town). Through it all, her basic
LESLEY URGO
(continued from page 18)
I am both relieved and apprehensive about finishing Delta Land. When an artist "wraps" a particular project, it travels on to the next realm: how the work will be perceived by others. The work then makes its own path, as the artist can no longer control or shape it. So I can only hope that, in addition to my not having left out anything really important, that Delta Land will retain some of the value I tried to bring to it: a historical as well as artistic relevancy. The relief comes in not having to scrutinize every part of the Delta landscape, every day, wondering how it will fit into the Delta Land book. The wondrous surprise is that my vision of the Delta has now become a tangible thing-a book. My "statement" is that I love this place and hope I have somehow managed to portray its complex beauty.
you about this
Fall 2000
STEVEN B. YATES
Page 25
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS ADRIAN AUMEN is a writer and editor working in the public relations and marketing department
at the University
JOHN T. EDGE, director Southern
of Mississippi.
of the Southern
Foodways
Alliance,
food and travel. He is the author of A Gracious
Recollections from the American
received her M.A. in Southern
Queen of the South: New Orleans in the Age of T. K. Wharton, 1853-1862, on view at the Historic New Orleans Collection, 533 Royal Street, has been extended by popular demand through December 2000. Thomas K. Wharton, an accomplished
architect,
arrived
in New Orleans
in
1845 and became superintendent of construction for the new Custom House on Canal Street. Beginning in 1853 and continuing until his death in 1862, Wharton kept a journal in which he faithfully recorded and sketched a revealing portrait of the city and its customs. Through paintings, prints, drawings, photographs, maps, and artifacts, the exhibition showcases aspects of life and culture
Recipes and
South and the recently published Southern Belly.
KAREN GLYNN is visual resources curator for the Southern from the University
writes about
Goodness:
Media Archive. She
Studies in 1995 and recently received an M.L.S.
of Alabama.
ANDREW C. HARPER recently joined the Center's staff as coordinator ning grant for the Deep South Humanities from Northern
of the plan-
Center. He earned a PhD. in history
Arizona University.
EVAN HATCH is a first year graduate student in the Southern Studies Program. He attended
the University
of North
Carolina
and graduated
with a B.A. in
American Studies. He enjoys country and western music, cooking, and any activities combining
both sports and leisure.
JOSH HAYNES is a second year Southern
Studies M.A. candidate
Alabama. He received B.A. in history from Tulane University rently researching
his master's thesis on Cherokee
potential post-M.A. employment
from Centre,
in 1998 and is cur-
religion, as well as researching
opportunities.
DONALD W. KARTIGANERholds the William Howry Chair in Faulkner Studies at the University of Mississippi and is director of the Faulkner Conference.
in New Orleans from a peak of economic success to the crash of the Civil War. For additional information, call
author of The Fragile Thread: The Meaning of Form in Faulkner's Novels.
504-523-4662.
COLBY H. KULLMAN teaches
in the English Department
He is the
at the University
of
Mississippi. He is the author and editor of numerous works on American drama. RONNI LUND! is the author of, among other works, Butter Beans to Blackberries: Recipes from the Southern
Pictures Tell the Story, the first exhibition to survey the photographic career of Ernest C. Withers, will be at the Brooks Museum of Art in Memphis, Tennessee, April 14June 30, 200l. For half a century, Withers has made his living as a photographer, and for more than 40 of those years, he has emblazoned his business advertisements with the words "Pictures Tell the Story." The story of Withers provides a compelling social history of the African American experience from the late 1940s to the 1970s. Included in the exhibition are Withers's well-known images of the civil rights movement, as well as his photographs of musical entertainers, baseball players of the Diamond League, and Memphis life. Additional information is available bye-mail (caroline.vonkessler@ brooksmuseum.org) or by telephone (901-544-6208).
Garden.
She is a founding
member of the Southern
Foodways Alliance. TED OWNBYholds a joint appointment
in Southern Studies and History. He is the
author of Subduing Satan: Religion, Recreation, and Manhood in the Rural South, 18651920 and American Dreams in MississiPPi: Consumers,
Poverty, and Culture, 1830-1998.
PHOENIX SAVAGEis a second-year graduate student in medical anthropology. primary area of interest is African magico-medical
DAVID WHARTON is assistant professor and director of documentary the Center, where is teaches courses in Southern
Her
systems in Mississippi. projects at
Studies, fieldwork, and photog-
raphy. He is the author of The Soul of a Small Texas Town: Photographs, Memories, and History from McDade. STEVENB. YATESis promotions manager for the Universiry Press of Mississippi. He is a winner of literary arts grants from the Arkansas Arts Commission, the Mississippi Arts Commission,
and the National
Endowment
for the Arts. His fiction has
appeared in the Missouri Review, Ontario Review, and many other magazines.
Eighth Oxford Conference for the Bool~ UNIVERSITY
OF
MISSISSIPPI
•
OXFORD,
MISSISSIPPI
March 30-April1, 2001
Reserve your lodging at special rate $50 a night
DOWNTOWN INN OF OXFORD 400 North Lamar Blvd.
Reservations 800~606~ 1497 www.downtowninnoxford.com
with continental breakfast if booked by March 15 Page 26
Fall 2000
The Southern Register
Gi~ Ideas Voices of Perthshire "
Voices of Perlhshire depicts life on a MississippiDelta cotton plantation from 1938 to 1942, as seen through the home movie camera of Emma Knowlton Lytle.Mrs. Lytledonated the original silent 8mm film to the Southern Media Archive. Producers Karen Glynn and Peter Slade added recorded commentary from both the filmmaker and retired Perthshire farm workers to the film. Voices of Perlhshire depicts the full cycleof a cotton crop from breaking the ground, to making a bale, to weaving cloth in the textile mills of North Carolina. (Voices of Perlhshire is a new release from the Southern Media Archive, replacing Raisin' Cotton.)
VfJl~Cett Perthshire
V3001
1999,63 minutes $25.00
lIThe Memory Is a Living Thing"
Southern Culture Catalog The University of Mississippi Hill Hall, Room 301 • University, MS 38677 Phone 800-390-3527 • Fax 662-915-7842
Sold To:
International Orders Other video formats may be available. Please call for information.
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_
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State
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_
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