Southern Register Spring/Summer 2002

"FAULKNER AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES" Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha July 21 ..26,2002 ulkner

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§ The official poster for the 2002 Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference is illustrated with Sidney J. Waintrob's image of Eudora Welty and William Faulkner on the occasion of Faulkner's receiving the National Institute of Arts and Letters Gold Medal for Fiction in May 1962. Flat posters, suitable for framing, are available for $10.00 each plus $2.50 postage and handling. Mississippi residents add 7 percent sales tax. Send all orders to the Center for the Study of Southern Culture with a check made payable to the University of Mississippi or with Visa or MasterCard account number and expiration date. Credit card orders also may be made by calling 800390-3527.

and His Contemporaries," the 29th annual Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference, will explore the ~ literary and intellectual relations Faulkner shares with other writers as well as the extent to which his work is a reflection of, and a commentary on, theirs. Among the topics to be discussed are Faulkner's relationships with some of his Southern contemporaries; Faulkner's connections with Hemingway, Willa Cather, and John Dos Passos; and the responses of Eudora Welty, Elizabeth Spencer, and Ellen Douglas to Faulkner's legacy. Scholars who will address the conference are Houston A. Baker Jr., Deborah Clarke, Grace Elizabeth Hale, W. Kenneth Holditch, W. Thomas Inge, George Monteiro, Daniele Pitavy-Souques, Peggy Whitman Prenshaw, Thomas Rankin, Merrill Maguire Skaggs, and conference director Donald M. Kartiganer. In addition to the formal lectures, Reckon Crew, a group of four Nashville singer-songwriters, will present the song cycle As I Lay Dying, evocative musical settings of Faulkner's classic novel. Other program events will include discussions by Faulkner friends and family, sessions on "Teaching Faulkner," and Arlie Herron's slide presentation of photographs of North Mississippi. The University's John Davis Williams Library will display Faulkner books, manuscripts, photographs, and memorabilia; and the University Press of Mississippi will exhibit Faulkner books published by university presses throughout the United States. Films relating to the author's life and work will be available for viewing during the week. The conference will begin on Sunday, July 21, with receptions for two exhibitions: Paradox in Paradise, mixed media artworks by Lea Barton, at the University Museums, and Ms. Booth's Garden, photographs by Jack Kotz, in the Gammill Gallery at Barnard Observatory. Next will be an afternoon program of readings from Faulkner and the announcement of the winners of the 13th Faux Faulkner Contest. Other events will include a Sunday buffet supper served at the home of Dr. and Mrs. M. B. Howorth Jr., "Faulkner on the Fringe"-an "open-mike" evening at the Southside Gallery, guided day-long tours of North Mississippi, a picnic served at Faulkner's home, Rowan Oak, and a closing party at Square Books. For more information about the conference, contact the Center for Non-Credit Education, P.O. Box 879, The University of Mississippi, University, MS 38677 -1848; telephone 662-915-7283; fax 662915-5138, e-mail noncred@olemiss.edu. For on-line information consult www.olemiss.edu/depts/south/faulkner/index.htm. and for on-line registration consult www.ics.olemiss.edu/events/faulknecyoknapatawpha_2001.htm1. For information about participating in the conference through Elderhostel, call 877-426-8056 and refer to the program number 24225, or contact Carolyn Vance Smith by telephone (601-446- 1208) or e-mail (catolyn.smith@colin.edu) . DONALD M. KARTIGANER

.Il\

Southern Register Published Quarterly by The Center for the Study of Southern Culture 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

Spring/ Summer 2002

2 3 4 5 6 6 7 7 8 8 9 10 10 11 14 15 15 16 17 17 18 19 21 26 26 27 28 28 29 29 30 32

2002 F& Y Conference: "Faulkner and and His Contemporaries" Director's Column Kotz Exhibition & Book Signing Professor Robbie Ethridge's New Book Peter Aschoff Morgan Scholarship for English Majors History Symposium Jimmy Faulkner Patchett Wins PEN/Faulkner Award Gammill Gallery Exhibition Schedule 2003 F& Y Call for Papers New Southern Studies Scholarship Tennessee Williams Festival Gray and Coterie Award Winners Reading the South: Reviews and Notes Brown Bag Schedule Center Ventress Order Trustees Calls for Papers 25th Anniversary Celebration Schedule Friends of the Center Southern Studies Graduation Photo Become a Friend of the Center Southern Foodways Alliance News 2002 Oxford Conference for the Book Writer in Residence Tom Franklin Franklin and Fennelly Mississippi Folklife Association Southern Studies Alums Country Music Regional Roundup Notes on Contributors Southern Culture Catalog Items Address Section/Mailing List Form/ Friends Information and Form

REgISTER STAFF Editor: Ann

J.

Abadie

DIRECTOR'S

COLUMN

Graduation day 2002 began

for Southern Studies with a morning breakfast for students, parents, and faculty, in the courtyard of Barnard Observatory. Since graduation ceremonies started early, breakfast in this lovely setting began at 7:30 a.m., and coffee and orange juice helped everyone prepare for the day-or at least to wake up. Muffins and other pastries from Oxford's Bottletree Bakery, owned by Southern Studies alumna Cynthia Gerlach, sent students off, ready to march into the Grove to celebrate their achievements. By the end of the summer, 10 of our students will have graduated this year with master of arts degrees in Southern Studies. We remain the only University that gives the Southern Studies degree, and our students come from near and far for its interdisciplinary curriculum. This year, our students have worked on theses on, among other topics, Southern foodways, the dulcimer, and the revolutionary impact of Elvis Presley on gender relations in the South. One student, Sally Monroe, completed a documentary studies photography project she had begun as a Southern Studies undergraduate major. She used family photographs, interviews, and commentary family members wrote on the photographs to document her family and community over three generations. Other graduate students offered colloquia that presented the results of internships. One student gave a presentation on her internship at the Southern Cultural Heritage Complex, one of the most important community cultural institutions in Mississippi. Another student worked with the University's "Steps to Success" program, which encourages academic success and personal achievement among the University's underrepresented populations in order to retain students who begin college here. Another student worked in Thad Cochran's Oxford office, and his research paper compared several generations of Mississippi politicians, including Cochran. Patricia Reis, a Brazilian student who studied with us, presented results of her work with a Memphis musical festival and told of how she hopes to implement a regional studies program when she returns to Brazil. The Center works hard to provide financial aid to our graduate students, and much of our effort rests on donations from Friends of the Center. The University provides only limited funding for assistantships, funding only three at minimum levels of aid. The Center includes graduate stipends, when possible, in grant proposals and other outside aid. Most of the funding to support graduate students, though, comes from donations from our annual fund drives. This year, during our 25th anniversary, we are systematically sending a letter to everyone on our 30,000 name database, asking everyone to join Friends of the Center and contribute to our fund raising efforts. The mailings will go out periodically over the next year or so, and some of you reading this may already have been contacted. A quarter-century anniversary is a landmark, and work with students provides much of our continuity. Alumni have gone on to work in museums, art galleries, research centers, and archives. Several of our students work for Southern Living magazine, and one is in Atlanta with CNN. Three of our graduates work with state humanities councils, and a dozen or so have earned doctorates in American Studies, history, or literature. Alumni Susan Glisson and John T. Edge have even returned to the Center to work with, respectively, the Institute for Racial Reconciliation and the Southern Foodways Alliance. Friends of the Center has supported our students as they prepare for cultural work that extends the Center's approach throughout the South and beyond. They put a face on our work, and we continue to depend on the generosity of our Friends to help us provide resour,ces to keep Southern Studies "telling about the South." CHARLES REAGAN

Graphic Designer: Heather Chappell

WILSON

Mailing List Manager: Mary Hartwell Howorth Lithographer: RR Donnelley Magazine Group The University complies with all regarding affirmative action and equal its activities and programs and does against anyone protected by law color,disability, national origin, race, status as a veteran or disabled veteran.

Page 2

applicable laws opportunity in all not discriminate because of age, religion, sex, or

CORRECTION: In the Winter 2002 issue of Southern Register, a review of OF Strom: An Unauthorized Biography of Strom Thurmond mentioned voters elected Thurmond to his "sixth eight-year term." It should have read his "eighth six-year term." We regret the mistake.

Spring/Summer

2002

The Southern Register

Kotz Exhibition & Book Signing

Myrtle at Church: Ms. Booth plays the organ at First Baptist Church in Mathison, Mississippi. otOgraPher be in Oxford

Jack Kotz will during the

29th Faulkner Conference ~ to meet guests at a reception for his exhibition Ms. Booth's Garden and to sign copies of his book of exhibition photographs. The reception will be held at the Gammill Gallery in Barnard Observatory

on Sunday, July 21, at 1:00

birthplace

in Hardin County, Tennessee.

The book contains 110 color images made during the past 20 years.

Ms. Booth's Garden shows Myrtle Booth at home, at church, in the bank and shops of "downtown" Mathiston, with her family and friends, enjoying the food they

simplest of things and most commonplace of experiences." In the process, the photographer learned that "people's spirits are inextricable from the land they inhabit." Author

and NPR commentator

Bailey

grow and eat, being a part of the natural

wrote the foreword to Ms. Booth's Garden. "These photographs," she says,

and built environment "These people lived

White

p.m. The booksigning will take place at Off Square Books on Monday, July 22, at 5:00 p.m.

around them. simply and

"give so much that you have the feeling that if you just look hard enough you will

deliberately," Kotz relates in his afterword to the book. "Gardens were not for fun,

be able to understand it all-the complexities of old, old friendships, the

In Ms. Booth's Garden, published by the Mississippi Museum of Art and distributed

they were simple economics. Pet chickens and turkeys became food as time and need

sweep of change, and the touching adjustments resourceful people make to

by the University Press of Mississippi, Kotz

dictated. Life was about hard work, going to church, and being good to one another.

accommodate it, the little eruptions of art that make up an enduring community."

provides an intimate portrait of his 96year-old grandmother and her community. Kotz, who grew up around Washington, D.C., and now lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in the 1980s began documenting his grandmother's life during frequent visits to her hometown of Mathiston, Mississippi, and on pilgrimages to her

The Southern Register

It was also about strict disciplines, adherence to the Bible."

and

On display this summer at the Gammill

"What most interested me over time was simply my grandmother's day-to-day life,"

Gallery are 46 photographs in the exhibition Ms. Booth's Garden. For information about the exhibition, call

Kotz says. "I was constantly intrigued by the seemingly simple way she lived and the reverence with which she regarded the

Spring/Summer

2002

662-915-5993. For information about the Kotz booksigning, call Square Books at 662-236-2262.

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History of Native Americans of 17th ..18th Century South Examined

.

In

Professor's New Book

~ewlY

tt...-.Y짜

published

volume

of 12 essays

~Y historians, anthropologists, and archeologists aims to decipher some perplexing historical mysteries: how and why did Indians of the 17th and 18th century South change after the European invasion?

The Transformation (University

of the Southeastern

Press of Mississippi),

coedited

Indians,

1540-1760

by Robbie

Ethridge,

McMullan Assistant Professor of Southern Studies and assistant professor of anthropology, examines and details two centuries for which very little is known about Southeastern Indians. "These two hundred or so years are practically unknown for the Southeast, yet this is a time in which dramatic happened to the Southeastern Indians," said Ethridge,

changes who has

published and presented several papers on Southeastern Indians of the 18th century. "This book will not only contribute enormously to our understanding of Southeastern Indian history, but also to our understanding of early American history." Ethridge coedited the book with Charles Hudson, Franklin Professor of Anthropology at the University of Georgia, a leading expert on the anthropology and history of Southeastern Indians. "This book is a remarkable example of scholarship," said Jay Johnson, associate director of the University's Archeology Research Center and a professor of anthropology. "It will stand as a landmark in the anthropology and ethnohistory of the region for many years to come." Ethridge currently is working with johnson on the Chickasaw Project-a National Endowment for the Humanities-funded joint academic venture with Mississippi State Universitywhich is shedding new light into the internal workings of the late 17th to early 18th century

Page 4

Chickasaws

with Northern Europeans and other Indian groups. Ethridge said the book's main purpose is to examine some of the historical forces at work when the Indians of the Southeast came into contact with the modern world system and to see how the native societies responded to these forces. "Answering these questions requires us to write the social history of the South between about 1526 to about 1715 and to identify and examine the historical forces, trends, and events that were attendant to the formation of the Indians of the colonial South," Ethridge said. "From these works, we now understand that the first 200 years of the historical era was a time when fundamental-even catastrophic-changes occurred in native societies of the South." The volume contains lectures presented at the University's 1998 Porter L. Fortune j r. History Symposium. Discussed were such topics as the introduction of Old World diseases, longdistance migration and dislocation, the influences of the Spanish mission system, the effects of the English plantation system, and the far-reaching shock waves generated by the northern fur trade of the English, French, and Dutch, and the English trade in Indian slaves and deerskins in the South. In addition to Ethridge and Hudson, other contributors are Stephen Davis, Penelope Drooker, Patricia K. Galloway, Steven Hahn, Marvin Jeter, Paul Kelton, Tlmothy Pertulla, Christopher Rodning, Helen Rountree, Marvin T. Smith, and John Worth. Ethridge next year is set to publish another book, The Creek Indians and Their World, 1796-1816 (University of North Carolina

DElDRA JACKSON

and their relations

Spring/Summer

Press).

2002

The Southern Register

PETER DECEMBER

ASCHOFF 24,

1949

~

FEBRUARY

15, 2002

Longtime Living Blues contributor Peter R. Aschoff died at his home on February 15, after suffering a heart attack. He was only 52. Peter was born in Omaha, Nebraska, on December 24, 1949, but grew up in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He first became interested in the blues while attending Lawrence University in Wisconsin, where he inherited a blues radio show from future Alligator Records owner and Living Blues cofounder Bruce Iglauer. During the 1970s Peter worked as a master carpenter and lived a hippie lifestyle raising chickens on a farm in Randalia, Iowa, all the while hosting the public radio show Only Blues. In the late '70s he returned to college at the University of Northern Iowa and met his future wife, Patricia. In 1983-the year Living Blues was acquired by the University of Mississippithey moved to Oxford, where Peter completed a master's degree in anthropology, began regularly contributing to Living Blues, and relished living in the "the heart of the beast." He left Oxford for several years to work toward a Ph.D. in anthropology at the University of Iowa and, after returning, worked as an instructor in anthropology at the University of Mississippi, where his courses, including Anthropology of the Blues, were popular with undergraduates. He was also a regular presenter at the annual Delta Blues Symposium at Arkansas State University, which paid tribute to him at this year's gathering. He is survived by his wife, Patricia; his son, Edward; his brother, Michael; sisters, JoEllen and Gretchen; and parents, Dr. Carl and Jacqueline Aschoff. The family has suggested that contributions in his memory be made to Friends of Living Blues, c/o the University of Mississippi Foundation, PO. Box 249, University, MS 38677. Secure online gift-giving can be made by clicking www.umf.olemiss.edu and, in Account Designation, marking "Living Blues." Gifts to Living Blues are tax deductible. SCOTT BARRETTA

Peter Aschoff was one of those rare men who wore his gentleness like a badge. He was passionate about everything he did in life, and he wasn't afraid to show his emotions. I think that one reason he loved the blues so much was that he knew that the secret power of the blues, a music that so often expresses anger and frustration, is that it allows you to vent your personal anger and frustration, and, if you're not too "cool" let your gentleness shine through. In his case, the gentleness shined brightly. The Peter Aschoff I remember is not the charismatic, intensely enthusiastic, larger-than-life teacher, blues scholar, and writer that many of you knew. The Peter I remember is a skinny college freshman, curious about everything, funny, likeable, and a bit shy. We met during my senior year of college. I don't remember how, but it was probably because I did the blues show on WLFM, the Lawrence University station. Blues fans were few and far between in those days, and our new friendship was based in our passion for the music which we actually knew very little about. In the fall of 1969, I arranged to bring Luther Allison up to our college in Appleton, Wisconsin, for a concert. Peter was my right-hand man; I held the posters up while he wielded the staple gun. We canvassed a hundred mile radius promoting that show, riding in myoid Rambler, stapling handbills and posters to every bulletin board, phone poll, and bar wall we could find. The show sold out, and Luther's charismatic performance was better than even our wildest dreams. It was a triumph for both of us, and sealed us both to our future professions and our lives in the blues. Peter inherited my radio show, and then took it to Cedar Falls, Iowa, where he continued to study blues. One of his listeners became his beloved, wonderful wife, Patricia. Together they made their way to the University of Mississippi, so Peter could live and teach in the homeland of the blues. When they were blessed with their son Edward, they honored me by making me his godfather. I'm immensely proud that Peter saw me as his mentor, and that I was among the first to share with him the music that became a beacon in his life. He had a special gift-he could excite and energize people about the blues. If I helped make him into a lifelong blues fan, it was his gift that created so many more lifelong blues lovers. The world-not just the blues-needs more men like Peter Aschoff. BRUCE IGLAUER

The Southern Register

Spring/Summer

2002

Page 5

English Department Announces Virginia Morgan Scholarship for Undergraduate English Majors After an early career in the business world of Memphis and New York, Virginia Morgan earned an M.A. degree in English at the University of Mississippi with a thesis on Renaissance drama. She took several doctoral courses before joining the faculty in 1968 and served the University in many capacities until her retirement in 1991. Morgan died in Memphis in 1997. Former Provost Gerald Walton describes her as "perhaps the most reliable, most helpful, and most knowledgeable instructor ever in the Department of English." During the years Walton served as director of freshman English, Morgan was his "unofficial assistant," helping to run the program smoothly while teaching a full load of courses in composition and sophomore literature, along with an occasional Shakespeare course. Between 1979 and 1982, she took on additional duties as project coordinator for the fledgling Center for the Study in Southern Culture, providing invaluable assistance in organizing its activities. Former Dean of Liberal Arts Dale Abadie recalls that "Virginia was considered among the most thorough and efficient advisors of students in the College." She touched thousands of students' lives, advising not only English majors but undecided students in Liberal Arts as well. Walton says that, during a period when the advisory system was often criticized, one student commented, "If everyone had an advisor like Miss Morgan, there would never be any complaints." Until her retirement, Morgan was also crucial to the success of the Savage Lecture series, one of the College of Liberal Arts' best-known annual events. From the book exhibits she meticulously prepared to the local tours she conducted for the internationally famous speakers on Renaissance literature and culture, Morgan was at the heart of the program named after her early mentor, Professor James E. Savage. It is especially fitting that a teacher who warmly encouraged several generations of Ole Miss students should be memorialized in the Virginia Morgan Scholarship. Information on how to contribute to the scholarship fund is available from Joseph Urgo, Chair of the Department of English, by telephone (662-9157439) or e-mail (jurgo@olemiss.edu). JOAN WYLIE HALL

27th Annual Porter L. Fortune

Jr.

History Symposium

"Race and Sport: The Struggle for Equality On and Off the Field" September 25-27,2002 SPEAKERS John Gerald

Gems,

C. Keith

Lamar University North

Harrison,

Rita Liberti,

Kenneth

Carroll,

Central

College

University

California

of Michigan

State University,

Michael

Lomax,

University

Patrick

Miller,

Northeastern

Illinois

Shropshire,

University Earl Smith,

Wake Forest University

Winslow,

TV Analyst

and Member

Kellen

Hayward

of Georgia

of Pennsylvania,

Wharton

of Pro Football

School

of Business

Hall of Fame

SPONSORS Department

of History

and the Center The University

For further

information,

• The University

Page 6

please contact:

of Mississippi.

Charles

University,

K. Ross.

MS 38677

for the Study of Southern

Culture

of Mississippi

Department

• Telephone:

Spring/Summer 2002

of History/African 662-15-5978

American

Studies

Program

• E-mail: cross@olemiss.edu

The Southern Register

JIMMY

FAULKNER January

18, 1923 - December

24, 2001

A leading voice in fostering understanding and appreciation of the man William Faulkner has been stilled with the death of] immy Faulkner of Oxford. James Murry "Jimmy" Faulkner, nephew of the Nobel laureate and son of author-artist John Faulkner, died last December 24 at North Mississippi Medical Center in Tupelo after a lengthy illness. He was 78. Jimmy Faulkner leaves a treasure of family lore on the uncle he called "Brother Will" in work that includes Across the Creek: Faulkner Family Stories (University Jimmy Faulkner (left) and Dr. Chester E. McLarty at dedication of Faulkner Press of Mississippi, 1986) and in stories and plaque at the Lafayette County Courthouse on the opening day of the 1983 recollections in publications including Southern Review, Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference Delta Review, Mississippi Review, and Delta Heritage. In addition, his "Knowing William Faulkner" I knew him well. I loved him. He was my father." presentation with color slides on his Brother Will was a Jimmy Faulkner had been engaged before retirement as a popular feature through the years of the annual Faulkner contractor with his Faulkner Construction Company. and Yoknapatawpha Conference at the University of He served during World War II and the Korean War as a Mississippi. Jimmy had been joined in the presentation in Marine Corps pilot, earning the Distinguished Flying recent years at the conference and in guest appearances at Cross, the World War II Victory Ribbon, and the Pacific colleges and universities by his daughter, Meg Faulkner Theatre Ribbon. He retired from active military duty as a DuChaine, of Oxford. lieutenant colonel. One of the more recent of Jimmy's reminiscences of his He was a communicant of St. Peter's Episcopal Church. revered uncle came in 1998 in the foreword to the Hill He was preceded in death by his wife, Nancy Watson Street Classics reprint of John Faulkner's My Brother Bill. Faulkner. "What I learned from Brother Will while growing up was Survivors, in addition to his daughter, Meg Faulkner to be a good sportsman, to know and respect nature, and to DuChaine, are two sons, James Murry Faulkner Jr. of stand on my own two feet," Jimmy writes. "He gave me my Jackson, Mississippi, and Thomas Wesley Faulkner of first cowboy chaps, hat, and pistol, my first airplane flight Lookout Mountain, Tennessee; his brother, M. C. (he was the pilot), and my first gin and tonic." "Chooky" Falkner of Oxford; and four grandchildren. Jimmy in that same foreword salutes his father, John Services were held at St. Peter's Episcopal Church, with Faulkner, as "a man of many talents-a civil engineer, a burial in St. Peter's Cemetery at Oxford. writer, a pilot, and a painter." Memorials may be made to the American Heart "Everybody liked John, and he liked them. He was a Association. friend, buddy, and teacher to [J immy's younger brother] WILLIAM BOOZER Chooky and me. He was the best daddy two boys ever had.

Patchett Wins PEN/Faulkner Award The bestselling novelist Ann Patchett, of Nashville, has been named the 2002 PEN/Faulkner winner for her 2001 book, Bel Canto. With an honorarium of $15,000, the prize is America's largest juried award for fiction, selected by writer-peers from more than 250 novels and short story collections. Based loosely on the 1996 terrorist takeover in Peru, Bel Canto was already receiving strong reviews when Patchett's book tour brought her to Oxford's Square Books last summer; but the national attacks in September 2001 brought even more attention to the lyrical story of an opera singer who captivates her captors and fellow hostages alike. Patchett was interviewed on National Public Radio this April along with Rene Fleming, the soprano whose voice inspired the author's creation of her heroine, Roxane Coss. NPR dramatically spliced brief recordings of Fleming's performances into the program. On Mother's Day, CBS interviewed Patchett and her mother, Jeanne Ray, who wrote her popular first novel, Julie and Romeo, at 60. "Thrilled" was Patchett's response to news of the PEN/Faulkner Award, which she accepted in May at Washington, D.C.'s Folger Shakespeare Library. The PEN/Faulkner Foundation, which also sponsors the Writers in Schools Project, is named after the Nobel Prize winner from Oxford, who shared his Nobel grant by creating an award for young writers. JOAN WYLIE HALL

The Southern Register

Spring/Summer

2002

Page 7

Lynn & Stewart Gammill Gallery

CALL

FOR

PAPERS

The 30th Annual Faulkner & Yoknapatawpha Conference

EXHIBITION

"FAULKNER AND THE ECOLOGY OF THE SOUTH" The University of Mississippi

SCHEDULE

July 20-25, 2003

June 3 ~August 16, 2002

Ms. Booth's Garden Jack Katz

• August 19 ~October 18, 2002

One Family Vaughn Sills

• October 21, 2002 ~January 31, 2003

25 Years

of Studying the South

Center for the Study of Southern Culture Anniversary Exhibition

• The Gammill Gallery, located in Barnard Observatory, is open Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m., except for University holidays.

Page 8

Telephone:

662-915-5993.

The concept of ecology has come to have a dual focus, referring to the systems of relations that exist both in the natural world and the constructed world. These systems, one pertaining to the relationships between natural organisms and their physical environments, the other with human groups and their social, as well as physical, environments, are increasingly regarded as interdependent. As Lawrence Buell has recently put it, one of the major tasks of ecocriticism "is to put 'green' and 'brown' landscapes, the landscapes of exurbia and industrialization, in conversations with each other." One of the aims of the 2003 conference is to explore that "conversation" as it exists in Faulkner's fiction. Throughout his career Faulkner was attentive to the communities of Jefferson and human groupings-ranging from the communities of Jefferson and Frenchman's Bend and the distinct African American and Native American groups within and without these communities, to the complex family structures of Sanoris, Compson, Bundren, and McCaslin-and to the specific settings of those groups within their natural and constructed environments. The play of setting and individual and group dynamics is constant, at times harmonious, at other times a source of conflict, as the human vacillates between struggle against the various forms of environment and a desire to act in accord with them. Here are some of the questions that might be addressed: How does Faulkner's fiction develop and change in its depiction of the ecological situation? Do ecological issues become moral and ethical issues in the fiction? Is there any kind of consistent Yoknapatawpha ecology? How does the fiction treat the phenomena of weather, "natural" disaster, the relations between town and county, animal and human? To what extent does Falkner's fiction reflect the larger Southern ecological situation within which much of that fiction takes place? We are inviting 50-minute plenary addresses and IS-minute papers for this conference. Plenary papers consist of approximately 6,000 words and will be published by the University Press of Mississippi. Short papers consist of approximately 2,500 words and will be delivered at panel sessions. For plenary papers the 14th edition of the University of Chicago Manual of Style should be used as a guide in preparing manuscripts. Three copies of manuscripts must be submitted by January 15, 2003. Notification of selection will be made by March 1, 2003. Authors whose papers are selected for presentation at the conference and for publication will receive (1) a waiver of the conference registration fee, (2) lodging at the University Alumni House from Saturday, July 19, through Friday, July 25, and (3) reimbursement oftravel expenses, up to $500 ($.345 a mile by automobile or tourist class airfare). For short papers, three copies of two-page abstracts must be submitted by January 15, 2003. Notification will be made by March 1, 2003. Authors whose papers are selected for panel presentation will receive a waiver of the $200 conference registration fee. In additional to commercial lodging, inexpensive dormitory rooms are available. All manuscripts and inquiries should be addressed to Donald Kartiganer, Department of English, The University of Mississippi, University, MS 38677. Telephone: 662-915-5793, e-mail: dkartiga@olemiss.edu. Manuscripts should only be sent by conventional mail, not e-mail or fax.

Spring/Summer

2002

The Southern Register

SOUTHERN

STUDIES

GRADUATE

ALUMS

ANNOUNCE

NEW SCHOLARSHIP

Y

hiS year marks the fifth anniversary of the death of Chris Fullerton, a Southern Studies alumnus. To honor his memory and his contributions to the Center, his friends announce plans to raise funds for a new scholarship in his name. The Fullerton Graduate Fellowship will be given to a student pursuing a master's degree in Southern Studies, focusing on documentary studies, African American Studies, or sports history. A native of Woodbridge, Virginia, Fullerton received a bachelor's degree in history from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia. He worked for the Museum of the Confederacy before entering the master's program at the University in the fall of 1992. During his time as a graduate student, he worked at the University Museums and served for a year as the assistant curator of Rowan Oak, William Faulkner's home. Fullerton focused much of his research in the Southern Studies Program on the history of baseball and race relations. His master's thesis, "Striking Out Jim Crow: The Birmingham Black Barons," examined the role Birmingham's Negro League team played in resisting discrimination in that city and eventually providing a forum for eliminating segregation. Fullerton's passion for history and for the subject of baseball carried over into his extracurricular activities. His friends remember him fondly as the catalyst for the first Southern Studies softball team, whose poor win record did not accurately reflect the importance of the games for team members. "Chris really pulled my class of students together with that softball team. We became more than just fellow students, but also great friends," says fellow alum Aimee Schmidt. "The master's program was just gaining respect when our class began at Ole Miss, and Chris was really the

Chris Fullerton

glue that held us together. He was tremendously funny and amidst the tragedy that often looms over the study of the South, Chris always made everyone laugh." Baseball remained Fullerton's singular love. In the fall of 1996, he returned to Birmingham, site of his many research trips, to become executive director of the Friends of Rickwood, a group devoted to the restoration of Rickwood Park, home of the Birmingham Barons and Black Barons and the nation's oldest baseball park. In addition to directing fundraising efforts to preserve the park, Fullerton oversaw the planning and promotion of the Rickwood Classic, created a Rickwood Field traveling exhibition, and scheduled baseball events at the park. He was developing a long-range plan to build a Museum of Southern Baseball History at Rickwood.

The Southern Register

Spring/Summer

"Chris Fullerton brought to the project an enthusiasm and a passion for the history of baseball," said Coke Matthews III, chairman of the Friends of Rickwood. "That passion was very much contagious with everybody who came into contact with him. He loved to refer to Rickwood as the mother church of baseball, and he certainly was the preacher." Fittingly, the new scholarship also marks the 25th anniversary of the Center's work. Fullerton's friends believe it appropriate to continue to support the institution that provided him an academic home. They encourage all alumni to become Friends of the Center in Fullerton's memory and, more importantly, to contribute to the new scholarship in his name. Gifts can be sent to the Center, noting the Fullerton Fellowship. SUSAN

2002

M. GLISSON Page 9

Mississippi Delta

Tennessee Williams Festival Elderhostel Programs for Tennessee Williams Festival The Elderhostel international program for older adults is offering a complete Mississippi Delta Tennessee Williams Festival package. The Elderhostel package includes programs before festival plus tours of a Delta plantation, a cotton gin, and several blues music sites; all festival activities; lodging and meals for five days (October 15-20); local transportation; and special guides/lectures. The fee is $580 per person, double occupancy. For information about participating in the festival through Elderhostel, call Elderhostel program coordinator and Center Advisory Committee member Carolyn Vance Smith in Natchez, Mississippi, at 601446-1208 or e-mail her at Carolyn.Smith@colin.edu. To register, a person must be 55 or older or accompanying someone that age. Just have a credit card ready and call tollfree, 877-426-8056 and ask for program # 24210-1015.

The Mississippi Humanities Council has awarded a grant for the tenth annual Mississippi Delta Tennessee Williams Festival, scheduled to take place in Clarksdale on October 17-19, 2002. Williams's 1961 play The Night of the Iguana will be a focus of this year's festival. As in the past, the festival program will include presentations by Williams authorities and friends, several performances, a session with papers by scholars, and tours of the house and neighborhood where the playwright lived as a child. Also scheduled in conjunction with the festival are workshops for teachers and for student actors and a drama competition, with prizes totaling $4,000 for the winners. Williams authorities confirmed to participate in the festival are George W. Crandell, Albert J. Devlin, Erma Duricko, Allean Hale, W. Kenneth Holditch, Colby Kullman, Nancy M. Tischler, and Ralph F. Voss. Actress and director Erma Duricko will perform as well as conduct an acting workshop for high school students. Williams's brother, Dakin, will also make his annual appearance. Other participants will be announced soon. Scholars are invited to submit papers for possible presentation at the festival. Papers on any topic related to Williams and his work are eligible for consideration. Presentations should be 20 minutes maximum. Authors whose papers are selected for presentation will receive free lodging during the festival and a waiver of the registration fee. The deadline for submissions is August 30, 2002. To enter, send a completed paper (7-8 pages) or an abstract (250 words) to Colby H. Kullman, Department of English, The University of

Mississippi, University, MS 38677. The Tennessee Williams Festival Acting Competition, hosted by Coahoma Community College, is open to high school students in Mississippi. The competition includes two acting categories, monologues and scenes. All material must be drawn from the plays of Tennessee Williams. Each monologue is to be two minutes or less, and each scene is to be between five and ten minutes and involve any number of characters. Cash prizes are given for winning monologues and scenes, which will be performed for the festival audience. Prize money will go to schools of the winners for use with drama activities or library books related to theater and literature. Students, with their teacher-sponsors, will be given the opportunity to decide how the prize money will be spent. For information on the 2002 festival and drama competition, write Tennessee Williams Festival, P.O. Box 1565, Clarksdale, MS 38614-1565; telephone 662-627-7337.

Gray and Coterie Award Winners Amy Clukey is the recipient of the 2002 Gray Award, given for her paper '''So I Shifted': Zora Neale Hurston's Negotiation of the Position of the Black Artist." Clukey wrote the paper in Katie McKee's Southern Studies 401 class in the Fall 2001 semester. Katie Snodgrass won the 2002 Coterie Prize for her paper "Yearning for Land: The Disconnection of the Soil and Spirit in African American literature." Snodgrass wrote the paper in Katie Henninger's Southern Studies 402 class in the 2001 Spring Semester. The Gray Award, established by Colonel and Mrs. Homer Gray of Oxford, includes a $100 prize and is designated for an outstanding paper that analyzes aspects of the Southern experience. The Coterie Award, which also carries a prize of $100, is given by the Oxford Coterie Club to encourage student scholarship and to support research in Southern culture. Ted Ownby, Annette Trefzer, and David Wharton, professors who teach in the Southern Studies Program, served as members of the awards committee.

Page 10

Spring/Summer

2002

The Southern Register

Readin the South Powerful Days: The Civil Rights Photography of Charles Moore. Photographs by Charles Moore. Text by Michael S. Durham. Introduction by Andrew Young. 208 pages. 188 duotone photographs. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, in cooperation with the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, 2002. $29.95 paper.

As the struggle for racial equality in the South emerged as a national issue, wire services started picking up some of Moore's photographs from Montgomery and publishing them nationwide. Several appeared in Life, the pinnacle of photojournalistic achievement at the time. Buoyed by these successes, Moore left the Advertiser in 1962 to work freelance. After two bleak months in New York, though, he returned to Alabama. His big break came that fall, when he traveled to Mississippi to cover the court-ordered enrollment of James Meredith at Ole Miss. Pretending to be ill and in need of a restroom, he talked his way into the Lyceum, where the U.S. marshals, on campus to protect Meredith from angry segregationists, had set up their command post. Thus, when the mob attacked the marshals that evening, Moore was inside the Lyceum. He was the only photographer there, and the pictures he made comprise a powerful record of the marshals' long night of desperation, frustration, and fatigue, as well as their determination to stand up to the rioters. Life bought all his film and ran a number of his photographs as part of its lead news story that week.

POWERFUL DAYS The Civil Rights Photography of Charles Moore

Charles Moore's Powerful Days, originally published in1991, is an important book, and the University of Alabama Press has done us all a favor by reissuing it. Anyone curious about the civil rights movement, the American South, or postwar America in general will find the photographs on its pages full of essential facts about the struggle for civil rights during the 1950s and 1960s. Even after four decades, the images are compelling. They still possess the power to shock, despite the fact that we've seen many of them before. In addition to its visual appeal, Powerful Days will also interest those who care about the way photographs record, reflect, and sometimes help create the historical moments that set the course for how the past will be understood in the future. Charles Moore was born in 1931 and raised in a small town in northern Alabama. Matters of race rarely crossed his mind while he was growing up. Blacks and whites "looked different and lived separately," he recalls, and that was simply the way things were. As a fledgling photographer for the Montgomery Advertiser during the late 1950s, though, he began seeing the world a bit differently. His job at the paper had him taking pictures of anything and everything in Montgomery, and sprinkled among the football games, car wrecks, and "grip-and-grin" handshakes were occasional assignments to photograph activities in the city's African American community. These included organizational meetings at black churches, several small protest rallies (including one at which he photographed a white man beating a black female demonstrator with a baseball bat), and police roughing up a young, then unknown, clergyman named Martin Luther King Jr. after his arrest for "lOitering." The more Charles Moore witnessed such events, the clearer it became to him that Alabama's racial status quo would have to change.

Before long, Moore was the photographer Life would send to the South's most racially troubled places, especially if violence seemed likely. Many of the pictures he made during this time have become part of our collective cultural memory: the exhausted U.S. Marshals holed up in the Lyceum at Ole Miss, protestors attacked by police dogs or bowled over by jets of water from high-pressure fire hoses in Birmingham, helmeted state troopers beating marchers on Selma's Edmund Pettis Bridge. These are photographs that have come to define the civil rights movement, especially for people too young to remember those times. As such, they not only describe the events they depict but are part of them, fundamental building blocks of America's history. Powerful Days gathers these images together and appends Moore's account (as told to Michael S. Durham) of making some of them. These are things to be thankful for. DAVID WHARTON

Book Reviews and Notes by Faculty, Staff, Students,

and Friends of the Center for

the Study of Southern Culture

The Southern Register

Spring/Summer

2002

Page 11

Reading the South

continued

Where These Memories Grow: History, Memory, and Southern Identity. Edited by W. Fitzhugh Brundage. Chapel Hill: University North Carolina Press, 2000. 384 pages. $19.95 paper.

Sites of Southern Memory: Katharine DuPre Lumpkin, Murray.

of

The Autobiographies of Lillian Smith, and Pauli

By Darlene O'Dell. Charlottesville: University Virginia, 2001. 192 pages. $45.00 cloth.

Press of

As debates go on about how people in the South should remember and commemorate sensitive and troubling topics of many kinds, "memory" has emerged as one of the more popular contemporary fields of study. The term appears in increasing numbers of book titles, and one of the best recent books on the Civil War, David Blight's Race and Reunion: The Civil War and American Memory, studies not the war itself but the varied and conflicting ways people interpreted its meanings. Most scholars who study memory analyze the ways people make choices about what to remember, what to keep alive, what to reinterpret, and what to forget, and they very often ask how particular interpretations of the past served either to justify or to challenge contemporary power relations. These two books, one a collection of historical essays and the other an analysis of three autobiographies, represent some of the most inspired recent scholarship about memory. The title of W. Fitzhugh Brundage's edited collection, Where These Memories Grow, comes from Allen Tate's "Ode to the Confederate Dead." Ironically, Brundage has skillfully gathered a group of essays that challenge any notion that the

TWO NEW TITLES

in the Literature

BAYLOR

& the Religious

UNIVERSITY

Confederacy is the only thing Southerners have thought much about. The American Revolution, slavery, gender, paternalism, farm life, ethnic life, religion, gentility, and what one might call folksiness all play important roles in the various essays. Violence plays a role in two essays about intentional forgetting. Many of the essays about white Southerners concentrate on ways certain memories can legitimate power relations, whether in political systems or class or household relations. As Michele Gillespie shows, Georgia artisans in the early republic used memories of how independent artisans contributed to the forming of the American republic, but, in the antebellum period, began leaving the egalitarian sides of artisan language behind in order to fit into a society based on ideas that white men deserved to dominate in a clear social hierarchy. Anne Rubin shows that leading Confederates used a "language of ancestry" (86) dating to the American Revolution to legitimize secession and their place in the Confederacy. Catherine Bishir's essay on postbellum architecture argues that Colonial Revival architecturewhich basically meant putting columns in front of big buildings-represented an attempt to fortify the wealth and status of turn-of-the-century elites by connecting them to the appearances and households of much older elites. Stephanie Yuhl's analysis of the literature, paintings, and architecture that female preservationists chose as representing the best of the Charleston past emphasize both the preservationists' class status but also their intensely personal, idiosyncratic concerns not to let the lives they knew be forgotten. Holly Beachley Brear analyzes issues of both ethnicity and gender in recent disputes over the control the Daughters of the Republic of Texas continue to claim over the preservation

Spirit

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from ...

orders fax

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BAYLOR

(888)

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PRESS

www.tamu.edu/upress

NIGHT

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UNIVERSITY

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6 x 9. 228 pp.

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of a square

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Reading the South

continued

and interpretation of the Alamo. The essays on African American memories often emphasize variety and consistently emphasize the ways African Americans contested dominant notions of power. As Gregg Kimball's essay shows, Virginia African Americans saw themselves as part of revolutionary traditionsrooted in the American Revolution, two slave revolts, and Biblical notions of the Chosen People-that challenged slavery and called either for equal political rights or for Liberian migration. Kathleen Clark details the often ambitious and very public postbellum celebrations of freedom that, she argues, set the stage for contemporary demands for equal rights and equal dignity in regional symbols and myths. Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp's study of "Negro Race Histories" shows how postbellum religious thinkers tended to interpret African American history as a story of steady progress. Only a few of the essays step outside the emphasis on either legitimating or challenging power. Two essaysJohn Howard's intriguing piece on an 1895 Brandon, Mississippi, murder, which involved charges of homosexuality, and Bruce E. Baker's discussion of lynching in South Carolina-raise questions about what people choose not to remember. Two others discuss memory and tourism. C. Brenden Martin analyzes the paradoxes in the ways Appalachian preservation efforts need to reaffirm outsiders' often silly understandings of mountain people in order to keep the outsiders coming-as touriststo spend money in Appalachia. Brundage's thorough analysis of Acadian identity in the mid-20th century shows the efforts to preserve Cajun language and myths, while also reinterpreting some old foolishness about Evangeline the milkmaid, ran the parallel tracks of instilling pride in an ethnic minority while also encouraging tourism. These essays draw on ideas common in Southern thinkers from William Faulkner to C. Vann Woodward, namely, that Southerners put a great deal of energy into thinking about

UNIVERSITY PRESS OF MISSISSIPPI

www.upress.state.ms.us

Okefenokee PHOTOGRAPHS

TEXT

BY LUCIAN NIEMEYER

BY GEORGE

W.

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A lush volume of 160 full-color photographs and informative text focused on the Okefenokee Swamp $45 hardback

Faulkner at West Point EDITED BY JOSEPH

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FANT AND

ROBERT ASHLEY

A new edition of a classic, and a commemoration of William Faulkner's visit to West Point forty years ago

On William Hollingsworth, By

$22 hardback

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EUDORA WELTY

Reprinted for the first time in over forty years, Welty's appreciative essay about one of the South's notable painters $20 hardback

Faulkner in America EDITED BY JOSEPH R. URGO AND ANN

J. ABADIE

A lively consideration of how to classify Faulkner's place in America $46 unjacketed $22 paperback

hardback,

A Cormac McCarthy Companion The Border Trilogy EDITED BY EDWIN DIANNE

Tennessee Williams and the South By

T. ARNOLD

AND

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The first book to examine McCarthy's three masterpiece novels as a cohesive whole $46 unjacketed $1 8 paperback

hardback,

KENNETH HOLDITCH AND

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Words and pictures that show the South's imprint on the life and works of the great playwright $30 hardback

New Orleans Sketches By

C.

WILLIAM

FAULKNER

Conversations with Richard Ford EDITED BY HUEY GUAGLIARDO

The first collection of this Pulitzer Prize-winning author's interviews and profiles $46 unjacketed $18 paperback

hardback,

EDITED BY CARVEL COLLINS

A new edition of the classic book containing Faulkner's first forays into serious fiction writing, along with an introduction by Faulkner's "best informed critic" $18 paperback

Laugh Track By

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Ingenious short fiction from the author of the novels Flesh and

Turning Japanese $25 hardback

continued on page 27

Find in bookstores, call 1路800路737路7788, The Southern Register

Spring/Summer

2002

or write to press@ihl.state.ms.us Page 13

THE BROWN BAG LUNCH AND LECTURE SERIES

Center for the Study of., Southern Culture

.

I

.,i

THE

\

UNIVERSITY

OF

FALL

MISSISSIPPI

2002

SEPTEMBER

OCTOBER

4

"After Open House: A Reading" Beth Ann Fennelly, Poet Visiting Assistant Professor of English

23

"Covering the Regional Roots Music Scene in North Mississippi" Bill Ellis, Music Columnist, Commercial Appeal Memphis, Tennessee

11

"International Journalism in the Age of Terror: A Southerner's Exposure" Michael Harrelson, Editor, Oxford Publishing Oxford, Mississippi

30

"The Preacher and the Preservationist: Historic Preservation and Affordability" Judith Johnson, Historic Preservation Consultant Memphis, Tennessee

18

25

"'Race and Sport: The Struggle for Equality On and Off the Field' - Porter L. Fortune History Symposium, September 25-27,2002" Chuck Ross, Associate Professor of History and Afro-American Studies

NOVEMBER 6

"Developing a Community- Based Arts Program in the Mississippi Delta" Amy Evans Southern Studies Graduate Student

13

"Living in History: Hopson Plantation and the Shack Up Inn" Warren Ables Southern Studies Graduate Student

20

"The Mississippi Museum of Art: Home Is Where the Art Is" Betsy Bradley, Director, Mississippi Museum of Art Jackson, Mississippi

"Requiem for None: Rowan Oak's First Complete Renovation" Bill Griffith, Interim Curator of Rowan Oak University Museums

OCTOBER 2

"One Family: An Extended Portrait in Photographs and Words" Vaughn Sills, Assistant Professor of Photography, Simmons College, Boston, Massachusetts

9

"'The ALL WRITE! Project: Partnering Mississippi Writers with Literacy Providers" Aleda Shirley, Poet and Project Director for the Mississippi Arts Commission Jackson, Mississippi

16

"Matzo Ball Gumbo, Gasper Goo Gefilte Fish, and Big Momma's Kreplach: An Exploration of Southern Jewish Foodways," Marcie Ferris, Doctoral Candidate, George Washington University Chapel Hill, North Carolina

The Brown Bag Luncheon

Page 14

(continued)

DECEMBER 4

"The Golden Moon Has Risen Near The Silver Star: Building Casinos in Mississippi's Choctaw Nation" Michael McBride, Architect, Project Director for the Golden Moon Casino

Series takes place each Wednesday at noon in the Barnard Observatory

Spring/Summer

2002

Lecture Hall during the regular academic year.

The Southern Register

CALL

FOR

PAPERS

Southern American Studies Association Deadline: August 30, 2002 "Regionalism in This Age of Globalization," the Southern American Studies Association's next biennial conference, will be held February 7-9, 2003, at Tallahassee, Florida. The host for the conference is the Program in American and Florida Studies, Florida State University. Panels will include roundtables on the new Companion to Southern Literature (LSU Press, 2002) and on Regional Museums in a Global Market. Proposals already received include Juke Joints and Rock 'n' Roll, Folk Art, Club Dancing, and Southern Prisons. Possible topics also include New England Exceptionalism; The Coen Brothers Do Regionalism; Queer Studies; Hispanic Floridiana; Think Globally, Act-and Make Music-Regionally. For submission guidelines, click on Interdisciplinary Conference@FSU, Feb.2003 at www.fsu.edu/~ams/. Please submit proposals and address questions to both conference chairs: Karen A. Bearor, Department of Art History, Florida State University, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306-1151; kbearot@mailer.fsu.edu; Dennis D. Moore, Department of English, Florida State University, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL 32306-1151; dmoore@mailer.fsu.edu.

â&#x20AC;˘ Joint Society for the Study of Southern Literature/American Literature Association 2002 International Symposium: Postcolonial Theory, the U.S. South, & New World Studies Puerto Vallarta, Mexico December 11-15,2002 Deadline for Submissions: August 15,2002 The U.S. South occupies an intriguing position in the increasingly popular field of New World Studies. Scholars and nonscholars have long compared the South to the American North, but how can we understand the South in connection to the Caribbean, which has faced somewhat similar issues of rural poverty, slavery, and racial division? What problems or solutions does the U.S. South pose for ongoing negotiations among postcolonial studies? How do these fields contextualize, redirect, open, or foreclose the traditional narratives of U.S. Southern Studies? Selected papers will appear in MississiPPi Quarterly and possibly in a volume containing an expanded version of that special issue. The symposium is supported by the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi and by Mississippi Quarterly: The Journal of Southern Cultures at Mississippi State University. Send abstracts and inquiries to Jon Smith, SSSLIALA Symposium Director at jon@ra.msstate.edu or P.O. Box E, Mississippi, State, MS 39762-5505.

The Southern Register

CENTER VENTRESS ORDER TRUSTEES The Ven tress Order is a donors group dedicated to strengthening departments and programs in the University's College of Liberal Arts. In recent months, a growing number of friends have joined this Order and committed their donations to the Center. The most recent Ventress Order member to designate a gift of $5,000 to benefit the Center is Dorothy Lee (Mrs. John) Tatum, of Oxford. Her membership brings to eight the number individuals or couples designated as Center Ventress Order Trustees. In the coming year, during the celebration of the 25th anniversary, the Center would like to add many more-at least 25- Ventress Order members to its ranks. The program offers various types of contributions: an outright gift of $5,000, a pledge of $1,000 a year for five years, $42 a month for 10 years, or even transfer of property such as stocks, bonds, or art work . If you or someone you know would be interested in learning more about the Ventress Order, and making the Center your Ventress Order funds' beneficiary, please contact Perry Moulds, Liberal Arts Advancement Associate, at 800-340-9542. Or, call the Center at 662915- 5993 and request help in setting up a Ventress Order/Southern Studies gift. You may also seek donation information on the University's Web site: www.umfolemiss.edu. Members of the Order have their names inscribed on a plaque displayed at the College of Liberal Arts, housed in historic Ventress Hall, named for James Alexander Ventress, a principal figure in the early history of the University. Members also have the opportunity to conduct business of the Order at its annual membership meeting. All Ventress Order gifts are tax deductible.

CENTER

VENTRESS

ORDER

TRUSTEES

Ann J. Abadie Vasser Bishop Ebbie (Mrs. William) Hart, in honor of Juliet Hart Walton and Gerald W. Walton Carlette McMullan Lynn & Holt McMullan Patricia & Phineas Stephens Dorothy Lee (Mrs. John) Tatum Lesley and Joseph Urgo

Spring/Summer

2002

Page 15

CELEBRATION AND REMEMBRANCE Faculty, students, staff, and friends will join in a variety of activities to celebrate the Center's 25th anniversary. Some of the activities are listed below. For details, look for announcements in the mail and consult the Center's Web site: www.olemiss.edu/depts/south.

July 21-26,2002 29th annual Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference. Theme: "Faulkner and His Contemporaries." Reception for exhibition of Jack Kotz photographs, Gammill Gallery in Barnard Observatory, on Sunday, July 21 at 1:00 p.m. September 28, 2002 Center Celebration in Yazoo City and Jackson: Visit Willie Morris's hometown and take a short drive to Holly Bluff to tour Silver Creek Cotton Gin (a new one, the largest east of the Mississippi River), followed by lunch. Hosted by Center Advisory Committee members Byron and Cameron Seward. Move on to Jackson for a tour of the Eudora Welty exhibition at the Old Capitol Museum, followed by dinner. Hosted by Center Advisory Committee members. Julia Reed will be the afterdinner speaker. September 30, 2002 Observation of the 30th anniversary of the integration of the University. Join Center faculty, staff, and students at the Ellipse for a ceremonial consecration of the site selected for a sculptural commemoration of the struggle for equal access to education in the state of Mississippi. A scale model of the sculpture will be unveiled to the public. October 17-20, 2002 5th annual Southern Foodways Symposium. John Shelton Reed and Calvin Trillin are among the featured speakers on the program theme "Barbecue: Smoke, Sauce, and History." Culinary, Exhibition Two Women and Their Cookbooks: Lena Richard and Mary Land, organized by Tulane University's Newcomb College, will be on display at University Museums before, during, and after the symposium. October 21, 2002 - January 31,2003

25 Years of Studying the South Center for the Study of Southern Culture Anniversary Exhibition Lynn & Stewart Gammill Gallery

November 2002 Silver Anniversary Month for the Center: 25 years of Studying the South Friday Afternoon, November 8 Address by former Center Director William Ferris Commentary by Center consultants Panel Presentation on the Southern Studies Program Friday Evening, November 8 Center Dinner Saturday Morning, November 9 Eudora Welty Celebration Recalling that Welty's work was the subject of the Center's inaugural event in November 1977, some of the author's longtime friends and admirers will join literary scholars in reflecting on her life and art. Saturday Afternoon, November 9 Addresses on the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture and other Center achievements during the past quarter century, plus a panel of students discussing the Southern Studies Program. Saturday Evening, November 9 Southern Studies Prom (formal dress not required) Current and former students, faculty, staff, and friends will celebrate the Center through music and dance.

February 2003 Scott Barretta, editor of Living Blues, and Adam Gussow, newly appointed assistant professor of English and Southern Studies, are organizing "The Blues Today: A Living Blues Symposium." The event will have a Friday evening concert followed by an allday Sa-turday program, with three panels and a plenary speaker.\

FRIENDS OF THE CENTER "As a musician with deep roots in the South, Ihave great hopes for the Center. It offers new, exciting programs which inspire hope for people of all races all over the world, spreading culture, music, and knowledge. " - B. B. King

~om

Nanih Waiya Mound ~o Koinonia Farm, from beau ty pageah ts to Pentecostal churches, from rural electrification to blues music, from grits and gravy to cracklin' bread, from Bessie Smith to Elvis Presley, from the Lost Cause to the Civil Rights Movement, from Little Dixie to the Upper Neck, from circuit riders to the Chitlin Circuit, the American South has developed its own distinct quilt in the greater tapestry that is American culture. At the University of Mississippi, in a building that went unfinished because of the Civil War, an innovative program has been exploring the South's nuances for a generation. From its modest beginnings at the University of Mississippi in 1977, the Center continues to expand on its original mission to examine and document all aspects of Southern culture. This year in November, the Center celebrates 25 years of excellence, devoted to researching, documenting, and teaching about the American South. It is an appropriate time to reflect on the Center's accomplishments as well as to note the support that has ~

made such work possible. Moreover, it is important to renew the commitment to continuing that work, through the annual Friends of the Center program. Eunice Milton Benton, a Southern Studies alumna, puts it best: "Friends of the Center nurture and sustain it. No living entity survives without this kind of support. It is life-giving stuff." The Friends of the Center program has funded scholarships for graduate students, allowing them to work in a variety of programs from oral history projects to producing a Grammy-nominated gospel album. In addition, Friends has made possible original research by faculty and students. Noted conferences on Faulkner and civil rights expand the reach of the Center beyond the campus, providing educational opportunities for everyone. Current graduate student Kay Walraven asserts, "The Center does such important work, and has given me, as a student of Southern culture, so many invaluable experiences and opportunities. Without the energies of the Center's devoted and generous supporters, that wouldn't be possible."

Building on past accomplishments, the Center looks ahead to the next 25 years, with an endowment devoted to studying the future of the South, expanding our documentary capabilities through film and video, enlarging our archival collections, and continuing our outreach to local communities through the development of cultural tourism, museums, and curriculum for teachers at all levels. This work is vital and needs the support of committed Friends to be effective. Please show your support for the Center for the Study of Southern Culture by becoming a Friend of the Center. If you are already a Center Friend, consider renewing your membership with an annual contribution. The generous support of our annual fund donors has enabled us to become the model for regional studies for 25 years. Please help us to continue that tradition and to begin building new ones. Information on how to become a Friend of the Center can be found on the back cover, or on the Center's Web page at http://www. olemiss.edu/ depts/south.

M. GLISSON

SUSAN

AND ANDREW

Southern

Studies graduates,

family,

friends,

gathered

on the

Observatory

row 1: Mary

students,

professors

steps

of Barnard

on graduation

May 11, 2002.

Wallace,

and

morning,

They are, from left, Beth

Lasseter,

Sally Walburn

Rana

Birdsall,

Busby;

row 2: Molly Boland,

Evans,

Sally Monroe;

Fisher,

Virge

C. HARPER

Joe Amy

row 3: Brian

Cornelius,

Brandi

Dykes, Charles Reagan Wilson, Andy Harper,

David

Wharton,

and Ted

Ownby.

The Southern Register

Spring/Summer

2002

Page 17

Become a Friend of the Center The Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi has gained an international reputation for innovative education and scholarship on the American South. The Center administers B.A. and M.A. programs in Southern Studies, sponsors research and documentary projects on all aspects of Southern culture, and encourages understanding of the South through publications, media productions, lectures, performances, and exhibitions. This year the Center celebrates 25 years of excellence. By contributing annually to Friends of the Center, you ensure that this valuable work will continue to grow.

ACTIVITIES

AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS

Leadership in Southern Studies • Developed the nation's first degree program in Southern Studies, beginning with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1979 • Added an M.A. program in Southern Studies in 1986 • Sponsored the three-year (1986-89) Ford Foundation Project, aimed at broadening the study of the South, especially encouraging the redefinition of Southern culture to incorporate the experiences of blacks, ethnic groups, and women Publications • Encyclopedia of Southern Culture • MississippiWriters: Reflections of Childhood and Youth • The South: A Treasury of Art and Literature • The Blues: A Bibliographic Guide • A Gracious Plenty: Recipes and Recollections from the American South • Faulkner's World: The Photogra/)hs ofM,artin]. Dain • Lower Pearl River's Piney Woods: Its Land and People • MississiPPi Folklife: The Magazine of the MississiPPPi Folklore Society • Living Blues®: The Magazine of the African American Blues Tradition (bimonthly) • New projects include the Mississippi Encyclopedia and a new edition of the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture Conferences, Symposia, and Lectures • Twenty-Ninth Faulkner Conference, July 21-26,2002 • Fourth Southern Foodways Symposium, October 17-20, 2002 • Tenth Oxford Conference for the Book, April, 10-13, 2003 • Weekly Brown Bag lecture series on Southern topics during the academic year • Symposia on The Media and the Civil Rights Movement, 1987, Civil Rights and the Law, 1989, and Southern Landscapes: Past, Present, Future, 1996

Documentary and Media Projects • A cultural inventory of Vicksburg and Warren County, Mississippi • A cultural and historical documentary project at lchauway, a 28,000-acre plantation in Georgia • An oral history of the Mississippi timber industry, concentrating on Pearl River County· • First Monday, a photographic and oral history of North Mississippi's oldest ongoing trade day • Old Ways: Church and Family, an ongoing project using photographs and oral histories to document two rural churches in North Mississippi • Ongoing studies of Lafayette County • Photography Exhibitions in the Center's Lynn and Stewart Gammill Gallery • Mississippi Portrait: The Farm Security Administration Photographs, 1935-1940, a CD-Rom distributed to libraries and schools throughout the state • One Hundred Years at Perthshire, online multimedia project: www.olemiss.edu/depts/south/l00 • Voicesfrom Perthshire, video • Red Tops: A Recording Commemorating the Rosedale Courthouse Red Tops Dances, Songs of Faith: African American Shape Note Singingfrom the Deep South, and other CDs Educational Outreach Programs • Summer institutes in Southern Studies for teachers • Community photography project for children in Tutwiler, Mississippi • Sponsorship of the Southern Media Archive • Partnerships with the Rowan Oak Society and the Charles Overby Center for Southern Politics at the University of Mississippi and with the Southern Cultural Heritage Complex in Vicksburg, Mississippi • Web site at www.olemiss.edu/depts/south details upcoming events and offers photographs, online exhibits, and links to Southern culture

Your annual donation through our Friends program helps the Center develop and expand the excellent programming listed above. Thank you for your yearly gift to the Friends of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture! Please see the back cover for contact information and for specific ways you can help.

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THE

NEWSLETTER

OF

THE

SOUTHERN

FOODWAYS

ALLIANCE

CORNBREAD NATION HOT OUT OF THE OVEN

S

FA members John Egerton, Lolis Eric Elie, Jessica Harris, and Fred Sauce man have been hard at work these past few months compiling and editing a book, Cornbread Nation: The Best of Southern Food Writing, to be published by the University of North Carolina Press. The editors see Cornbread Nation as the SFA's calling card, a physical manifestation of our myriad passions. Writes editor John Egerton,"Nothing else the South has to offer to the nation and the world-with the possible exception of its music-is more eternally satisfying, heart-warming, reconciling, and memorable than its food." We think you will concur. Among the contributors are Roy Blount Jr., Rick Bragg, Nikki Giovanni, and a host of fellow SFA members. Look for copies at your local bookstore in October.

Oral History Campaign Begins The SFA celebrates, teaches, preserves, and promotes the diverse food cultures of the American South. Fundamental to achieving these goals are the collection and dissemination of oral histories that tell the life stories and explicate the life works of the standard bearers of the culinary arts. To date, the SFA has enjoyed modest success, capturing for posterity the words and deeds of people_like Alabama barbecue man Van Sykes and Louisiana file maker Lionel Key. This January, with the financial support of the Crisco company, we began a broader and more systemic effort, collecting oral histories of baking in the South. In cooperation

with graduate students at the Center for Public History at the State University of West Georgia in Carrollton and the Center for the Study of Southern Culture here at the University of Mississippi, we have interviewed bakers of angel biscuits and hot water cornbread, not to mention pecan pie, chess pie, and blackberry cobbler-all the while striving to tell the larger story of life in the South by way of our region's folkways. And now, with the financial support of the National Pork Council, we have begun collecting oral histories from pitmasters, those men and women who work the barbecue pits of the South, shoveling hickory embers

beneath splayed hogs. Already in the can are interviews with men like James Willis of Memphis, Tennessee. When graduate student Brian Fisher asked him about the importance of sauce, Willis replied: "People can holler about it but now I just tell you a fact that with barbecue-you got to have a sauce. You ain't got a sauce. You ain't got no barbecue .... Now, if you cook barbecue all day long and you ain't got no good sauce, you ain't got no barbecue. Sauce separates you from the money. Make a good sauce, you make the money." Look for interviews, photographs, and supporting research to go live on our Web site- www.southernfoodways.com-in the not too distant future.

Field Trip, A Taste of Texas Barbecue, Great Success Our second Southern Foodways Alliance Field TTip, A Taste of Texas Barbecue, was held June 14-15 in and around the city of Austin. Over the course of a day and half, we explored the foodways of Central Texas, a region where cultural, ethnic, geographic, and agricultural forces converged to create a world-class barbecue culture. This program was sponsored by White Lily, the lighter baking flour, made from 100 percent pure soft wheat. Since 1883, White Lily has been an icon of Southern baking and tradition. White Lily is a member of the C. H. Guenther & Son family of companies, the oldest family-run miller in the nation. If you weren't one of the lucky 80

registrants and you're still pining for some smoky Texas 'cue, you can take solace in a perusal ofRobb Walsh's new book, Legends

of Texas Barbecue: Reci/Jes and Recollections from the Pit Bosses. In addition to making an appearance at the Austin event, Robb will present a paper, "Cotton Pickers in the Meat Market: The Origins of the Texas Barbecue Business," at this year's Southern Foodways Symposium scheduled for October 17 -20 here in Oxford. And if you happen to find yourself in Austin sometime soon, be sure to drop in on one of the two restauranteurs who acted as our hosts for the weekend: Hoover Alexander and Eddie Wilson. Hoover Alexander, a veteran of more

than 25 years in the restaurant business, was raised in East Austin. Since 1996 he has been the chef and owner of Hoover's Cooking, where he pays homage to his mother's cooking. Hoover's Cooking: 2002 Manor Road., 512-479-5006. Eddie Wilson is proprietor of the phenomenon known as Threadgill's. Open since 1933, this temple of Southern home cooking has played host to some of the nation's best pickers and singers. Wilson is also the author of Threadgill's: The Cookbook, which includes a comic book history of the restaurant. Threadgill's: 301 W. Riverside Drive., 512-472-9304; 6416 North Lamar, 512459-3855.

Feast Here Tonight: A Benefit for Ronni Yields More than $25,000 On February 8, Louisville, Kentucky, restaurateurs joined with Southern Foodways Alliance authors and chefs to host Feast Here Tonight: A Benefit for Ronni. Thanks to the generosity of myriad friends, more than $25,000 was raised to benefit Ronni Lundy, an SFA founder who was diagnosed with ovarian cancer late last year. The benefit was sponsored Brown Hotel, FSA Group, Gourmet magazine, Hawley-Cooke Booksellers, the Seelbach White Lily, and Woodford Reserve.

in part by Brown-Forman, the Camberley Hilton, the Southern Foodways Alliance,

Lowcountry Cuisine Conference

Sad News! Jeanne Voltz Passes

The College of Charleston Program in the Carolina Lowcountry and the Atlantic World, together with Johnson & Wales University in Charleston, South Carolina, will sponsor a March 20-22, 2003, conference on Catolina Lowcountry and Caribbean Cuisines. The programming committee seeks proposals of original scholarship on the development of Lowcountry cuisine. Inquiries should be directed to Jeffrey Pilcher, Department of History, The Citadel, Charleston, SC 29409, or pilcherj@citadel.edu.

Jeanne Voltz, a founding member of the SFA, passed away in January. She was 81. Over the course of a long and fruitful career, she served as food editor of the Miami Herald, the Los Angeles Times, and Woman's Day. Her Barbecued Ribs, Smoked Butts, and Other Great Feeds won a James Beard Award. "She tackled food as a journalist back when many food sections were still put out by the advertising department," wrote Kathleen Purvis in a Charlotte Observer obituary. "She was determined about covering food and about getting it right." Jeanne Voltz will be missed.

SOUTHERN

FOODWAYS

nalue

___

cOlupany

__

ALLIANCE

address

__

city

state

telephone

fax

zip

_

email

_

o $25 student o $200 nonprofit

MEMBERSHIP

_

0

0

$75 families

0 $500

corporations

$50 individual

institutions

Please make checks payable to the Southern Foodways Alliance and mail them to the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, University,

MS 38677. FOR FURTHER

INFORMATION,

VISIT

US AT OUR WEB SITE,

Edge, SFA DirectOr, at 662.915.5993

www.southernfoodways.com

or via email at johnt@olemiss.edu.

or call John T.

J:

was t a familiar statement, made by many participants and attendees at the Ninth Oxford Conference for the Book, held April 11-14, 2002, in Oxford on the campus of the University of Mississippi: "This is the best conference yet." The weekend's events began Thursday evening with a special book conference edition of Thacker Mountain Radio, an hourlong author reading and live music radio show sponsored by Square Books and the Center. "There's a certain America I grew up loving in your writing, the America of Whitman, something that sees writing and books essential to a truly free life that seems to not only live on but prosper here," Tasmanian novelist (and three-time conference veteran) Richard Flanagan told the packed house at Off Square Books during the live broadcast, which also featured poet Beth Ann Fennelly, music by Duff Dorrough and the Revelators, and a surprise appearance by Debra Winger and Arliss Howard, who were there to discuss their film version of Larry Brown's Big Bad Love. Later that evening, a crowd of curious locals and conference-goers packed Fulton Chapel to view the Oxford premiere of Big Bad Love. Featuring notable screen actors Debra Winger, Rosanna Arquette, Angie Dickinson, and writer/director/star Arliss Howard, the film was a refreshing departure from the ordinary Hollywood fare, celebrating the North Mississippi music and landscape in addition to the short stories of Larry Brown. A panel discussion with Winger, Howard, and Brown (moderated by Thacker Mountain host Jim Dees) followed the screening. After a reception in the Union Ballroom, many retired to hear more music by Duff and the Revelators at Ajax Diner, where the published authors outnumbered the cooks and waitresses. Friday's traditional morning panels on writing and publishing were moderated by Barry Hannah, whose obliteration of pretense

The Southern Register

Right: After the Oxford screening of Big Bag Love, author Larry Brown, actor Debra Winger, and writer/director/actor Arliss Howard talked to the audience about the film.

Pat Holt, former book editor at the San Francisco Chronicle and current author of the e-mail book column Holt Uncensored, was panelist for two sessions during the Oxford Conference for the Book. To read her report on the conference, which appeared on the May 14, 2002, go to holtuncensored@topica.com.

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has made him a perennial conference favorite. The sessions drew a large attendance to the new and more intimate setting in Johnson Commons. Hannah first led a discussion on submitting and publishing for new writers. joining him as panelists for the session were current University visiting writer Tom Franklin (Poachers) and his agent, Nat Sobel; novelist Brady Udall (The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint) and his editor at W. W. Norton, Carol Houck Smith; and Grove-Atlantic Press editor Amy Hundley; with one of their newest authors, Sheri joseph (Bear Me Safely Over). The second panel, focusing on finding a voice and reaching an audience, was comprised of diverse authors, including Aishah Rahman, a playwright and author of a strong memoir called Chewing Water, about her hard upbringing in Harlem; Rick Moody, who managed his best with some of the panel's hardest questions; Steve Almond, the up-and-coming author of My Life in Heavy Metal, showing no fear of fierce subject matter; and Mississippi's native poet Natasha Trethewey, author of Bellocq's Ophelia, who was joined by her publisher from Graywolf Press, Fiona McCrae. The afternoon was devoted to readings by writers who had held the John and Renee Grisham Visiting Southern Writer in Residence position at the University of Mississippi. (See related story, page 25.). The evening's official culmination came with a fund-raising buffet at Isom Place, which provided a beautiful setting for participants and conference attendees to interact. Among the many informal events that proliferated well into the night (and often the next morning) was the Oxford premiere of North Carolina filmmaker Gary Hawkins's documentary The Rough South of Larry Brown, which was screened at the Lafayette County-Oxford Public Library and attended by the film's director and its two main subjects, Larry and Mary Annie Brown. Saturday's sessions began with "The Endangered Species: Readers Today and Tomorrow," an annual panel moderated by Elaine H. Scott and featuring local literacy advocate Claiborne Barksdale, children's author Gloria jean Pinkney, and outspoken book industry columnist Pat Holt, who abo added gusto to

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the following panel on the book business, which was hosted by American Booksellers Association president Neal Coonerty. Also on that panel were Graywolf publisher Fiona McCrae and Boston-area bookseller Timothy Huggins, who cut his teeth at Lemuria Books in Jackson, Mississippi, before opening his own shop, the highly popular Newtonville Books in Newtonville, Massachusetts. Some of the conference highlights occurred in the Saturday afternoon sessions. Fonner Boston Globe reporter Curtis Wilkie (Dixie) led an intriguing discussion with his pals and fellow journalists Jack Nelson and Thomas Oliphant in a session labeled "Covering Trouble," in which they discussed gathering facts in volatile times and places. The annual poetry readings and remarks were widely hailed by various audience members as the best they'd ever attended. "I've never been so rapt, sitting for an hour of poetry," one participant was overheard to say. The poets included Beth Ann Fennelly, who read from her collection Open House and who will be joining the University English staff teaching poetry in the fall of 2002; Natasha Trethewey, who currently teaches at Emory University; and William Trowbridge, who wrote the collection Flickers and drew big laughs for his readings. The afternoon readings featured Steve Almond, who read to an appreciative audience, the biggest he encountered on his national book tour, he later reported; Rick Moody, who read a selection from his new memoir, The Black Veil; and Richard Flanagan, who delivered a brief, powerful excerpt from his novel Gould's Book of Fish. Pulitzer Prize-winning dramatist Paula Vogel wrapped up the day's session with inspiring remarks on her career as a playwright. The evening culminated officially in a fundraising cocktail party at Off Square Books and carried on into the wee hours at the various and vital cultural emporiums Oxford offers. Those still standing convened at 8:00 a.m. Sunday for a continental breakfast in the Mississippi Hall of Writers, hosted by Dean of University Libraries John M. Meador. The sessions continued later that morning with readings by Ace Atkins, local mystery author and recent addition to the University journalism department; David Galef, author of the story collection Laugh Track and head of the University's new M.F.A. program in creative writing; Brady Udall, whose first novel The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint has fastly become one of the most popular summer-reading choices; first-timer Sheri Joseph, a creative writing teacher in Kentucky; and Aishah Rahman, who made a strong impression on those unfamiliar with her work. The remainder of the day, and of the conference, was dedicated to Tennessee Williams, in a fitting display of commemoration and discussion. (See related article, page

24.) The Tenth Oxford Conference for the Book, which is already in the planning stages and promises to feature another great line-up, will be held April 10-13, 2003. JAMIE

PHOTOGRAPHS

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2002

BY DOUG

McLAIN,

KORNEGAY

EXCEPT AS NOTED.

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TENNESSEE WILLIAMS Highlighted at Ninth Oxford Conference for the Book the word "plasticity" to The 2002 Oxford Conference focus on three dimensions for the Book honored of his plays: the setting of Mississippi's native son, the play world itself (the Tennessee Williams. Born on off-stage world that is Palm Sunday, March 26, 1911, lurking, often intruding in Columbus, Williams spent upon the stage interior), his early years in Mississippi, the placidity of the stage living for a time in Clarksdale world (the way Williams in the rectory of St. George's manipulates the cube of a Episcopal Church, the home of space as a director on the his grandparents, the Reverend page), and the words that Walter and Rosina Dakin. In remain unspoken on stage Williams's honor, Michele that the audience never Cuomo directed a production hears (Williams speaking of Williams's short play The directly to his reader). Gniidiges Fraulein; Paula Vogel, Book conference participants visiting the Tennessee Williams Park during a "I cannot," Vogel Mel Gussow, and Kenneth tour of Clarksdale, Mississippi, are (from left) Jack Oakman, Mel Gussow, Lili Reka, Aishah Rahman, Shay Youngblood, Erma Duricko, Paula Vogel, asserted, "read Williams Holditch spoke about Williams Colby Kullman, Kenneth Holditch, and Sandra Knispel. as a "living playwright" for all on the page without seeing him on the ages; and Erma Duricko and stage-conducting the Holditch performed readings performance, orchestrating the sound, from his plays and poetry. directing the spotlight, watching the Michele Cuomo, assistant professor play himself, there as a witness to its of Theatre Arts at the University, veracity, its transparency of his own gave life to Williams's 1966 play The . " vOice. Gnadiges Fraulein by directing a Kenneth Holditch, prominent production that skillfully highlighted literary scholar and professor emeritus its theatre of the absurd, menacing at the University of New Orleans, lunacy. Emphasizing the farcical next addressed the conference on elements of the tragedy of the down"Southern Comfort: Tennessee and-out Fraulein (a once applauded, ~ Williams and the Climate of His show-biz, B-girl in European Childhood." From the Delta to New vaudevtlle), the productIOn evokes Kenneth Ho1ditch displaying his new book on Orleans, Holditch explained, the horror and pain of those who have Tennessee Williams "Williams drew the sustenance that been used up by society and reduced later 20th-century drama character-based, kept his creativity alive and active for to scavenging in order to maintain the almost half a century." Williams attributed most meager board and keep at the worst rather than ruthlessly driven by Aristotelian plot" and "for giving us a his tendency "to poeticize" and to create of flop houses. The madcap confusion of "Southern heroines" who "gild the lily" canon of women characters who are the play is truly a "slapstick tragedy"-an nuanced, fully dimensional human and "speak in a rather florid style" to his alternate title used by Williams to hawk geographical and familial background, for his play. beings." Celebrating Williams's mastery of "his grandfather's sermons, his mother's atmosphere and environment, Vogel 1998 Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright monologues, his father's bombast, all focused on his "between-the-lines" stage Paula Vogel delivered a formal directions, which are unspoken keys to his found their way into the speech of his presentation on "Tennessee Williams: plays. Williams called for a theatre that characters." Often calling New Orleans Between the Lines" in which she his "spiritual home," Williams remarked in was "plastic"; and Vogel proposed to use specifically praised Williams "for making

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the 1970s to Don Lee Keith after they had observed a well-known local character, Ruthie the Duck Girl, in Jackson Square: "I shall always think of New Orleans-affectionately of course-as a vagabond's paradise. In New York, eccentrics, authentic ones, are ignored. In Los Angeles, they're arrested. Only in New Orleans are they permitted to develop their ~ eccentricities into art." By contrast, ~ Holditch explained, Williams thought of St. Louis as that "cold Northern O'i city," that "St. Pollution, a city I University students Becky Bourgeois (right) and loathe." Eventually, it came to Sarah Szymanski in The Gniidiges Fraulein symbolize for him "the expulsion from Eden, the loss of innocence, joy and DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire is both grace." It was the antithesis of "Southern a tiger and a moth, and Tom in The Glass comfort." Menagerie is devoted to his sister yet Celebrating Tennessee Williams as "a abandons her in his own rush to freedom. poet of the human heart," New York Times As Gussow explained, Williams "in his theatre critic Mel Gussow discussed tragedies of love and loss, of illusions Williams's ability to transmogrify his life, created and purity corrupted," never his illusions, and his delusions through abandoned his search for "the need for acts of the imagination. For Williams, understanding and tenderness and writing had always been a daily fortitude for individuals trapped by imperative-his salvation. Amidst the circumstances." The gallery he created is chaos of life, his redemption lay in his "a galaxy of the wounded and wounding in writing. Defining a playas "a snare for the life, roles that actresses and actors will be truth of human experience," Williams drawn to forever." discovered at the root of that truth "a The truth of Gussow's observations was continuing ambiguity," for Blanche

g

underscored by the last event of the conference-dramatic readings from Tennessee Williams by director and actress Erma Duricko and Kenneth Holditch. Reading from a wide variety of Williams materials, they gave life to America's "playwright of compassion" through selections from his apprentice plays, later plays, and poetry. The perfect ending to this celebration of Tennessee Williams was delivered in a prayer by one of his own characters, Esmerelda of Camino Real (played by Duricko): "God bless all con men and hustlers and pitchmen who hawk their hearts on the street, all two-time losers who're likely to lose once more, the courtesan who made the mistake of love, the greatest of lovers crowned with the longest horns, the poet who wandered far from his heart's green country and possibly will and possibly won't be able to find his way back, look down with a smile tonight on the last cavaliers, the ones with the rusty armor and soiled white plumes, and visit with understanding and something that's almost tender those fading legends that come and go in this plaza like songs not clearly remembered, oh, sometime and somewhere, let there be something to mean the word honor again." COLBY

H. KULLMAN

John and Renee Grisham Writers in Residence Return to Ole Miss In 1993, John and Renee Grisham established a Writer in Residence program at the University of Mississippi. The program is designed to bring "an emerging Southern writer" to campus for one year, early in his or her career. The Grisham Writers writer is given office space in the Department of English and provided T. R. Pearson housing across the road from Rowan Mark Richard Oak. Mary Hood At the 2002 Oxford Conference for the Book, seven of the nine past Tim Gautreaux Grisham Writers returned to Oxford to Randall Kenan celebrate the English Department's new Darcey Steinke MFA in creative writing, a program made possible by their presence over Steve Yarbrough the past decade. Two writers could not Claude Wilkinson make it, and for good reasons: T. R. Tom Franklin Pearson was on a book tour, and Mark Richard was in France working on a Shay Youngblood movie. The others, however, offered a

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full afternoon of reading and remarks to an enthusiastic audience. Also, the 2002-2003 Grisham writer, Shay Youngblood, was formally introduced at the conference and read from her novel, Black Girl in Paris. The Grisham Writer teaches two in Residence writing workshops, one each semester, providing creative writing students at 1993-1994 the University steady exposure to new 1994-1995 methods and styles of writing. The Grishams also fund a Visiting Writer 1995-1996 Series, which brings writers to campus 1996-1997 for public readings. Recent and 1997-1998 upcoming Grisham Visitors include Paula Vogel, Billy Collins, and Clifton 1998-1999 Taulbert. The two programs are 1999-2000 indispensable aspects of the English 2000-2001 Department's M.F.A. program and central to the literary vitality of the 2001-2002 university and community. 2002-2003 JOSEPH

2002

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WRITER IN RESIDENCE TOM FRANKLIN This article originally appeared in the Daily Mississippian on Monday, February 4,2002. Tom Franklin, 2001-2002 Grisham Writer in Residence at the University, has been featured in the Nebraska Review, the Texas Review, and Smoke Magazine. He was also the winner of the 1998 Writers at Work Literary Nonfiction Contest and a 2001 Guggenheim Fellowship. Franklin's early achievements led him to his first book, Poachers, a collection of short stories that writer Richard Ford called "a new song for the South, yet not for some mossy past because they are contemporary stories." Franklin does not write Southern stories about plantations and the romanticized past. He describes his work as a new look at an old territory, an industrial look. "Somebody once said that it was 'industrial gothic' and I like that description of it," Franklin said. Franklin was thrilled and surprised with

the popularity of his first book. "Collections of short stories usually don't sell well, especially first collections. So, I was happily surprised," he said. Franklin, an Alabama native, graduated from the University of South Alabama in English. While there, he worked the night shift at some unusual places, including a grit factory, hazardous waste clean-up sites, and a hospital morgue. Franklin said these jobs helped him receive what he calls "a writer's education." "A writer's education is out in the world. The jobs you have, the people you know, where you grew up, the things you do, the foreign countries you visit-all those things are really good for your writing in that they broaden you," Franklin said. These experiences not only gave Franklin an education but they helped him learn about detail. "One of the most important

aspects of fiction is the detail that a writer uses. [My early jobs] gave me great detail about strange places," Franklin said. His sense of detail has earned Franklin labels such as "vivid portraitist" and gives his stories "valuable and unexpected depth," according to some in the writing community. Writer Philip Roth said Franklin reminds him of Faulkner and particularly of the Faulkner of Wild Palms. "I don't think anyone should be compared to Faulkner. It's not fair," Franklin said. "He's the best writer in the last century and it seems wrong to compare a writer with one book of short stories to a writer of such a vast body of work as Faulkner's, but a writer who writes out of a Southern tradition will ultimately be compared to him. He's god in literature in my opinion." GARRETHC. BLACKWELL

FRANKLIN AND FENNELLY READ POETRY, SHORT STORIES This article originally appeared in the Daily Mississippian on Thursday, March 7, 2002. Tom Franklin, the 2001-2002 Grisham Writer in Residence, and his wife, poet Beth Ann Fennelly, who received the 2001 Kenyon Review Prize in Poetry for a First Book for her collection Open House, melded their voices to read their work at the Center's Brown Bag program on Wednesday, March 6. Franklin and Fennelly read, among other works, a short story titled "The Saint of Broken Objects," a collaborative piece about the changes marriage partners endure. The writers read the parts they had each written, shifting voices to allow the audience to hear the alternate views of husband and wife. The story, which was written at the MacDowell Colony, a colony for writers and artists in New Hampshire, began as an idea when Franklin began moving into his house in Illinois. "I kept breaking things and I said suddenly out of nowhere, 'In his 37th year he became clumsy,''' Franklin said. "We thought that was sort of a good line. So we started throwing words at one another and writing them down and soon we had the draft of a story." The couple also read their individual works of literature. Fennelly read several poems dealing with such topics as space probes and breast feeding. Fennelly recently gave birth to the couple's first child, Claire, and has written many poems about motherhood. She said she tried to capture things she was unprepared for in parenting. "One of the things that I was unprepared for was breast feeding," Fennelly said. "It is so much harder and better than I could have guessed. It is a part of our society that has been left out, that some people don't talk about." Another of Fennelly's poems comments on a decision to replace with a stick figure an engraving of a pregnant woman set to go on a NASA space probe, designed to show alien life form a glimpse of human life. "It struck me odd," Fennelly said. "First of all, what would be so upsetting about a pregnant woman? But also, what would a stick figure drawing of a pregnant woman look like?" Franklin and Fennelly have had to schedule work around the

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demands of their new infant. Fennelly measures time in "B.C." and

"A.c.," before and after Claire. "There is so much about having her and raising her and caring fot her that is fiercer and more wonderful and complex and isn't reflected in that pastel, sort-of focused . picture of the mom and the little baby," Fennelly said. Curtis Wilkie, a visiting professor in journalism and an audience member, said he had heard Fennelly read before. "She had a reading a few months ago. I came to hear Wordsworth, but I heard Allen Ginsberg instead," Wilkie said. "She has kind of a hip style." Franklin also read a portion of a novel in progress, "Hell at the Breech," about the so-called Mitcham War, an 1890s family feud that occurred near Franklin's birthplace in Dickinson, Alabama. Franklin started writing this tragic novel after his publisher turned down a comedy and told him that he's better at writing dark and violent works." Franklin's biggest problem on the current novel is writing about the past. "It's been horrible," he said. "I will never start another historical novel. The next thing I write will have happened yesterday and have cell phones in it." After his reading, Franklin commented on his grammar. "Some of my students are in the audience. I've told them how evil adverbs are, and there must be 20 adverbs in the selection I just read." Franklin and Fennelly will leave Oxford at the end of the summer to go to Sewanee, Tennessee. Fennelly said that she loves the people in Oxford and that she regrets having to leave. "I love Oxford," Fennelly said. "I think it's a paradise. I told Joe Urgo [English Department chair] that I'd handcuff myself to the stairway in our house and they'd just have to come and cut me out." SHANESCARA Editor's Note: Fortunately, Fennelly will be in Oxford during the coming year, teaching poetry in the English Department. Franklin will be writer in residence at the University of the South in Sewanee. The couple, and Claire, will have residences in both places, travelling between Oxford and Sewanee on a weekly basis.

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Reading the SoutI-l continued from page 13

their pasts. Sometimes those pasts are big, public, and multigenerational; sometimes they are smaller and more private. But this collection is not ilbout making a regional comparison that would argue somehow that Southerners are distinctive in their concern for remembering. Instead, the essays stress the diversity of Southern memories, the sense the memories are up for grabs, and the complex purposes those memories serve. Darlene O'Dell's Sites of Southern Memory studies how autobiographies by Katharine DuPre Lumpkin, Lillian Smith, and Pauli Murray challenged conventional ideas about the Lost Cause and white supremacy. Studying autobiography means studying memory, because autobiographers are always making choices abollt what and how to remember. O'Dell is especially good at getting inside the personal memories of how the three autobiographies confronted issues of race and racism, especially in dead and living bodies. One could say that while most of the authors in Brundage's collection study how people constructed memories, O'Dell is studying how her three autobiographers deconstructed certain

memories, specifically the ways people in the South had tried to use memories as monuments to the naturalness and legitimacy of white supremacy. In her discussion of Lumpkin's The Making of a Southerner, O'Dell concentrates on the scene of in which the father, heir to a tradition of paternalistic gentility that the young Lumpkin inherited :md respected, heat up a young black woman employee. The rest of her autobiography involvecl the remaking of Lumpkin's identity. However, O'Dell stresses that no matter how much she rejected her father's and the South's claims of patriarchal traclitions, Lumpkin was buried near her family members, "next to the fathers and followers of Confederate nationalism and Lost Cause convictions" (79). Lillian Smith and Pauli Murry had no mixed feelings. Smith's autohiography, Killers of the Dream, dramatized the fictional ghosts that propped up segregation, and she wrote to show how limiting and artificial segregation could he. Smith was buried on the grounds of the slimmer camp where she "envisioned a New SOllth hased on diversity ,md experimentation" (J 03). Pauli Murray,

horn a generation later in Baltimore, detailed her fascinating life as a writeractivist-priest in her 1956 book Proud Shoes. The only African American of the three writers, Murray offered a more direct denunciation of segregation, hy upholding the memories of her Union soldier grandfather and activist grandmother. She saw a Confederate cemetery as offering an immediate offense to her and her family's goals of freedom, and struggled to have her grandparents' graves treated with the dignity they deserved. Neither O'Dell's short volume nor Brundage's collection offers easy reading. The eSS:1ys in Where These Memories Grow go down more easi Iy when digested one or two at a time, and Sites of Southern Memory is filled with enough quotations, references to theoretical works, and parenthetical expressions to impress some readers and irritate others. This difficulty likely stems from the nature of studying memory, which is an inherently complex topic. But those willing to make the effort will find much to learn from both of these works. TED OWN flY

Mississippi Folklife Association The Mississippi Folklife Association (MFA) met recently in Biloxi for its third annual conference. The weekend was planned around workshops, field trips throughout Point Cadet, and evening entertainment. Aimee Schmidt, Southern Studies alumna now residing in Atlanta, was the first workshop presenter. Her topic was "Displaced in the New South: A Study of Asian and Mexican Immigrants in Southern States." Lee Ann Cummings, deputy director of the Mississippi Arts Commission (MAC), presented a workshop in Public Relations and Marketing Strategies, emphasizing how to write press releases for all media. The 2002-2003 Board of the MFA was elected with Valerie Plesred as president, Charles Wsir Johnson as vice president, and David CrosbY:1s secretary/treasurer. Members at large are Jerry Bangham, Dorothy Lewis, Susan Lloyd McClamroch, and Janina Shoemaker, the latter two of Ocean Springs. The MFA will present workshops on various interest areas such as documentation methods, including field recording, oral history, and photographic records, around the state for those interested in folk culture and folk an. Call 228-875-1616 for memhership informarion.

The Southern Register

S/Jring/Summer

2002

From left: Janina Shoemaker, Dorothy Lewis, David Crosby, Susao Lloyd McClamroch, Charles Wsir Johnson, Valerie Plested, Jerry Rangham

Page 27

Southern Studies Alums Undergraduate students who major in Southern Studies face a frequent question, "What can you do with a degree in Southern Studies?" The people willing to answer that question tend to be creative and at least a bit courageous, because at the University of Mississippi, they receive the only Southern Studies B.A. available in the world. The following students, all undergraduate majors, show the variety of choices people have made with their degrees. Southern Studies majors have continued their educations in graduate programs of many kinds. Franklin Ridgway, the only twotime winner of the Gray Award for writing the best undergraduate paper in Southern Studies, is completing his M.A. degree in English at the University of Mississippi and will enroll in the fall in the English Ph.D. program at the University of Illinois. Ridgway was a founding member of the Green Party of Mississippi and helped organize the Southern Writers Southern Writing Conference in 2001. Elizabeth Taylor Barton graduated in Southern Studies in 1991 and received a degree in counseling from Peabody College at Vanderbilt University in 1998. She now lives in Jackson, working as senior high counselor at Jackson Preparatory School and a therapist at the Shepherd's Staff Counseling Center. Maria McGowen, who worked for Living Blues while earning her Southern Studies degree, received her M.A. in history at Wake Forest University before moving on to the Ph.D. program at the University of Delaware. Sarah Alford completed her undergraduate degree in 2000 and is now in the Southern Studies M.A. program, where she is writing her thesis on cooperative farming in the Mississippi Delta. Chris Price is a graduate student in journalism at the University of Mississippi. He has continued his undergraduate interests by taking graduate classes in Southern Studies. Law schools like Southern Studies majors, and several Southern Studies students have gone into law. Leslie Ayres completed her Southern Studies degree in 1999. She will graduate this spring from the law school at the University of Texas and has worked in the juvenile public defender's office in Austin. After graduating, she will begin working for a law firm in Baton Rouge. Ann Carson Alias, a double major in Southern Studies and English, completed law school at the University of Georgia and has worked as a law clerk in United States District Court in Georgia. Tiffany Kilpatrick worked in a public defender's office in Mississippi before moving on to work in advertising in Atlanta. She plans to attend law school. Other majors have made careers connecting issues of Southern culture to public audiences. John T. Edge realized his "calling" as a student of Southern foodways while pursuing his undergraduate degree in Southern Studies. Edge has received great acclaim as

executive director of the Southern Foodways Alliance at the University of Mississippi and as the author of countless publications on Southern food, including the books Southern Belly and A Gracious Plenty. Emy Bullard Wilkinson graduated in Southern Studies in 1993 and immediately became the first executive director of the Yazoo County Convention and Visitors Bureau. She is now director of tourism for the Corinth Area Tourism Promotion Council and has served as president of the Mississippi Tourism Association. Michelle Weaver Jones received undergraduate and graduate degrees in Southern Studies. She works with the Historic Preservation Division of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, running a field office housed in the School of Architecture at Mississippi State University. Jones works with groups throughout the state on historic preservation projects. Ginny Smith left for Washington, D.C., in August 2001 and is now working for a nonprofit group called IES. Independent Educational Services helps private schools across the country find teachers and administrators. Southern Studies continues to attract interesting and creative individuals. For example, Chris Thompson, a double major in Southern Studies and journalism and the editor of the Daily Mississippian, completed his degree in 2001 by writing a novel for his Honors project. He is now working in the Peace Corps in Niger. Lauren McDaniel completed her degree in 2000 and went to Charleston to work as a pastry chef. She plans to enroll in graduate school in social work in 2002. Laura Anne Heller works as assistant librarian at Jackson Preparatory School and is developing a documentary photography and oral history project on the churches of Madison County, Mississippi. She is pursuing a graduate degree in library science. Cynthia Gerlach came from Portland, Oregon, to the University of Mississippi for undergraduate and graduate degrees in Southern Studies and found she did not want to leave Oxford. She is owner of Bottletree Bakery, a favorite spot for Southern Studies students, faculty, friends, and alumni. Justin Showah completed a double major in Southern Studies and English in 2000. He has played bass in several north Mississippi bands, including the Circuit Riders, Coldwater Independence, and the Thacker Mountain Radio Show house band. He appeared on Cary Hudson's recent CD, The Phoenix, on Black Dog Records. Other former students continue to do fascinating things, and we will be delighted to learn about the careers and interests of other Southern Studies alumni and to spread the word of their activities in future articles.

COUNTRY

TED OWNBY

MUSIC

Kyle Young, director of the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, wrote a response to Charles Wolfe's "A Note to Those Interested in Traditional Country Music" that appeared in the Winter 2002 issue of the Southern Register. Excerpts from his letter follow. The enclosed document outlines our plans for the Walkway of Stars and explains why the Walkway at the old building had to be destroyed in order to protect its integrity. The Walkway of Stars is an important fundraising and recognition tool for us. All of the current members will be included in the new memorial at no additional expense to the honorees or their sponsors. The "beautiful, custom-built record cabinets" are downstairs in our archive and continue to house part of our record collection. The sale of the old building to BMI partially financed this grand $37 million new building, which includes a Hall of Fame rotunda in keeping with the honor of membership, 40,000-square-feet of gallery space, four theaters, a grand public conservatory, a satellite radio studio, and classroom space. As a not-for-profit 501(c)3 educational organization, our mission is the preservation of the history of country music ... Please come and visit us. The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum is located at 222 Fifth Avenue South, Nashville, document about the Walkway of Stars, call 615- 416-2001 or visit www.countrymusichalloffame.com.

Page 28

Spring/Summer

2002

TN 37103.

For details, including a copy of the

The Southern Register

"-

â&#x20AC;˘

;:l!

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

eg10Th

SCOTT BARRETTA is editor of Living Blues magazine. GARRETH C. BLACKWELLis a journalism Mississippi.

The Tougaloo Art Colony at Tougaloo College is sponsoring, for the sixth year, a week-long Indulgence in the Visual Arts workshop for artists, art educators, and art students. The workshop will be held from July 26 until August 2, 2002. For more information, write or call the Registrar, Tougaloo Art College, P.O. Box 578, Jackson, MS 39174.

The Georgia Literary Festival (formerly known as the Eatonton Literary Festival) will take place on August 3, 2002, in Sparta, where Harlem Renaissance writer Jean Toomer will be featured along with other authors from the Georgia Piedmont. In 1921, Hancock County's rural black and white people inspired Toomer to write Cane, one of the most evocative books about the South between the two world wars. Other writers to be recognized are the Beman Brothers, local colorist Richard Malcolm Johnston, and Joe David Brown, author of Paper Moon. For details, call 706-485-0388 or see www.gsu.edu/eatonton.

The Historic New Orleans Collection announces the opening of A Visible Presence, A Legacy of Service: 275 Years of the Ursulines in New Orleans on Tuesday, June 25, 2002, at 533 Royal Street. The exhibition will remain on view through Saturday, December 14. The Ursuline nuns came to New Orleans from France in 1727 to educate women and administer the colony's military hospital. In the ensuing centuries, the Ursulines have been a visible and enduring presence in the city. The exhibition illuminates the history of the order's activities in New Orleans through paintings, objects, books, and documents. Visitors to the exhibition will be able to hear recordings of the oldest surviving manuscript music in the Mississippi River Valley and listen to recorded translations of letters written in 1727 by Ursuline nun Marie-Madeleine Hachard to her family in France. A noteworthy document on display is a letter written by President Jefferson to the nuns in 1804. A Visible Presence, A Legacy of Service is free and open to the public Tuesday through Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. For more information, visit the Historic New Orleans Collection on the Internet (www.hnoc.org) or call 504-523-4662.

The Southern Register

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of

WILLIAM BOOZER, of Nashville, has been a frequent visitor to Oxford through the years in his role as editor during 1981-2001 of The Faulkner Newsletter and Yoknapatawpha Review and as a Faulkner collector and contributor to book pages of the Memphis Commercial A/Jpeal and Nashville Banner. JOHN T. EDGE, director of the Southern Foodways Alliance, writes about Southern food and travel. He is the author of A Gracious Plenty: Recipes and Recollections from the American South and Southern Belly. SUSAN M. GLISSON is assistant director of the Institute for Racial Reconciliation and of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture. She earned a Ph.D. in American Studies from the College of William and Mary. JOAN WYLIE HALL teaches in the English Department at the University of Mississippi. She is the author of Shirley Jackson: A Study of the Short Fiction and articles on Tennessee Williams, William Faulkner, Grace King, Frances Newman, and other authors. ANDREW C. HARPER joined the Center's staff as coordinator of a National Endowment for the Humanities planning grant and assists with numerous projects. He earned a Ph.D. in history from Northern Arizona University. BRUCE IGLAUER was a founder head of Alligator Records.

The Art of the Book: 20 Years of Art and Design from the University of Georgia Press will be on display at the Georgia Museum of Art, in Athens, September 1-30, 2002. The University of Georgia Press was founded in 1938 and is now one of the largest publishing houses in the South. It publishes 80-90 titles each year, in a range of academic disciplines as well as books of interest to the general reader, and has nearly a thousand titles in print. The exhibition focuses on the art and design of book covers published by the Press during the past two decades. For details, call 706-542-4662 or visit the Web site www.uga.edu/gamusuem.

major at the University

DEIDRA JACKSON Communications newspaper reporter M.A. in journalism

of Living Blues magazine and is the

is a communications specialist for the Office of at the University of Mississippi. Formerly a and editor in North Carolina, she received her from the University in 1995.

DONALD W. KARTIGANER holds the William Howry Chair in Faulkner Studies at the University of Mississippi and is director of the Faulkner Conference. JAMIE KORNEGAYis a bookseller at Square Books, editor of the store's Dear Reader newsletter, and a freelance writer. He lives in Water Valley, Mississippi. COLBY H. KULLMAN is professor of English at the University of Mississippi. Among his publications are articles on Tennessee Williams and other modern dramatists, Theatre Companies of the World, and Speaking on Stage: Interviews with Contemporary American Playwrights. He is coeditor of Studies in American Drama: 1945-Present. TED OWNBY holds a joint appointment in Southern Studies and History. He is the author of Subduing Satan: Religion, Recreation, and Manhood in the Rural South, 1865-1920 and American Dreams in MississiPPi: Consumers, Poverty, and Culture, 1830-1998. SHANE SCARA received a B.A. degree from the University Mississippi, where he majored in journalism and English. JOSEPH R. URGO chairs the English Department Mississippi. DAVID WHARTON is assistant professor projects at the Center, where is teaches fieldwork, and photography. He is the Texas Town: Photogra/Jhs, Memories, and

of

at the University of

and director of documentary courses in Southern Studies, author of The Soul of a Small History from McDade.

CHARLES REAGAN WILSON is director of the Center and professor of History and Southern Studies. Among his publications are Baptized in Blood: The Religion of the Lost Cause and Judgment and Grace in Dixie: Southern Faiths from Faulkner to Elvis.

2002

Page 29

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