Southern Register Spring 2k7
5/13/07
12:56 PM
Page 1
the THE NEWSLETTER OF THE
CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF SOUTHERN CULTURE • SPRING 2007
THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSISSIPPI
Wilson Named Kelly Gene Cook Sr. Chair of History Ownby Named Interim Director of the Center
T
James Thomas
he College of Liberal Arts has announced the appointment of Center director Charles Reagan Wilson as the Kelly Gene Cook Sr. Chair of History. Wilson, who has been director since 1998, will return to fulltime teaching beginning this fall, necessitating his leaving his current position. He will also continue to serve as a professor of Southern Studies. Ted Ownby, professor of history and Southern Studies at the University and director of graduate studies at the Center, will serve as interim director in the next year, during which a national search will be conducted for a new director. Ownby has taught at the University since 1988 and has served as both undergraduate and graduate advisor in the Southern Studies Program. 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, and he has directed symposia on Southern childhood, manners in the South, the role of ideas in the civil rights era, and the cultural interaction of whites and blacks in the
Ted Ownby (left) and Charles Wilson
region. He is the coeditor of the Mississippi Encyclopedia, currently in production at the Center. “Charles Wilson has provided excellent leadership for the Center during his tenure,” said Glenn Hopkins, dean of the College of Liberal Arts. “With his guidance, the Center strengthened its core areas and greatly
The Center for the Study of Southern Culture will celebrate its 30th anniversary on November 11–13, 2007, with talks and festivities, including a Southern Studies Prom and the return of old friends. Mark you calendars and plan to be in Oxford that weekend. Details will follow.
expanded its scope of activities, while increasing its visibility across the country. In recognition of these achievements, he was appointed in January to another four-year term as director of the Center. When a wonderful opportunity arose to devote his time to his many scholarly pursuits, Dr. Wilson, a scholar at heart, could not resist. While we will miss his leadership in the Center, we are most fortunate to have this nationally recognized scholar and dedicated teacher
(continued on page 35)
Southern Register Spring 2k7
5/13/07
12:56 PM
the
D
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 2007
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 25 31 32 33 34 36 36 37 40
Wilson Named Cook Chair Director’s Column Living Blues News 2007 F&Y: Faulkner’s Sexualities 2007 Book Conference Report MIAL 2007 Gala in Greenwood Mississippi Encyclopedia Report McIntyre Named THC Director Linguistics Conference Honors New Volume of Encyclopedia Glisson’s New Civil Rights Book 2007 OCB Portfolio Preview Mississippi Historical Society Awards Five Ladies Remembered In Memoriam “Mississippi Reads” Initiative Melody Golding’s Photographs Rankin’s Larry Brown Photographs Gammill Gallery Exhibition Schedule Williams Festival in Clarksdale Williams Tribute in Columbus SFA Oral History Projects Online Southern Foodways Alliance News Reading the South: Reviews & Notes 2007 Young Authors Fair 2007 Mississippi Delta Literary Tour 2007 Oxford Conference for the Book Garsts Fund TCE Spirituals DVD Regional Roundup Notes on Contributors Southern Culture Catalog Items Address Section/Mailing List Form/Friends Information and Form
REGISTER STAFF Editor: Ann J. Abadie Graphic Designer: Susan Bauer Lee Mailing List Manager: Mary Hartwell Howorth Editorial Assistant: Sally Cassady Lyon Lithographer: RR Donnelley Magazine Group The University complies with all applicable laws regarding affirmative action and equal opportunity in all its activities and programs and does not discriminate against anyone protected by law because of age, color, disability, national origin, race, religion, sex, or status as a veteran or disabled veteran.
Page 2
Page 2
I R E C T O R
’
S
C
O L U M N
When the opportunity arose to become the Kelly Gene Cook Sr. Chair
of History, I had mixed feelings. On the one hand, I am energized at the thought of more time for my research and teaching when I begin my new position this fall. On the other hand, I am saddened that I will no longer be able to work as closely as before with so many wonderful people associated with the Center. Bill Ferris, our founding director, had been here almost two decades when I became director eight years ago. He and associate director Ann Abadie had made the Center a well-respected institution, and my challenge was to build on their work. My long-time collaborator, Ann has been a constant help and friend as we strengthened existing Center programs and launched new initiatives. We have assembled a superb staff, and they have been a joy to work with. My assistant, Sally Cassady Lyon, has been invaluable in helping keep my sometimescomplicated activities manageable. Two long-time staff members, Sarah Dixon Pegues and Mary Hartwell Howorth, have been essential to the operations of the Center, and their presence also has made it a pleasant place to be. The Southern Foodways Alliance, headed by our former Southern Studies graduate student John T. Edge, and with support from a first-rate staff, is also housed at the Barnard Observatory. Center work can be a far-flung enterprise, with some of our staff scattered across campus. Periodic crises of funding kept us on our toes. We have worked closely with Ted Smith in the University of Mississippi Foundation, and I am especially grateful to him for his support and encouragement over the last few years. He should take a large share of the credit for the Center’s recent progress in its annual fund drive and its endowment funding. I look forward to continued work with our Southern Studies faculty. I brag on them all the time because I think they are a superb group of scholars and teachers. Their research gives us a high scholarly profile. When former colleagues like Tom Rankin and Bob Brinkmeyer left for other positions, it was a challenge to replace them, but we have found scholars whose work enhances everything we do at the Center. Many thanks to Nancy Bercaw, Robbie Ethridge, Adam Gussow, Katie McKee, Ted Ownby, and David Wharton for their splendid cooperation over the years. One of the lucks of the draw during my years as director was the change to work with friends on our Center Advisory Committee. I remember my nervousness during my first formal meeting with them. They proved to be a delight to work with, as enthusiastic boosters of our work and key moral and financial supporters of it. I particularly must mention Jim and Madeleine McMullan, who served as chairs of our Executive Committee and who have given me much personal encouragement, and Sarah Dabney Gillespie, who served for many years as chair of the Advisory Committee. I appreciate having been able to visit with members of that group and share our work with them. My vision of the Center has rested on its academic foundations. Our academic program attracts terrific, talented students, often passionately engaged with the South. Our faculty research and collaborative projects like The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture and the Mississippi Encyclopedia place the Center in the institutional lead of research on the South. The Center is a distinctive institution because of its strong record of bridging the gap between the academy and broad public audiences interested in the South. Whether Faulkner, contemporary writers, blues music, foodways, or the global South, Center conferences and symposia engage fundamental issues of Southern culture and present that work to diverse audiences. I believe in taking the study of Southern culture “on the road” and have enjoyed the many occasions to take part
(continued on page 3)
Spring 2007
The Southern Register
Southern Register Spring 2k7
(continued from page 2)
5/13/07
12:56 PM
Page 3
Director
in conferences, symposia, workshops, and lecture series across the region, the nation, and the world. We have made new friends and a wide network of people who share our commitment to trying to understand the South. Mississippi provides the particular context for our work, and I appreciate the cooperation we have received from so many people in cultural institutions in this state. I am pleased that my friend Ted Ownby will be our interim director next year. He has been a daily source of good spirits
and smart advice, with his office right down the hall from mine at the Barnard Observatory. He is our senior Southern Studies faculty member and our graduate advisor, who also has been involved in many Center outreach activities. I will continue to be around, teaching Southern Studies courses as well as history, and working on Center projects. I’ve worked throughout my career to help define the interdisciplinary study of the American South, and I look forward to continuing to do that. CHARLES REAGAN WILSON
Living Blues News The Fifth Annual Living Blues Symposium occurred at the Center in February. Entitled “Blues Women Today,” this year’s conference featured live blues music on the Oxford Square throughout the weekend, a tour of the University of Mississippi Blues Archive, film screenings, and an intimate poem and song swap with author Wanda Coleman and Memphis musician Di Anne Price. Details on next year’s Blues Symposium will be announced in future issues of Living Blues. The current issue of Living Blues provides a comprehensive overview of blues music in our own backyard. Over the last two decades, Mississippi hill country blues has become increasingly popular. With the successful late careers of R. L. Burnside, Junior Kimbrough, and Otha Turner, most blues fans tuned into the driving, often hypnotic, sounds emanating from this little corner of Mississippi. With the passing of the elders, LB decided it was time to check on the current scene and found
it still vibrant, vital, and growing. In this issue we profile eight artists who are all children (biological or “adopted”) or grandchildren of the early masters. Additionally, University of Memphis musicologist David Evans, the foremost authority on hill country blues, gives an overview of the history of the scene and examines what makes the music unique. We round the issue out with a tribute to the legendary Robert Lockwood Jr. and our 2007 Annual Living Blues Festival Guide. A one-year subscription to Living Blues is $25.95, and blues fans can subscribe online at www.livingblues.com. A complimentary issue of Living Blues is available upon request. Simply e-mail info@livingblues.com and request a sample issue of the world’s most authoritative blues magazine. MARK CAMARIGG
Subscribe to Living Blues • 1 year = $25.95 (US) $31.95 (Canada), $41.95 (Overseas) Name _____________________________________________________________________________________________ Address ___________________________________________________________________________________________ City ______________________________________________________ State _____________ Zip _________________ Telephone _________________________________________________________________________________________
❏ Check Enclosed ❏ Credit Card Number_______________________________________________________ Exp. Date _____________ Email info@livingblues.com to request a sample copy. Send Subscription form to: Living Blues, P.O. Box 1848, 301 Hill Hall, University, MS 38677, or subscribe online at www.livingblues.com
The Southern Register
Spring 2007
Page 3
Southern Register Spring 2k7
5/14/07
1:05 PM
Page 4
“Faulkner’s Sexualities”
Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference July 22–26, 2007 The two cartoons by William Faulkner featured in this article—one of which is the image on this year’s conference poster—appeared in the May 1925 issue of an Ole Miss publication called The Scream. They are an intriguing indication of how early in Faulkner’s career he had begun to explore issues of sexuality that would become prominent in his mature fiction. Both cartoons are scenes of two men separated from, yet very much aware of, the women also depicted. In one scene there are three women fashionably dressed, in the other a single nude statue; what all four share is an apparent obliviousness to the men. The men, although neither is oblivious, differ in their responses to the women. In each cartoon one of the men is quite taken with the women— even to the point of intoxicated rapture—while the other man functions as supporter and perhaps protector. Already certain themes and dynamics suggest themselves. The men, whatever the varying intensity of their attention, share a certain respect, perhaps even a kind of dismay, not only at the women’s attractiveness, but their stony indifference. The men are more comfortable with each other, and yet there seems little likelihood that they will ever be able to abandon their interest or, in at least two of the men, their fascination. As for the women, their remoteness suggests not only aloofness but independence, even a kind of fearlessness. Out of such compulsions, rejections, and loyalties there eventually emerged an array of novels and stories that have come to be regarded as an extraordinarily complex commentary on sexuality in the South, the Americas, and the world. “Faulkner’s Sexualities”— topic of the 34th annual Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference on July 22–26, 2007—will spend five days of lectures and panel discussions
The 13th annual Southern Writers, Southern Writing Graduate Student Conference will be held at the University of Mississippi July 19–21, 2007. Creative and critical readings will address various topics on or about the South. Critical topics are not restricted to literature; we welcome submissions from other disciplines and are particularly interested in interdisciplinary perspectives. Students whose papers are accepted may register for the 34th annual Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference at a reduced rate of $100 registration fee. For more information, visit www.outreach.olemiss.edu/events/faulkner or write to southernwriters@gmail.com.
Page 4
exploring the fiction in terms of its sexual relations. In addition to the speakers announced in the previous issue of the Southern Register—John Duvall, Jaime Harker, Catherine Gunther Kodat, Deborah McDowell, Gary Richards, Dawn Trouard, and Michael Zeitlin—the conference will feature
Illustrating the 2007 Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference poster and program is a cartoon William Faulkner drew for a 1925 Ole Miss publication called The Scream. Flat copies of conference posters with illustrations by Glennray Tutor (1989–1993), John McCrady (1994, 2003, 2005), and William Faulkner (2007) and with photographs by Martin Dain (1996), Jack Cofield (1997, 2000), Bern Keating (1998), Odione (1990), Budd Studios (2002), and from the Cofield Collection (2001), the Williams Library (2004), and the Commercial Appeal (2006) are available for $10.00 each plus $3.50 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 dates. Credit cards orders also may be made by calling 800-390-3527.
Spring 2007
The Southern Register
Southern Register Spring 2k7
5/13/07
12:57 PM
Page 5
2007 Oxford Conference for the Book Report
One of the cartoons William Faulkner drew for a 1925 publication called The Scream
The Southern Register
manuscripts, photographs, and memorabilia at the John Davis Williams Library. There will also be guided daylong tours of North Mississippi, including the Delta and Memphis, a picnic served at Faulkner’s home, Rowan Oak, and “Faulkner on the Fringe”—an “open mike” evening at the Southside Gallery. For more information on the conference, contact the Office of Outreach and Continuing Education, P.O. Box 879, The University of Mississippi, University, MS 386770879; telephone: 662-915-7283; e-mail: fyconf@olemiss.edu. For information on the conference program, course credit, and all other inquiries, contact the Department of English, Box 1848, Bondurant Hall, The University of Mississippi, University, MS 38677-1848; telephone: 662-915-7439; e-mail: fyconf@olemiss.edu. For online registration, visit us on the Web at www.outreach.olemiss.edu/events/ faulkner. DONALD KARTIGANER
Spring 2007
Carlo Feltrinelli discussed his family’s literary enterprise, which consists of approximately 90 bookstores and the Italian publishing firm begun in 1954 by his father, Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, the subject of a recent book by the son, Feltrinelli: A Story of Riches, Revolution, and Violent Death.
Page 5
Jayne Wexler
Caroline Garnier of Morehouse College, Peter Lurie of the University of Richmond, and Michael Wainwright of Lancaster University in England. They will also be joined by nine panelists: Stephen Barnes, College of the Ozarks; Joel Dinerstein, Tulane University; Kristin Fujie, University of California at Berkeley; Jennie Joiner, University of Kansas; Matt Low, University of Iowa; David Madden, Louisiana State University; Michelle Moore, The College of DuPage; Gina Patnaik, University of California at Berkeley; and Chris Teepe, University of Albany. Other program events will include an original dramatic reading, Mr. Twain, Meet Mr. Faulkner; a panel of Faulkner friends and family, moderated by Elizabeth Shiver; sessions on “Teaching Faulkner,” conducted by James Carothers, University of Kansas, Charles Peek, University of Nebraska at Kearney, Terrell Tebbetts, Lyon College, and Theresa Towner, University of Texas at Dallas; a discussion of “Collecting Faulkner” by Seth Berner; and an exhibition of Faulkner books,
This 14th Oxford Conference for the Book on March 22–24, 2007, was dedicated to the late Lafayette County author Larry Brown (1951–2004) and offered nine sessions with presentations by critics and scholars as well as by his family and friends, including his longtime editor, Shannon Ravenel, several writers, and musicians. There were also exhibitions, film screenings, and a special concert dedicated to the author. Brown’s last novel, A Miracle of Catfish, and a special limited-edition version of the musical-tribute CD Just One More were released during the conference. Other sessions were devoted to young readers, readers as an endangered species, and poetry. Among writers participating in these sessions were Thomas Sayers Ellis, Shay Youngblood, Nickole Brown, David Galef, Kimiko Hahn, and LeAnne Howe. Other events included a breakfast with Russian writers, a visit with Italian publisher and author Carlo Feltrinelli, and a talk by Margaret Bradham Thornton about compiling and editing the Notebooks of Tennessee Williams. The fourth Mississippi Delta Literary Tour was scheduled in conjunction with the conference, as was a creative writing workshop with Margaret-Love Denman, director of the creative writing program at the University of New Hampshire. The week of literary activities ended on Saturday evening with a marathon book signing at Off Square Books.
Southern Register Spring 2k7
5/13/07
12:57 PM
Page 6
Mississippi Arts and Letters Awards Events to Be Held June 9 in Greenwood Oscar-winning actor Morgan Freeman and acclaimed costume and set designer Myrna Colley-Lee are among the Mississippians who will receive awards from the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters (MIAL) at its awards gala June 9 in Greenwood. The other winners are Richard Ford, fiction; Jere Nash and Andy Taggart, nonfiction; Natasha Trethewey, poetry; Samuel Jones, musical composition; and Debra Ferguson, photography. Freeman and Colley-Lee will accept Lifetime Achievement Award. NOMINEES Out-of-state judges selected the winners from the following Mississippi artists nominated by MIAL members for outstanding art presented to the public in 2006. Fiction: Tom Bailey, Robert Dalby, Richard Ford, Tom Franklin, Carolyn Haines, Darden N orth, Farrell O’Gorman, Steve Yarbrough, and Olympia Vernon. Nonfiction: Douglas Brinkley, Beth Ann Fennelly, John Hailman, Jere N ash, Dorothy Shawhan, Martha Swain, and Andy Taggart.
Poetry: Carolyn Elkins, Ava Haymon, Dwaine Rieves, Aleda Shirley, and Natasha Tretheway. Musical Composition: John L. Cornelius, Kenneth W. Davies, Samuel Jones, Albert C. Oppenheimer, Shandy Phillips, James Sclater, and Clint Tibbs. Visual Arts: Lea Barton, William Dunlap, Kennith Humphrey, Hyun Chong Kim, P. Sanders McN eal, Caroline Norris, and Lucy Phillips. Photography: Debra Ferguson, Timothy Isbell, H. C. Porter, Euphus Ruth Jr., and Joe York. AWARDS GALA EVENTS The awards banquet begins at 6:30 at the Staplcotn headquarters, 214 Market Street, in downtown Greenwood. Malcolm White, Mississippi Arts Commission director, will be master of ceremonies. Tickets are $50 per person. A cocktail reception honoring the 2007 nominees and former MIAL winners precedes the banquet at 5:30 at Staplcotn. There is no charge for this event. The evening activities will cap a day of events honoring the nominees and winners. From 10:00 a.m. until 4:00
p.m. the public can view works by the visual arts and photography nominees. At 1:30 p.m. Turnrow Books will host readings and signings by the fiction and nonfiction nominees. The annual MIAL membership meeting will take place at Staplcotn at 5:00 p.m. Since 1980 the Institute has given its prestigious awards to honor the achievements of living Mississippians (current residents or former ones with continuing, significant ties to the state). Recipients receive cash prizes and Mississippi-made gifts. This is the only statewide juried arts competition. Established in 1978 to support, nurture, and recognize one of Mississippi’s most important resources, her artists, MIAL is privately funded, self-perpetuating, and nonprofit. MIAL welcomes new members, and anyone may join. Membership dues start at $35 for an individual (students at $15). To reserve tickets to the awards gala, call Margaret Anne Mitchell at 601366-0761 or mail a check to MIAL, P.O. Box 2346, Jackson, MS 39225-2346. Additional information about the 2007 gala and MIAL membership may be found at www.ms-arts-letters.org. JOANNE PRICHARD MORRIS
MIAL MEMBERSHIP FORM Name _____________________________________________________________________________________________ Address ___________________________________________________________________________________________ City ____________________________________________ State _____________ Zip _________________ E-mail _________________________________ Daytime Telephone ____________________________ Check membership dues category:
❏ Student . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $15 ❏ Contributing (couples) . . . . . . $60 ❏ Institutional. . . . . . . . . . . . . $150
❏ Individual . . . . . . . . . . . . $35 ❏ Sustaining . . . . . . . . . . . $125 ❏ Patron . . . . . . . . . . . . $1,000
Make checks payable to MIAL. Send to Margaret Anne Mitchell, Executive Secretary, P.O. Box 2346, Jackson, MS 39225-2346.
Page 6
Spring 2007
The Southern Register
Southern Register Spring 2k7
5/13/07
12:57 PM
Page 7
Mississippi Encyclopedia Making Progress
Cover of 25th anniversary edition of Mildred D. Taylor’s classic story based on the history of her Mississippi family
The Southern Register
James Thomas
Contributors for the Mississippi Encyclopedia are making progress toward the project’s goal of completing almost all of the text by the end of Summer 2007. Coeditors Charles Reagan Wilson and Ted Ownby continue to hope that the book, to be published by the University Press of Mississippi, will come out by the end of 2008. The Mississippi Encyclopedia will be in good company. The Center is pushing forward with the multivolume New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, and encyclopedias about North Carolina and South Carolina have come out in the past year. Those join important volumes about Tennessee, Texas, Kentucky, and Appalachia, and the impressive New Georgia Encyclopedia is available online. Other states and regions are the subjects of ongoing encyclopedia projects, some online, some text versions, some both. The Mississippi Encyclopedia will be a big book consisting of about 1,800 entries. To date, we have approximately half that number, and the number grows daily. As important, we have commitments from authors to complete another 600 entries—and that number also grows every day. If all of those authors
From left: Ted Ownby, Charles Wilson, and Odie Lindsey
Map for James F. Barnett Jr.’s entry on the Natchez Indians is based on Robert S. Neitzel, Archaeology of the Fatherland Site: The Grand Village of the Natchez (Mississippi Department of Archives and History, Archaeological Report No. 28, Jackson 1997, Figure 2).
meet their spring and summer deadlines, we will have well over three quarters of the total entries completed by August. We rely on volunteer authors, fellow scholars, graduate students and alumni, and other old and new friends for this project. Authors write for the Mississippi Encyclopedia for many reasons—to share their knowledge, to learn something new and display the results, to tell good stories, to contribute to an understanding of the state, to correct misunderstandings, to be part of what will be a large and impressive project, to be the first footnote, even to improve their resumes. Some write out of pride, some out of criticism, some from sheer fascination. Whatever their reasons, they do not write to get paid, and the Center appreciates their contributions. We promise authors that they will be involved in something valuable and impressive, and that we will throw a good party when the book comes out. Our major partners include the University Press of Mississippi, the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, the Mississippi Humanities Council, and the Mississippi Arts Commission. They have helped publicize the project, helped raise (continued on page 8)
Spring 2007
Page 7
Southern Register Spring 2k7
5/13/07
12:58 PM
Page 8
(continued from page 7)
Encyclopedia
funds, and helped support the project, sometimes when the going was slow. We also reply on the expertise of scholars from all of the colleges and universities in the state. Immediate Plans. This summer is an important time for the Mississippi Encyclopedia. This summer is the final deadline for all entries. Southern Studies Graduate Assistant Odie Lindsey has the job of keeping in politely persistent contact with all of those authors and with many potential new ones. Summer is the time when the coeditors will start editing text, a long process that will continue almost until the volume goes off to the University Press of Mississippi. Summer is also important for the project’s 30 associate editors. Most of those editors will be writing overview essays on their topics—Architecture, Industry, Sports, Civil Rights, and Press along with 25 other topics—and making their last suggestions about the encyclopedia’s content. The other new phase of the project involves the search for illustrations. We plan to have illustrations on about half of the pages of the volume, so over the next few months, Center staff will be seeking maps, artwork, photographs, postcards, and other illustrations, and we will be looking especially for those illustrations that are not expensive. Fundraising. Financial gifts from some donors and the Mississippi Department of Archives and History and some new support from the University of Mississippi have helped us make progress, primarily by freeing faculty to work on the project, financially supporting the efforts of the associate editors, and funding some work by graduate assistants. Further fundraising will be necessary to speed the process of writing the final entries and checking facts, searching for illustrations, and copyediting the final volume. After a period of concern for funding for this project, we are optimistic that with some further assistance, the Center can push it forward to completion. Novelist Bobbie Ann Mason once said that writing is her form of rock and roll. To be honest, encyclopedia work is nobody’s form of rock and roll. It is slow going, and it relies far more on organization and persistence rather than moments of inspiration. What’s more, encyclopedias are inherently imperfect. As soon as it comes out, the Mississippi Encyclopedia will have omissions. Most readers will wonder how we could have a successful encyclopedia about the state without including some topic we overlooked, and most of them will be right. But there is something intriguing about a book that will include things ranging from the state’s constitutions to its people to its music to its soils (including the official state soil—Natchez silt). It will cover writers from Sherwood Bonner to William Faulkner to Jill Connor Browne to Mildred G. Taylor. Part of what is fascinating is the sheer variety of topics. On one fruitful day in March, we received five new entries on individual civil rights workers, one on Muslims in Mississippi, and another on fusion politics. On the same day, new authors agreed to write entries on public welfare, two novelists, and two contemporary blues musicians. In the world of encyclopedias, that was a good day, and if this summer is full of such days, before long the encyclopedia will be on the readers’ shelves. Readers interested in the range of topics or other information about the Mississippi Encyclopedia should consult the project’s Web site, www.olemiss.edu/depts/south/ms_encyclopedia/. TED OWNBY
Page 8
Spring 2007
E. Patrick McIntyre Jr. Named to Lead Tennessee’s Historical Preservation Efforts Southern Studies Alum E. Patrick McIntyre Jr. was recently named executive director of the Tennessee Historical Commission. “Patrick McIntyre has the right kind of experience that is important for this organization’s success and the type of vision for the Historical Commission’s ongoing role in preserving Tennessee’s history that we had hoped to bring to this position,” said board chairman Norm Hill. McIntyre was previously executive director of the Tennessee Preservation Trust where he led the advocacy group’s growth in membership from 300 to more than 500 members, created an effective annual fund-raising campaign, and established a statewide preservation awards program. He also served previously with the Alabama Historical Commission as endangered properties coordinator. “Patrick McIntyre has demonstrated a passion for the work of historical preservation, and I believe he’ll make an excellent leader for the Tennessee Historical Commission,” said Commissioner of Environment and Conservation Jim Fyke. The Tennessee Historical Commission, which is attached administratively to the Department of Environment and Conservation, identifies and administers state historic sites, encourages the diverse study of Tennessee’s history, makes nominations to the National Register of Historic Places, and awards federally funded grants for historic preservation projects in Tennessee. The Tennessee Historical Commission also assists local communities that have established or wish to establish local historic preservation programs. McIntyre serves on the boards of Preservation Action, the Belmont Mansion Association, and Tennessee Conservation Voters. He holds a B.A. in anthropology from the University of Alabama and an M.A. in Southern Studies from the University of Mississippi. In 2003, he received the Preservation Award from the Cumberland Tower Homesteads Museum Association for his work in Cumberland County. For more information about the Tennessee Historical Commission, visit www.tdec.net/hist.
The Southern Register
Southern Register Spring 2k7
5/13/07
12:58 PM
Page 9
The 74th annual Southeastern Conference on Linguistics hosted a special plenary session titled “A Southern Linguistic Quilt” April 13 on the campus of Northwestern State University of Louisiana in Natchitoches. The special session was held to celebrate the forthcoming publication of the Language volume of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, the fifth in the series. The conference’s overall theme was “Languages and Dialects of the American South,” in honor of the volume’s forthcoming publication. “A Southern Linguistic Quilt” featured nine short presentations by contributors to the Language volume. The talks focused on examples of Southern American speech that encapsulate and demonstrate the region’s fascinating language diversity and landscape. Presenters played short audio and video excerpts that highlighted the language users, and then presenters offered brief commentaries about each excerpt. Topics ranged from “Talking Backwards on Tangier Island, Virginia” by David Shores from Old Dominion University to “The Harrowing of Hell in Western North Carolina” by Tom Nunnally from Auburn University. Volume coeditors, Michael Montgomery and Ellen Johnson, gave presentations and were joined by the series’ managing editor, James Thomas, in giving the session’s opening remarks. Other presenters were local host Lisa Abney, Northwestern State University of Louisiana; Margaret Lee, Hampton University; Katherine Mille, Midlands Technical College; Michael Picone, University of Alabama; and Walt Wolfram, N orth Carolina State University “Dealing as it does with such a living, dynamic thing as speech,” Michael Montgomery said after the session, “our
The Southern Register
James Thomas
Linguistics Conference Honors The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture
Ellen Johnson giving opening remarks
volume of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture was tailor-made for a celebration that would bring the material vividly to life. It was important for us to present Southerners who were not only ordinary but who also were
Spring 2007
using language in their own everyday fashion. The myriad ways and forms of Southern speech is the main thrust of our book, but the session aimed to show that Southern speech is fascinating, not because thousands of articles and books have been written about it, but because it defines who Southerners are.” The Language volume of The New Encyclopedia aims to achieve that goal as well. The volume contains more than 60 entries on language in the South. Among those entries are 11 on indigenous languages and major essays on French, Spanish, and German. Each of them provides both historical and contemporary perspectives, identifying the language’s location, number of speakers, vitality, and sample distinctive features. The book acknowledges the role of immigration in spreading features of Southern English to other regions and countries and in bringing linguistic influences from Europe and Africa to Southern English. The fascinating patchwork of English dialects is also fully presented, from African American English, Gullah, and Cajun English to the English spoken in Appalachia, the Ozarks, the Outer Banks, the Chesapeake Bay Islands, Charleston, and elsewhere. Topical entries discuss ongoing changes in the pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar of English in the increasingly mobile South, as well as naming patterns, storytelling, preaching styles, and politeness, all of which deal with ways language is woven into Southern culture. The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, volume 5, Language is published by the University of North Carolina Press and will be in stores and available online at www.uncpress.unc.edu on July 16, 2007.
Page 9
Southern Register Spring 2k7
5/13/07
12:58 PM
Page 10
Glisson Edits New Book on Unsung Heroes of Civil Rights Movement
Kevin Bain, Imaging Services
Susan M. Glisson
Abraham Galloway, Homer Plessy, James K. Vardaman, A. Phillip Randolph, Amzie Moore, James Lawson, Charles Sherrod, Robert F. Williams, Jose Angel Guttierrez, and Leonard Peltier. A number of women’s stories are also told. Nobel Prize-winner Ida B. Wells leads the list, followed by Diane Nash, Mae Bertha Carter, Judith Brown, Sylvia Rivera, and Lucy Randolph Mason. Besides coordinating the entire project, Glisson wrote the book’s introduction and the chapter on Mason. “Between reading and editing manuscripts, reviewing and making the
authors’ revisions, proofing the galleys, and completing the index for the publisher, this was the most tedious labor of love I’ve undertaken since I wrote my dissertation,” Glisson said. In a review, scholar and historian James Dittmer of DePauw University praised Glisson, stating “(she) has assembled a stellar cast of scholars to tell the stories of individual Americans engaged in the struggle for human rights. This remarkable collection of essays is at once inspiring and sobering. It demonstrates that ordinary people can accomplish extraordinary things. But it also reminds us of the distance still to be traveled before this country lives up to its democratic promise.” Praised for her work with the Philadelphia [Mississippi] coalition, a multiracial task force that helped bring about justice in the 1964 civil rights murders there, Glisson previously coauthored First Freedoms: A Documentary History of First Amendment Rights in America, published by Oxford University Press in 2006. A graduate of Mercer University with bachelor’s degrees in religion and history, Glisson holds a master’s degree in Southern Studies from the University of Mississippi. She earned her doctorate in American Studies from the College of William and Mary. For more information on the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation, visit www.olemiss.edu/ winter_institute. EDWIN SMITH
Doug McLain
Southern Studies Alumna Susan M. Glisson has compiled a book chronicling popular and less renowned heroes of the civil rights movement. Glisson, director of the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation at the University of Mississippi, edited The Human Tradition in the Civil Rights Movement, a 320-page collection of biographies exploring the civil rights movement in the United States from Reconstruction to the 1970s. “This volume represents years of intense literary effort on the part of the individual authors,” said Glisson, a Salzburg Fellow who began serving communities seeking positive race relations in Mississippi in 1998. “I hope all readers of this work will understand that just as these men and women emerged from obscurity to help shape American history, that they, too, have the power to improve their own lives as well as the lives of others.” Written specifically with high school and college students in mind, the work presents 17 individuals involved in extraordinary events in the fight for equality. While focusing on the importance of individuals on the local level, the authors also explore the influence that this primarily African American movement had on others, including La Raza, the N ative American Movement, feminism, and gay rights. While more well-known activist Martin Luther King Jr. is discussed in the work, the book focuses specifically on important figures who have been overlooked, including
Page 10
Spring 2007
The Southern Register
Southern Register Spring 2k7
5/13/07
12:58 PM
Page 11
Mississippi Historical Society Awards
Southern Culture, was winner of the Elbert R. Hilliard Oral History Award. Amy Evans, SFA oral historian, accepted the award for the Mississippi Delta Hot
Amy Evans
Jennifer Ford
Dalton Lyon
Courtesy Mississippi Department of Archives and History
Courtesy Mississippi Department of Archives and History
Courtesy Mississippi Department of Archives and History
Tamale Trail project, created in cooperation with the Viking Range Corporation in an effort to document the history, tradition, and culture of hot tamales from Tunica to Vicksburg. Last year, SFA was the inaugural winner of the Hilliard Award for its oral history of Doe’s Eat Place in Greenville. A graduate student and a librarian at the University also received awards from the Society. Carter Dalton Lyon won the Glover Moore Prize for the best master’s thesis in Mississippi history in 2006. Lyon presented his thesis, “Sanctuaries of White Supremacy: The Story of the Jackson Church Visit Campaign, 1963–1964, Part 1,” for his master of arts degree. Jennifer Ford received an Award of Merit for her outstanding work at the University of Mississippi as the Special Collections Librarian at the John D. Williams Library.
Winthrop Jordan
Robert Jordan
The Mississippi Historical Society at its annual meeting in Jackson on March 1–3, 2007, presented its highest honor, the B. L. C. Wailes Award for national distinction in the field of history, posthumously to Winthrop Jordan, professor emeritus of history and African American Studies at the University of Mississippi. Jordan’s seminal 1968 book, White over Black: American Attitudes toward the Negro, 1550–1812, won the National Book Award, the Parkman Prize, the Ralph Waldo Emerson Award, and the Bancroft Prize. Jordan won another Bancroft Prize for his 1993 work, Tumult and Silence at Second Creek: An Investigation into a Civil War Slave Conspiracy. Jordan was coauthor of several widely used history textbooks. For the second year in a row the Southern Foodways Alliance, an institute of the Center for the Study of
2007 Oxford Conference for the Book March 22–24, 2007 • Portfolio Preview. For more, see page 33. “In the last decade of his life, Larry Brown was as much an aspiring musician as he was a novelist,” said author and Brown friend Jonathan Miles. “His appreciation for music drew him to musicians, in Oxford and elsewhere, just as his writing as spare, haunting, and bluesy as any old-time ballad drew musicians to him.” Gathering to discuss these relationships as well as the connections between writing fiction and songwriting were (from left) Bill Whitbeck, Robert Earl Keen, Miles (moderator), Clyde Edgerton, Tim Lee, Alejandro Escovedo, Ben Weaver, and Vic Chesnutt. Larry Brown’s son Shane was also a panelist for this session.
The Southern Register
Spring 2007
Page 11
Southern Register Spring 2k7
5/13/07
12:59 PM
Page 12
Five Ladies Remembered The Center for the Study of Southern Culture during the past year lost five of its longtime supporters, women who were involved with the Center from its early years and who made significant contributions not just to our programs but to those in Mississippi and beyond. We miss these dear friends, whose contributions to our work will continue long after their passing.
Dorothy Hagert Crosby September 6, 1908–April 5, 2006 Hattiesburg, Mississippi Dorothy Crosby was one of the Center’s first major patrons, and she supported our work through generous financial contributions
Page 12
to activities ranging from the publication of the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture and the multivolume Mississippi Writers anthology to the restoration of Barnard Observatory and the operation of the Gammill Gallery. She was a regular participant in annual events like the Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference and in 1984, when the Center sent its first delegation of American scholars to the A. M. Gorky Institute of World Literature in Moscow as part of an ongoing USA-USSR exchange project on William Faulkner, she accompanied the group. Having visited Moscow and other Russian cities in the 1950s, she became a leader of the delegation. She hosted events to introduce the Center to friends in Hattisburg, at her lodge and the Crosby Arboretum near Picayune, and during a Words & Music program in N ew Orleans. Until ill health kept her close to home after her 90th birthday, she continued to attend many Center programs in Oxford and elsewhere. Lucille Starnes Daniels January 15, 1915–February 9, 2007 Lafayette County, Mississippi Lucille Daniels and her late husband, Motee Daniels, were devoted supporters of the Center from 1978, when William Ferris came to interview for the job as its director. Since the first Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference in 1974, participants had visited the Daniels’ country store near Yocona, where Lucille offered cold drinks and supplies, and Motee entertained patrons with stories about being Faulkner’s bootlegger and other ventures. After mules disappeared from the county, Motee kept two or three in the nearby pasture for the benefit of visiting Faulkner fans. When Bill Ferris moved to Oxford, he took visitors to the store and to a cabin where they often had parties with dinner, live music, and dancing. As Bill wrote nearly 20 years later, their cabin “became a haven where we hosted Spring 2007
parties for dignitaries who visit the Center to learn about the South” and where we once “entertained international visitors from Africa, the Middle East, and Haiti.” The Lucille and Motee Daniels Endowment Fund, established in 1998 in honor of their friendship with Bill Ferris, provides an annual award for an outstanding Southern Studies graduate student paper. Keith Somerville Dockery McLean May 30, 1914–April 3, 2006 Cleveland, Mississippi Keith McLean, a founding member of the Center’s Advisory Committee, was an enthusiastic supporter and made frequent trips to Oxford and other locations to participate in Center
The Southern Register
Southern Register Spring 2k7
5/13/07
12:59 PM
activities. She seldom missed a conference, joined Southern Studies trips on the Delta Queen, was in Washington for the celebration of the publication of the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture at the Senate Office Building, and went to Moscow for the first Faulkner symposium sponsored by the Center and the Gorky Institute of World Literature. Recipient of the 1994 Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, a founding member of the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters, and a member of the National Council of the Metropolitan Opera, she especially encouraged Center programs in the literary, musical, and visual arts. Mississippi artist Bill Dunlap’s Fence Row: Stock Tracks, one of the few of her prized paintings she selected to take to her apartment after failing health required that she leave her home at Dockery Plantation, she bequeathed to the Center for display in the large lecture hall in Barnard Observatory, where it is enjoyed daily by students, faculty, and visitors. Frances Gregory Patterson August 11, 1916–October 3, 2006 Tupelo, Mississippi Frances Patterson—described in her hometown newspaper as elegant, articulate, direct, outspoken, and determined—was active in the arts, but her primary interest was education. She was an ardent supporter of her undergraduate alma mater, Mississippi University for Women, and of the University of Mississippi, where she earned an M.A. in education, with a concentration in teaching gifted
Page 13
children. A teacher in the Tupelo Public Schools for more than 30 years, she took the lead in developing a program for academically gifted students and was recognized for her outstanding work by her students, their parents, and the Mississippi Department of Education. Her enthusiasm for teaching literature and encouraging students was evident when she established and endowed the Eudora Welty Awards in Creative Writing, which are selected through a competition held in high schools throughout Mississippi and judged by faculty in the English Department at the University of Mississippi. The winners read their entries and receive cash awards, $500 for first prize and $250 for second, at the annual Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference. This legacy is an enduring one left by a founding member and two-time chair of the Center’s Advisory Committee.
In Memoriam Winthrop Jordan November 11, 1931–February 23, 2007 David Halberstam April 10, 1934–April 23, 2007
The Southern Register
Spring 2007
Mary Jayne Garrard Whittington August 13, 1915–November 14, 2006 Greenwood, Mississippi Mary Jayne Whittington spent her life promoting two of her great loves—the arts and the Delta. Her pioneering work in the arts included helping organize the Greenwood Little Theatre and build its playhouse, named for her husband W. M. Whittington Jr.; the Greenwood Foundation for the Arts and its annual festival; the town’s Cottonlandia Museum and its juried art competitions for Mississippi artists; and a longtime series that featured readings by state and visiting writers. She helped support these ventures with personal and family contributions and through a variety of activities, including staging mule races. She was also a writer, whose publications include Reveille, her memoir about serving as a WAC in the U.S. Army from 1942 to 1945, and a regular column in the Delta Review magazine in the 1960s and ’70s. To introduce the Center to the Delta and her Delta friends to the Center, she staged a weekend of arts events, parties, and tours, including a visit to the cotton cooperative Staplecotn and its grading rooms. This weekend provided an example for other members of the Center’s Advisory Committee, who staged similar occasions to spread the word about the Center and its programs. Mary Jayne Whittington was the recipient of the 1994 Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts and of widespread admiration for her tireless efforts to promote the arts and to introduce Southern culture in all its varieties. Page 13
Southern Register Spring 2k7
5/14/07
1:05 PM
Page 14
“Mississippi Reads” “Mississippi Reads” was recently initiated to encourage readers of all ages to read one specific book by a Mississippi author each year. The first book, the choice for 2007, is Go Down, Moses by William Faulkner. Set in the author’s mythic Yoknapatawpha County and the nearby Mississippi Delta, the book tells the story of the McCaslin family, both white and black, and explores race, love, marriage, land, environment, history, religion, and other major themes. The Mississippi Library Commission has publicized the project by distributing 800 posters and 30,000 bookmarks illustrated with a Faulkner portrait by photographer Jack Cofield and the covers of six vintage editions of Go Down, Moses published between 1942 and 1995. MLC is also circulating two traveling book club kits, which contain 20 copies of Go Down, Moses and other supporting materials. Many libraries and bookstores throughout the state are sponsoring discussion groups, readings, talks, and other programs about Go Down, Moses. Faulkner’s World: Photographs by Martin J. Dain, a traveling exhibition celebrating the author’s centennial in 1997, is making an encore tour in conjunction with the “Mississippi Reads” project. Accompanying the 40 photographs in the exhibition are a video about Faulkner and African American culture and a book of Dain’s Faulkner photographs published by the University Press of Mississippi. Financially assisted by the National Endowment for the Humanities through the Mississippi Humanities Council, the exhibition is traveling to libraries around the state. “Mississippi Reads” Contacts WEB SITE www.mississippireads.org E-MAIL misssissippireads@gmail.com
Page 14
Copies of the “Mississippi Reads” poster are available to individuals for $10.00 each plus $3.50 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 dates. Credit cards orders also may be made by calling 800-390-3527.
Mississippi Reads Spring 2007
The “Mississippi Reads” project is partially funded under the federal Library Services and Technology Act administered through the Mississippi Library Commission for the Institution of Museum and Library Services.
The Southern Register
Southern Register Spring 2k7
5/13/07
1:00 PM
Page 15
Photographer Melody Golding Documents Katrina in Exhibitions and Book
Melody Golding
Thao Thi Pham, Biloxi, Mississippi
The Southern Register
Melody Golding
Melody Golding, photographer from Vicksburg, went to the Mississippi Gulf Coast on September 7, 2005, as a volunteer for the American Red Cross to help Katrina victims. “I took all of the seats out of my suburban and filled it with bottled water, hundreds of MREs, first aid, and baby items,” she said. “I had thrown my camera in the car at the last moment and as I was assisting the storm’s victims I began to take photographs of the unbelievable destruction and devastation that I witnessed of the worst natural disaster recorded on U.S. soil.” Traveling to the Gulf Coast almost monthly for a more than a year after the disaster, Golding took thousands of images on film and digital stills and also recorded hours of video oral histories of what happened after Hurricane Katrina. “I have documented from Pascagoula to Pearlington, state line to state line,” she says. “Every faction of society is represented in my work—men, women, old, and young, African American, Asian American, Hispanic, and Caucasian. These images tell such a dramatic story that people everywhere should see them and know what happened on the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina.” Golding is seeing that the story is told. The Royal Photographic Society featured her images of Katrina in its October 2005 Journal, published in England and distributed through out the world. Mississippi Magazine featured the exhibition in the June 2006 issue. Golding’s photography exhibition Stark Exposures: Images of Katrina was presented at
Pearlie Goodman, Bay St. Louis, Mississippi
the Walter Anderson Museum of Art in Ocean Springs in the summer of 2006 and displayed in the rotunda of the Mississippi State Capitol in October 2006. Another exhibition, Katrina: Mississippi Women Remember, opened at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C., on March 9, 2007, and will remain on display through May. The 53 photographs in the exhibition are accompanied by a video with stories of Mississippi women who are survivors of the storm. Operatic soprano Lucia Lynn, a native of Mississippi, currently residing in Los Angeles, composed and performed “Song of Katrina” for the video chronicle. Golding’s photographs are featured in a new book, Katrina: Mississippi Women Remember, published by the University Press of Mississippi. Included with 70 photographs and accounts by almost 50 Gulf Coast women are essays by Mississippi authors Ellen Gilchrist, whose residence in Ocean Springs suffered damage, and Mary Anderson Pickard, whose home Katrina destroyed. The book is edited by Sally Pfister, a longtime community volunteer who lived in Ocean Springs and was one of the founding directors of the Mississippi State Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Royalties from book sales will benefit the MSC/NMWA Artists Relief Fund. Golding’s Katrina photographs will be displayed at the Gammill Gallery in Barnard Observatory in the summer of 2008. Spring 2007
Page 15
Southern Register Spring 2k7
5/13/07
1:22 PM
Page 16
Larry Brown | 24 Photographs by Tom Rankin
The first time I photographed Larry Brown was, I think, in 1993, in St. Peter’s cemetery in Oxford across the street from my house. He needed a new portrait for some reason, and we began by walking among the majestic cedars in the old section of the cemetery, with Larry commenting on the shape and girth and texture of nearly every tree we passed. He didn’t talk long before he was reminded of his place at Tula, what trees were there or the hardwoods he would plant in his own small attempt to resist the clearcutting of timber. We ended the photographing by taking some pictures on my front porch, Larry relaxed in the swing. Then, if memory serves me, we went and had a beer. I never intended to assemble a portfolio of photographs of Larry Brown. I sometimes took his picture when he needed one for a book jacket or some other promotional purpose. And I took pictures of him from time to time when we were together, riding or fishing or hunting. Many of the photographs I made of Larry, his family, and friends were made simply from the perspective of a friend. And they were taken for no apparent reason, other than to acknowledge a good moment, nice light, a well-lived afternoon. There are lots of moments, too, I spent with Larry that I wish I had photographed. I wished I’d photographed him playing his guitar for hours on end while we sat up all night to cook a pig. I wish I’d taken a picture of him minutes before his daughter’s wedding when he was sitting on the stoop at the back of church, strumming a few chords, seeming to try to relax his nerves before he walked down the aisle. I wish I’d taken pictures of him with his grandchildren. But I didn’t. These are among the many I took, and, like we all know but so often forget, they mean so much more to me now than they did when he was alive.
Page 16
With Lilly, Yocona, Mississippi, 1994, Silver gelatin print
Photographer, filmmaker, and folklorist Tom Rankin assembled 24 photographs of his longtime friend Larry Brown to exhibit in conjunction with the 2007 Oxford Conference for the Book, which took place at the University March 22–24 and was dedicated to the late author. Rankin has donated the exhibition photographs to the Southern Media Archive in the University’s John Davis Williams Library. The photographs will greatly enrich the Larry Brown books, papers, and other materials in the Library’s Department of Special Collections. Rankin is director of the Center for Documentary Studies and associate professor of the Practice of Art and Documentary Studies at Duke University. Before moving to North Carolina in 1998, he lived in Oxford and taught at the University of Mississippi. He currently chairs the Board of Trustees of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. His books include Sacred Space: Photographs from the Mississippi Delta, which received the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award for Photography; “Deaf Maggie Lee Sayre”: Photographs of a River Life; Faulkner’s World: The Photographs of Martin J. Dain; and Local Heroes Changing America: Indivisible.
Spring 2007
The Southern Register
Southern Register Spring 2k7
5/13/07
1:22 PM
Page 17
Just One More: A Musical Tribute to Larry Brown
With Jonny Miles, deer camp, Copiah County, Mississippi, 1997, Silver gelatin print
Just One More: A Musical Tribute to Larry Brown is a compilation of tunes by artists who were his friends, fans, and peers. With 18 tracks, 12 of which are previously unreleased, the album features a wide range of critically acclaimed artists, among them Alejandro Escovedo, T-Model Ford, Vic Chesnutt, Robert Earl Keen, and the North Mississippi Allstars to name a few. Also available is a special two-disc edition of Just One More featuring eight additional songs and a 12-page booklet with contributions from Clyde Edgerton, Jonny Miles, Tom Rankin, Madison Smartt Bell, and others. The bonus two-disc version is available at select bookstores and a few online retailers (including www.milesofmusic.com) until supplies run out. The official one-disc version is available in most record stores, as well as www.bloodshotrecords.com and the usual online sources.
Exhibition Schedule October 1–November 2, 2007 Meet the People behind the Food: The Southern Foodways Alliance Oral History Initiative at Year Three Photographs from the SFA’s Oral History Archive
March 19–May 23, 2007 Tom Rankin Portraits of Larry Brown May 25–August 17, 2007 Lisa Bourdeaux Percy Terra: A Delta Tango in Time
November 5, 2007–January 12, 2008 Southern Studies Documentary Students Photographs of Oxford, Mississippi
August 20–September 28, 2007 Todd Bertolaet, Bruce West, David Wharton First Anniversary: Photographs of the Mississippi Gulf Coast One Year after Hurricane Katrina
January 15–March 31, 2008 Rob McDonald Birdhouses
The Gammill Gallery, located in Barnard Observatory, is open Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m., except for University holidays. Telephone: 662-915-5993.
The Southern Register
Spring 2007
Page 17
Southern Register Spring 2k7
5/14/07
1:19 PM
Page 18
2007 Mississippi Delta Tennessee Williams Festival
Collection of Richard Freeman Leavitt
The 15th annual Mississippi Delta Tennessee Williams Festival will take place in Clarksdale on October 12–13, 2007. The festival will focus on Williams’s play The Night of the Iguana, which had its premiere on Broadway in 1961 and was adapted to film in 1964 and again in 2000. As in the past, the festival will include presentations by Williams authorities and friends, performances, screenings of Williams films, 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 $2,500 for the winners. Broadway stars Tammy Grimes, winner of two Tony Awards and a member of the America Theatre Hall of Fame, and actor/producer Joel Vig from Hairspray will return to present a one-act Williams drama with local thespians. Presenting staged readings and scenes from Iguana will be Theatre Oxford’s Johnny McPhail and Alice Walker and scholar/actress Ann Fisher-Wirth. Porch plays in Clarksdale’s historic neighborhood where the playwright spent his childhood will feature actress Janna Montgomery of Oxford, who also will sing blues ballads written by Williams at the festival’s Friday night reception. Williams authorities participating in the festival include
W. Kenneth Holditch of New Orleans; Thomas Keith, editor of New Directions Publishing of New York City; David Kaplan, director and founder of the Provincetown Williams Festival; Ralph Voss of the University of Alabama; and Colby Kullman, Travis Montgomery, and Anna Baker from the University of Mississippi. 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. Supported by grants from Coahoma Community College, the Mississippi Arts Commission, and the Mississippi Humanities Council, the festival is free and open to the public. For brochures and more information contact Coahoma Community College’s Public Relations Department at 662-621-4157. Page 18
Spring 2007
The Southern Register
Southern Register Spring 2k7
5/13/07
1:01 PM
Page 19
Tennessee Williams Tribute in Columbus Columbus, Mississippi, will sponsor the sixth Tennessee Williams Tribute and Tour of Victorian Homes September 4–9, 2007. As the birthplace of Thomas Lanier Williams, Columbus is one of four sites in the United States—New Orleans (March), Clarksdale, Mississippi (October), and Provincetown, Massachusetts (September)—that honor the great American playwright with an annual festival. The 2007 Columbus Tribute will offer performances of four one-act plays—A Tennessee Suite: The Traveling Companion, The Chalky White Substance, Summer at the Lake, and I Can’t Imagine Tomorrow—and an original monologue, “A Woman to Watch.” The monologue tells about Irene Selsnick’s being named producer of the initial production of A Streetcar Named Desire. The program will include six lectures on Friday and Saturday at the Mississippi University for Women. Scholars Ralph Voss (University of Alabama), Joan Wylie Hall (University of Mississippi), Steve Pieschel (Mississippi University for Women), and Kenneth Holditch (University of New Orleans) will give presentations, as will actor Jeremy Lawrence, and the winner of a graduate competition of scholarly papers. Colby Kullman of the University of Mississippi will provide commentary on Yellow Bird and Eccentricities of a Nightingale following a screening of the two films. On Friday and Saturday, luncheons in an 1879 landmark home and a notable local restaurant will preface the gala Moon Lake Party on Saturday evening with a Southern Soul Food Supper and after-dinner entertainment by New York scholar, playwright, and actor Jeremy Lawrence in his oneman show Talking Tennessee. On Sunday, visitors are invited to St. Paul’s Episcopal Church where Williams’s grandfather, the Reverend Walter Dakin, served as rector and where Williams was baptized in 1911. The sermon by Reverend James Carlyle will be based on a theme from A Streetcar Named Desire. After a Southern luncheon at the church, visitors may tour Victorian homes of Columbus that illustrate the preservation of the Williams home, which serves as the Columbus Welcome Center and is designated as a National Literary Landmark in this Preserve America City. Information about all activities of the Tennessee Williams Tribute and Tour of Victorian Homes may be found by visiting www.muw.edu/tennesseewilliams/, by calling 800327-2686, or by writing TWT and Tour, Tennessee Williams Welcome Center, 300 Main Street, Columbus, MS 39701.
The Southern Register
Spring 2007
Tennessee Williams Tribute & Tour of Victorian Homes September 4-9, 2007 Columbus, Mississippi Birthplace of poet, author, and playwright Tennessee Williams To order a brochure call 1-662-328-0222 or e-mail sbcaradine@cableone.net for information and tickets. www.muw.edu/tennesseewilliams/ Page 19
Southern Register Spring 2k7
5/13/07
1:01 PM
Page 20
Three New SFA Oral History Projects Online Interviews and photographs by Amy Evans Amy Evans, oral historian for the Southern Foodways Alliance, has traveled the back roads of nine Southern states over the past three years, documenting the foodways—the traditions, the tools, and the people—of the South. She has gathered a myriad of stories, from harvesting oysters in Charleston to curing bacon in Kentucky. As a result, the SFA’s online archive contains more than 200 interviews with pitmasters, fisherfolk, bartenders, and other Southerners who are the keepers of the stories behind the food. The SFA’s three newest projects—BBQ, Boudin, and Gumbo Trails—are designed not only to collect oral histories related to Southern food, but to support and inspire culinary tourism throughout the region. To view all SFA oral history projects, please visit www.southernfoodways.com. BBQ Trail www.southernbbqtrail.com The Southern Foodways Alliance and Jim ’N Nick’s Bar-B-Q invite you to set out on the BBQ trail and meet a plethora of folks along the way. Meet Susie Headrick, who taught her family about cooking BBQ when they purchased the Green Top. Learn about the origins of the sauce that’s made every week at Top Hatt Barbecue. Visit Chuck’s Bar-B-Que, where you belly will be filled with pork and your soul with gospel.
pot and all that [is]. But we’ve got three huge pits now. And it just started growing. When we had been here just a little while it started growing.” —SUSIE HEADRICK, LEO & SUSIE’S FAMOUS GREEN TOP BAR-B-QUE, DORA, ALABAMA Boudin Trail www.southernboudintrail.com
Gumbo Trail www.southerngumbotrail.com The folks at McIlhenny also sponsor the Gumbo Trail. Learn how to make roux with Billy Grueber from Luizza’s by the Track. Meet Lionel Key, an artisan whose uncle taught him to make file from sassafras leaves. And then visit with the Olivier family for supper, where you just might find three different versions of gumbo on the table.
The McIlhenny Company, maker of Tabasco, invites you to explore the Boudin Trail. Visit T-Boy’s Slaughterhouse, one of the last of its kind, where the boudin is as fresh as it can get. Learn about the days when casings were stuffed using cow horns from Jimmy Guidry, the boudin maker at Don’s Specialty Meats. Visit with Robert Cormier, coowner of The Best Stop, who has traced his Cajun heritage back a handful of generations to family in Nova Scotia.
“Well, of course, we have a lot of different parts to boudin that makes a large difference. One of the things that I always say that makes a big difference is fresh meat. When you get some meat that’s been killed in Kansas City somewhere and get it shipped in a box, and you’re not sure how old it is and so forth, your boudin is not going to taste as good as some that’s been killed and de-boned and cooked and put in boudin right away.”
“When we first got it, it had one little pit out there. And it’s covered up now by the cabinet where the coffee
—T-BOY BERZAS, T-BOY’S SLAUGHTERHOUSE, MAMOU, LOUISIANA
Page 20
Spring 2007
“[My gumbo recipe] came from my mother. It’s just something that’s handed down, and I’m very proud of it—that I happened to learn it, you know, from her because I know it came from her mother and that whole area [in south-central Louisiana], so I really feel honored that I was able to—as a kid—learn something about this.” —BILLY GRUEBER, LIUZZA’S BY THE TRACK, NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA All Trails include oral histories, photos, film snippets, audio clips, and interactive maps for hungry travelers. So grab a fork and go!
The Southern Register
Southern Register Spring 2k7
5/13/07
1:01 PM
Page 21
SOUTHERN FOODWAYS REGISTER The Newsletter of the Souther n Foo dways Alliance
Letter from the President Hot off the Griddle Three books—and two journals— just came across the Southern Foodways Alliance transom. We thought you would like to know about the texts Texas Cowboy Cookbook: A History in Recipes and Photos, by Robb Walsh, and Moonshine!: Recipes, Tall Tales, Drinking Songs, Historical Stuff, KneeSlappers, Recoverin’ the Next Day, Pleasin’ the Law, How to Make It, and How to Drink It, by Matthew Rowley. As for those journals, the Winter 2007 edition of the Southern Quarterly is chockablock with foodstuffs, including essays by Jessica Harris, Gerald Patout, and Amy Evans. Order your copy at www.usm.edu/soq. And be on the lookout for Mixologist: The Journal of the American Cocktail. Volume 2 includes a meditation on ice by Audrey Saunders. E-mail mixellany@mac.com for copies.
This year began with a productive Atlanta SFA board of directors retreat on January 6–7, organized by vice president, Angie Mosier, and hosted by Linton and Gina Hopkins, chef and owners of the stylish and delicious Restaurant Eugene. We worked hard, folks, but amazing meals of homemade scones and biscuits, a citrusladen trifle, Benton’s bacon (only two pieces each, please—hold back, Brett Anderson!), and a scrumptious lunch of shrimp and grits kept us sustained as we reviewed long-range plans and discussed goals and programs for the coming year. A highlight of the weekend included the first SFA Potlikker Film Festival at Atlanta’s Sweetwater Brewery, featuring three films by SFA filmmaker Joe York. The sold-out event brought us many new Atlanta members, who were introduced to us by way of mouth-watering movie concessions, including pig on a stick and potlikker shots. Our plates are full this year: The first annual gathering of the Fellowship of Southern Artisans and Chefs was celebrated at Blackberry Farm on February 24. And we recently completed work Willie Mae Seaton’s New Orleans home and restaurant and toasted the work of John Currence at an April 1 dinner at Rio Mar in New Orleans. Camp Shoals, the first of SFA’s two day camps for 2007, was held April 20–21 in and around Florence and Tuscumbia, Alabama, and Camp Carolina will take place September 7–8 in and around Chapel Hill. And then there’s the June 22–24 Field Trip to Charleston, South Carolina, and a July 21 Potlikker Film Festival in Houston, Texas. Meanwhile, planning is under way for foodways lectureships, classes, and seminars at the University of Mississippi, and Melissa Hall will join the SFA staff as a full-time communications staffer this year. Last, Adrian Miller and his committee members are hard at work organizing an extra special fall SFA symposium, which will mark the 10th anniversary centerpiece of our programs. As you can see, the “state” of the SFA is great, and we count on your financial support to make our work possible. Thank you for your loyal friendship and enthusiasm. Please contact me, if you’d like to learn more about the SFA or share a suggestion. I look forward to seeing you soon. MARCIE COHEN FERRIS FERRISM@EMAIL.UNC.EDU
SFA Contributors Timothy C. Davis is a Charlotte, North Carolina, native currently living in N orth Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. An MFA student at Queens University, he has written for magazines including Saveur, Christian Science Monitor, and Mother Jones. Amy Evans is oral historian for the Southern Foodways Alliance. She is also an exhibiting artist, freelance photographer, and cofounder of PieceWorks, a nonprofit arts and outreach organization.
Marcie Cohen Ferris, SFA president, is assistant professor of American Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is author of Matzoh Ball Gumbo: Culinary Tales of the Jewish South. Melissa Booth Hall assists with communications and outreach for SFA. She is a graduate of Centre College and of Salmon P. Chase College of Law. She has worked as a public defender, a stay-at-home mom, and an instructor in the Paralegal Studies Program at the
University of Mississippi. At long last, she has figured out a way to parlay her passion for food into a profession. Thomas Head writes regularly for the Washingtonian and other publications on food, drink, and travel. Angie Mosier, SFA vice president, is a freelance writer and food stylist.
Southern Register Spring 2k7
5/13/07
1:02 PM
Page 22
Spotlight on Charleston: SFA Founder Louis Osteen Louis Osteen
Photo courtesy Louis Osteen
Louis Osteen of Louis’s at Pawley’s in Pawley’s Island, South Carolina, has been called many things over the years: the father of Lowcountry cuisine, a groundbreaker in popularizing regional foodstuffs, and a James Beard Best Chef Southeast 2004, to name but a few. But Osteen, a founding member of the Southern Foodways Alliance, a recent inductee into the Fellowship of Southern Chefs, Artisans, and Farmers at the Blackberry Farm 2007 Taste of the South Gala, and a towering figure in American cuisine no matter the region, doesn’t suffer foodies—or better put, food snobs—gladly. “I always realized that there was good food and not-so-good food, depending on who made it,” Osteen says. “I began worrying about that kind of stuff in high school when I worked at my family’s drive-in theater—that I could affect how the hamburgers and French fries came out.” “I think I became regional—like a lot of people—in the early 1980s,” he says. “My beginnings were in a French kitchen and those guys were tough on American food. Back then it was all
‘hamburgers and Coca-Cola.’” Osteen’s knack is for combining French techniques with typical Lowcountry, coastal Carolina ingredients—rice, sweet onions, fish, shellfish, and oysters. “All regional cuisine is that byproduct of the heritage of the regional population as well as the stuff that grows there,” says Osteen. “[Which is] all very logical, but exploring these backgrounds a little makes for some interesting items. Most all of the kitchen techniques that we use relate back to their classic French cousins.” Osteen has built a bustling “offseason” business in Pawley’s with nightly and weekend specials geared to
locals—his fried chicken Sundays are legendary from Myrtle Beach to Charleston. He’s also opened a supercasual, funky eatery on the same property called the Fish Camp Bar—a place where, more often than not, you can find Osteen and/or his wife, Marlene, eating lunch. “Sort of like how regional food evolves because of place, so does the clientele,” says Osteen. “Just makes sense to feed who’s there.” Of the Fish Camp Bar, Osteen says that “we all know that ‘fine dining’ is challenged, so it seemed time to relax a notch.” One thing that won’t change, according to Osteen, is the focus on local and regional ingredients. “We buy a great deal of local fish and seafood,” he says. “We’d like to buy more produce locally, but it’s difficult. . . . When I first moved to the South Carolina coast, there were six processors of South Carolina crabmeat. Now, there are none. I think that’s a real shame.” Which is just like Osteen, you understand: thinking locally, and, as a result, acting globally.
TIMOTHY C. DAVIS
More Accolades for SFA’s Oral Historian Amy Evans SFA members know about the consistently excellent work of oral historian Amy Evans. Her comprehensive, vibrant, and thoughtful work with SFA oral history subjects gives life to our mission. Evans’s work regularly draws accolades from her fellow academics and historians. This year is no exception. The Mississippi Delta Hot Tamale Trail is the recipient of the 2006 Elbert R. Hilliard Award for Outstanding Oral History Project, which is awarded by the Mississippi Historical Society. From the award letter: “This award, which carries a $300 cash gift, was established by the Mississippi Historical Society to recognize oral history projects exemplifying a distinguished collection, high-quality preservation, and proper use of oral history.” Look for new oral histories to be
added to the Tamale Trail this summer. Amy presented the Tamale Trail to the Society of Mississippi Archivists, who held their annual conference at the University of Mississippi on April 19. As a result, the Southern Foodways Alliance is now an active member of the Society of Mississippi Archivists, with Amy serving as its representative. Can’t get enough tamales? SFA member Brooks Hamaker wrote a tamale piece for Relish, a weekly newspaper insert delivered to nearly 6 million homes. Since the article, Amy has been inundated with requests for tamale information from hungry readers across the country. Alton Brown of the show Good Eats made a recent stop on the Tamale Trail, collecting footage for his other Food Network show Feasting on Asphalt.
Look for the tamale episode to air in early August. This summer, Travel+Leisure will highlight Mississippi tamales and Amy’s work on the Tamale Trail. Meanwhile, the SFA collaborated with the American Studies department at the University of Texas and the Central Texas Barbecue Association for the Texas leg of our Southern BBQ Trail. Dr. Elizabeth Engelhardt has dedicated her graduate level American Foodways class solely to the collection of oral history interviews relating to the tradition and craft of barbecue in and around Austin. Evans traveled to Austin in January to speak with the class about the project and conducting fieldwork. Visit the project online at www.southernbbqtrail.com. MELISSA BOOTH HALL
Southern Register Spring 2k7
5/13/07
1:02 PM
Page 23
Bowen’s Island Oral History Project
Southern Foodways Alliance name company address
M E M B E R S H I P Please make checks payable to the Southern Foodways Alliance and mail them to the Center for the Study of Southern Culture University, MS 38677.
city
state
telephone
fax
zip
❏ $50 student ❏ $75 individual ❏ $100 family ❏ $200 nonprofit institution ❏ $500 corporation
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, VISIT US AT OUR WEB SITE: www.southrnfoodways.com or call John T. Edge, SFA Director, at 662.915.5993 or via e-mail at johnt@olemiss.edu
Amy Evans
To the uninitiated, the oyster joint on Bowen’s Island near Charleston, South Carolina, was a curiosity of sorts—an aging pile of cinderblocks and boards plastered with layers of graffiti. Inside the bivalves were cooked on a flattop that resembled a sacrificial altar. To legions of loyal customers, the place could hardly be called a restaurant. It was a state of mind. In 2006, as Bowen’s Island Restaurant celebrated its 60th anniversary, Robert Barber accepted a James Beard America’s Classic Award. Five months later the restaurant—started by his late grandmother, May Bowen—burned to the ground. What remained were the stories. May Bowen, a hairdresser, and her husband, Jimmy, a printer, wanted to start a business of their own near their home in Charleston. In the early 1940s they Oyster picker Victor “Goat” Lafayette bringing in his day’s harvest opened a Folly Beach restaurant, Bob’s Lunch, named after May’s son. They served seafood, meat-and-threes, and May’s homemade pies. In 1946 the Bowens purchased a small “Goat” Lafayette started bringing oysters to May Bowen when he 14-acre inlet island at the end of James Island, just north of Folly was a kid. De facto manager Jack London found respite on Beach. They built a road to the island and, near the end of the Bowen’s Island after years in the shrimping business. Longtime road, a house. As fishermen began docking on their shore, the customer Paula Byers celebrated her daughter’s wedding at island became known as Bowen’s Island. When fishermen started Bowen’s Island; Robert Barber, an ordained minister, performed asking May Bowen to cook their catch, a restaurant was born. the ceremony. Bowen’s Island Restaurant began as a simple cinderblock After three months of construction, Bowen’s Island building, where oysters were roasted and shrimp were fried. Word Restaurant has reopened. Fresh oysters are being brought in spread quickly. Oyster pickers brought in their catch to sell, and from the marshes, new walls are ready to receive their marks, Citadel cadets filled the small dining room on Friday nights. As and new memories are already being made. the place became more popular, the Bowens added rooms and Fall into the Bowen’s Island state of mind when we visit built decks. Customers added contributions, too. In time, 60 years this legendary haunt as part of our June Field Trip. Visit the of graffiti covered the walls—and the chairs, and the jukebox, oral history project online at www.southernfoodways.com. and May’s vintage hair-curling machine over in the corner. Sixty years of stories have now been collected as part of the AMY EVANS SFA’s Bowen’s Island Oral History Project. Oyster picker Victor
Southern Register Spring 2k7
5/13/07
1:02 PM
Page 24
SFA Member Reid Mizell Continues the Discussion Arthur Clement
“Surfing the internet; that’s how I found the SFA,” says Reid Mizell, longtime member and CEO of Tula, a hip marketing firm in Atlanta, Georgia. “I was researching something for a client and stumbled upon the SFA Web site. I guess I have attended about seven symposia so far.” It’s fun to find out how folks happen upon our group. Some are led by a friend, some attended Ole Miss, some find it through their jobs in the food business, and then there are those, like Mizell, who see a blurb on the Web or a snippet in a magazine. The draw was instant. “My family has been in the South for 300 years. We can literally visit grave sites of relatives that have been here that long. I always wanted my children to feel a connection to their homeland and so we have taken the trips, told them stories and they know their relatives and how the food I grew up eating in Athens, Alabama, tastes. It is important to me.” When she first joined the group, she knew that, beyond the eating, there would be some heady talk about tradition and history. Mizell also knew that the group’s mission statement promised to explore the diverse food cultures of the American South. “I was excited about that prospect because my experience with gatherings in the South has been that the race talk was in that big bucket of things that you don’t talk about,” says Mizell. “I always hated that about most Southern gatherings, so when it started coming up at SFA meetings, I really tuned in and fell in love with the group.” A few years back when the SFA declared that an entire year’s programming would be “Southern Food in Black and White,” Mizell was ready: “Ever since I was a teenager I have been trying to reach for a level of conversation regarding race relations that will help me move forward and become more aware of the struggle and how to make that struggle easier. It’s about personal reconciliation as well as the state of a culture that you love. Talking about it allows you to move
Guests enjoying “Sunday Supper” at Reid Mizell’s home
forward. We have a shared history and it makes us understand our own story better to hear what others have experienced. We shouldn’t just assume that someone has a certain story because they grew up white in the South or whether they grew up black in the South. We should hear the stories to get the picture.” Following the “Black and White” symposium, program chair Adrian Miller challenged attendees to return home, gather friends, black and white, around a table, and continuing the discussion. Mizell took the lead: “I decided to invite friends, black and white—an even number of both—and young as well as mature,” says. We had 20-somethings and 40- and 50somethings there. We chose to make the theme, ‘Sunday Supper’ and asked folks to bring something they might eat after church on Sunday. We enjoyed fried chicken, ribs, tomato casserole, pound cake, sweet tea, Cokes in little bottles, things like that. Everyone loved it and it proved that we eat the same and share the fun and fellowship
that comes from gathering together in the same way. We spoke about the past and found that our children (the 20somethings) were interested to hear that each of us (the older folks) all had some kind of link to a farm or a garden in their past. They don’t have that memory at all and it sort of shocked us to find that we are loosing that link to the land so quickly. We hope to host another dinner soon.” Asked whether the Southern Foodways Alliance should continue to engage dialogue about racial reconciliation, Mizell enthusiastically says, “Yes! You know there was a level of emotional resonance at the ‘Black and White’ symposium. We came away feeling full spiritually and I think we need to revisit the subject in some way every time. I believe that continuing the talk will anchor our ideas that ‘food as culture’ is more than sharing stories and recipes. While those things are important, there is more; there is rich ground to explore out there.” ANGIE MOSIER
Southern Register Spring 2k7
5/13/07
1:25 PM
Page 25
Reading the South Memoirs.
By Tennessee Williams. New York: New Directions, 2006. 274 pages, 143 photographs. $16.95 paper. So much has changed since Tennessee Williams published his Memoirs in 1975. Reviewing it in the New York Times, Robert Brustein wrote: “The love that previously dared not speak its name has now grown hoarse from screaming it.” In her afterword to this 2006 new edition of Williams’s Memoirs, Allean Hale writes that 30 years ago she reviewed the autobiography, beginning with this “dreadful” comment: “Now comes Tennessee Williams’s Memoir, and if he has not exactly opened his heart, he has opened his fly.” She now explains: “This judgment reflected many of the reviews of the day that concentrated on the book’s shock value. In free-from-shock 2006 the nonstop sexual cruising sounds almost like wholesome exercise.” Who better than John Waters to introduce this edition of the Memoirs, as Waters confesses in his introduction that he made Tennessee Williams his “armchair” childhood friend by celebrating “another world that Tennessee Williams knew about, a universe filled with special people who didn’t want to be a part of this dreary conformist life that I was told I had to join.” At the beginning of his Memoirs, Williams asks: “Shall I attempt to entertain you . . . with my theatre or my life . . . ?” Here is the life. Williams’s Memoirs is a universe filled with special people: the known and the unknown, the conformists and the nonconformists, creatures of the flesh and angels of the spirits, those who are bought and those who do the buying, and even the fugitive kind. Here, he is to be found meditating with Christopher Isherwood at a Hollywood monastery, spending a productive summer with Carson McCullers on Nantucket, falling into a depression by Audrey Wood’s comment that Ten Blocks on the Camino Real needed to be put away (“don’t let anybody see it”), celebrating life in Sicily with his true love Frank Merlo, and traveling with his grandfather who “all his life had been in love with life” and found “everything pleased him.” Dozens of photographs are part of the fascination of Williams’s Memoirs, for we see him as a young man with his brother, Dakin, in the Ozarks, with the staff of The Eliot (campus magazine at Washington University, St. Louis), on the Lido with Maria St. Just, with Carson McCullers in Key West, with
Irene Selznick and Margo Jones at the time of Summer and Smoke, with Tallulah Bankhead during a rehearsal for the 1955 revival of Streetcar, with Anna Magnani aboard the Andrea Doria, and in his first and last appearance as an actor (“Doc” in Small Craft Warnings). Some of the conversations reported are not to be forgotten. On meeting Tennessee Williams’s mother backstage after having just performed as Amanda Wingfield, Laurette Taylor asks her: “Well, . . . how did you like yourself?” When Mrs. Williams innocently responds with “Myself?”, Taylor continues: “You notice these bangs I wear? I have to wear them playing this part because it’s the part of a fool, and I have a high, intellectual forehead.” Fortunately, Williams’s mother was “so bedazzled” by Taylor’s “somewhat supernatural quality on a stage” that she did not pick up on the remark. Playing with time as he does in so many of his plays, Williams gives us a vision of his past as portrayed in his present, with various notes and observations on his future. This technique works most effectively as the rapid scene changes require an active, alert participation from
Book Reviews and Notes by Faculty, Staff, Students, and Friends of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture
The Southern Register
Spring 2007
Page 25
Southern Register Spring 2k7
5/13/07
1:03 PM
Page 26
Reading the South continued every reader. While deciding to take a role in his own play Small Craft Warnings “as a way to draw people to the play,” Williams precedes this present event with a story of the past in which he and fellow University of Missouri friend Smitty went to a sort of speakeasy identical to the one he depicts in Orpheus Descending: “A longsloping hill was dotted with little gazebos in which the home brew was served and in which couples would carry on. The gazebos were lighted by tissue paper lanterns, and one by one these lanterns would be extinguished.” Following his inthe-present comment about his decision to join the cast of Small Craft Warnings, Williams gives us the story of his “poignant and innocent love affair” with charming, University of Missouri Chi Omega Anna Jean. Moving into the future is never a problem: “I do have plans for the near future in addition to the inevitable one of death. I will move to Southern Italy or Sicily and I will fulfill my promise to acquire a nice bit of land on which to raise goats and geese and to finish one more play.” Why not dream, Williams asks, explaining that “a persistent dream has meaning, and is sometimes fulfilled.” Of great value are his many comments concerning what it is like being a writer: “I would say it is like being free. . . . To be free is to have achieved your life. . . . It means the freedom to stop when you please, to go where and when you please, it means to be voyager here and there, . . . And someone has wisely observed, if you can’t be yourself, what’s the point of being anything at all?” Williams wisely concludes his Memoirs in the present moment with a story about bringing his beloved sister Rose to New York City for three days beginning with New Year’s Day 1975. The high-
Page 26
light of her visit was definitely watching Fellini’s film Amarcord, which she later proclaimed as: “That wonderful movie!” Calling her affectionately the “soi-disant Queen of England,” he observes: “In any case, you couldn’t ask for a sweeter or more benign monarch than Rose, or, in my opinion, one that’s more a lady. After all, high station in life is earned by gallantry with which appalling experiences are survived with grace.” Like his sister, Williams survived a lifetime of appalling experiences with grace. COLBY H. KULLMAN
William Faulkner and Joan Williams: The Romance of Two Writers.
By Lisa C. Hickman. Foreword by Richard Bausch. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2006. 218 pages. $35.00 paper. William Faulkner’s ability to create a story from many voices is unsurpassed. The Sound and the Fury is as much Benjy Compson’s book as Quentin’s; and As I Lay Dying balances Darl Bundren’s poetic philosophizing with Cora Tull’s worries about cakes and hen’s eggs. In relating the real-life romance of Faulkner and Joan Williams, Lisa Hickman takes a similar approach. Juxtaposing passages from the hundreds of letters exchanged by the two writers, she provides the fullest available account of their complex and troubling relationship. The letters are so rich in drama that Hickman originally hoped to publish an edition of the Faulkner-Williams correspondence. As she explains in the preface, however, “The project took shape through a melding of letters, interviews, Joan’s published and unpublished material, and
Spring 2007
existing biographical and scholarly resources.” Hickman brought the combined skills of a journalist and a scholar to the task. Unlike Faulkner’s biographers, she had unprecedented access to Williams’s perspective. The women met in 1993 when Hickman was writing about Faulkner’s psychiatrists for Memphis magazine; in the years that followed, they became friends. Eventually, they decided that Hickman would undertake the research that resulted in her 2003 University of Mississippi doctoral dissertation, “Lonesome Spirits: William Faulkner and Joan Williams.” Williams died the next year, at 75. In revising the study for publication, Hickman aimed not only to present the facts of the FaulknerWilliams relationship to a larger audience but also to attract new readers for Joan Williams’s fiction. As the subtitle The Romance of Two Writers makes clear, Hickman has great respect for Williams’s literary art. She emphasizes that the teenaged Williams won Mademoiselle magazine’s College Fiction Award before she met Faulkner; and her first novel, The Morning and the Evening (1961), appeared long after the intense relationship of
The Southern Register
Southern Register Spring 2k7
5/13/07
1:03 PM
Page 27
Reading the South continued 1949–1953—when Joan was 21 to 25—had ended. Hickman cites Joyce Carol Oates, Doris Betts, Robert Penn Warren, and other well-known authors who favorably reviewed Williams’s books. For Hickman, Williams’s fiction “easily matches that of Katherine Anne Porter, Elizabeth Spencer, Carson McCullers, Eudora Welty, Lee Smith, Ellen Douglas and Ellen Gilchrist, among others, yet her stature as a writer has been stunted by her connection with Faulkner.” Many readers would give a higher ranking to at least a few of these authors; but Williams’s place in the tradition of Southern women writers has undeniably been neglected. Even though she left her Memphis home to study, work, marry, and raise a family in New York and Connecticut, Williams spent most summers in a cabin in north Mississippi to stay close to the landscapes that inspired her five novels and her short-story collection. She regretted that Faulkner did not direct her toward the works of Welty and other women who were as absorbed as she was in the lives of country people. Interviewed by Hickman, Williams said that Faulkner did not teach her much about writing: “Maybe most really good writers are probably not really good teachers.” Instead of suggesting ways she might revise her prose, Faulkner would typically “take things and rewrite them and then I would feel it wasn’t mine.” Williams does credit Faulkner with teaching her never to give up on her work, but Hickman believes she already had the necessary “tenacity” before Faulkner fell in love with her.
The Southern Register
Spring 2007
Page 27
Southern Register Spring 2k7
5/13/07
1:03 PM
Page 28
Reading the South continued Hickman stresses that Faulkner’s attraction to Williams was unique among his several attachments to younger women (Meta Carpenter, Ruth Ford, Jean Stein, Else Jonsson, and others): “Only in this relationship with Joan Williams did Faulkner’s personal desires comingle with an opportunity to mentor a talented young writer.” Despite an age difference of more than 30 years, the two were alike in their lifelong “sense of loneliness,” their susceptibility to depression, a sensitivity to “the suffering of others,” and “a love for their kindred South,” says Hickman. Yet, their expectations for the relationship were very different. In long talks with Hickman, Williams downplayed “Faulkner’s fervent sexuality. If she could recast the story, the affair would have remained unconsummated. Faulkner would be pining while Joan learned what she could from the master.” Williams told Hickman that, although she never felt “manipulated” by Faulkner, he did press her strongly to reject her 1950s middle-class mores and engage in a physical relationship. In emotional and erotic letters, Faulkner suggested that her reticence was responsible for his recurring depression and alcoholic binges. Adding to the pressure, he claimed that a sexual affair would cause her writer’s block to melt. They finally made love for the first time on June 17, 1952, and that summer Faulkner gave Williams the manuscript of The Sound and the Fury; nevertheless, he continued to accuse her of failing to match his passion. Hickman describes Williams’s “gradual drifting away” from Faulkner after she met the magazine writer Ezra Bowen in September 1953; the young couple married the next spring. Ironically, it was Bowen who “really made me a writer,”
Page 28
Williams told Hickman. The son of biographer Catherine Drinker Bowen, he encouraged Williams to reserve each morning for writing “and saw to it that she always had live-in help with the house and children.” In 1971, nine years after Faulkner’s death, Joan Williams published The Wintering, a fictionalized account of their affair. Hickman finds “a strange and persistent detachment” in the book, “despite the polished prose.” She speculates that “the detachment might be attributed to the challenge of taking an essentially biographical story and attempting to recast it as fiction.” I prefer to think that Williams was finally able to distance herself from a relationship that was, in fact, often manipulative. During the early 1950s, Faulkner had urged her to write a novel about the two of them; he recommended that she name her alter ego Laurel Wynn. Instead, Williams called the young protagonist Amy Howard—a name of her own for a story that she told only when she was ready. In Hickman’s compassionate study, Williams takes a further step out of Faulkner’s confining shadow. JOAN WYLIE HALL
Conversations with Larry Brown.
Edited by Jay Watson. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007. 240 pages. $50.00 unjacketed cloth, $20.00 paper. In a 15-year period beginning in 1988, Mississippi native Larry Brown (1951–2004) published two collections of short stories, five novels, a memoir, and a collection of essays. Two of his novels, Joe and Father and Son, won the Southern
Spring 2007
Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. Brown wrote with compassion, humor, and unflinching honesty about the struggles of rural and small-town working-class Southerners. Twenty-nine years old when his writing career began, Brown with his plainspoken style, sharp eye for detail, and keen ear for dialogue quickly established him as one of the most respected and compelling new voices in contemporary Southern literature. Conversations with Larry Brown brings together 17 interviews Brown gave between 1988 and 2004. The collection includes interview material from a full-length film documentary about Brown’s life and work, as well as two previously unpublished pieces. Across these conversations, Brown offers insights into all of his books and several of his short stories. He discusses his childhood in rural Lafayette County and in Memphis, his experiences as a U.S. Marine and an Oxford firefighter, and his difficult apprenticeship as a writer. He pays tribute to important literary influences—Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, Cormac McCarthy, and Harry Crews, among others—and
The Southern Register
Southern Register Spring 2k7
5/14/07
1:22 PM
Page 29
Southern Register Spring 2k7
5/13/07
1:04 PM
Page 30
Reading the South continued comments on the influence of film, music, and the Southern oral tradition on his work. He discusses his art of “sandbagging” his characters—heaping adversity upon them to see how they will react— and speaks powerfully and eloquently about his love for the rural landscapes of north Mississippi and the changes they underwent during his lifetime. Jay Watson, associate professor of English at the University of Mississippi and the author of a scholarly work on William Faulkner, provides an illuminating introduction to the collection and a chronology of Brown’s life and work.
because, regardless of what I learned in that forest, these trees will be razed, trunks sold, branches burned, unseen creatures hurt. Olson’s work is deceptively poignant; his poems are often short vignettes of tales that don’t always reveal the entire picture, leaving readers to wonder. As in “Dream in the Dark,” metaphors are blended into images that suddenly emerge with their own meaning.
STEVE YATES
Breathing in Darkness.
By Ted Olson. Nicholasville, Kentucky: Wind Publications, 2006. 128 pages. $15.00 paper. In a “dark world” of his choosing, Appalachian-based poet Ted Olson reveals a tremendous amount of light along the “one-way hills” in his latest collection of poems, Breathing in Darkness. Olson is a writer of many hats: A musician and music chronicler, nature writer, folklorist, and editor of several anthologies, he possesses the rare and incisive talent of a surveyor in the natural world, or a conjurer in a literary world of his own making. He blurs the lines between seeing and believing, and the delight in making ordinary discoveries unique. In “Ripeness Is All,” A bramble rests on a train rail: rustcolored blackberries tremble. While crossing the tracks, a man stumbles into the sun— a ripe one!
Page 30
The first four sections of this new collection draw from Olson’s deeply rooted experiences in nature, along creeks and rivers, and often in the shadowy forests; the memories of childhood still linger like historical signs—searching to reconcile with his father. In one of the collection’s most compelling pieces, “Looking for Deer,” Olson returns to his childhood home “beyond the edge/of the county seat,” where he recalls seeing deer for the first time. The image of the forest, though, is wonderfully juxtaposed with the cinder-block walls of his windowless bedroom and his escape to “where I was not/supposed to go.” Olson’s encounter with a buck in the darkness is not as forbidding as his disobedience of his father’s orders: then one day despite my fears I ran away again.
When I awoke, I saw my shadow climbing down the wall—cast there curiously, by the sun. The fifth section deals with unions and relationships between men and women, “gifts” that either rescue or chronicle a lover’s disappearance into a blizzard without a sweater. In “TVA Blues,” two lovers recall their last tryst on a boulder that now lies below a lake. Like Robinson Jeffers’s work, Olson’s poetry is not deluded by dreams, but challenged by their premises. Yet there is also a mystic element to Olson’s compelling work, a yearning as old and searching as Rumi or, as he writes in “Those Weren’t My Words,” (my vain attempt to live again in nature’s way). JEFF BIGGERS
Returning to sell his homeplace as an adult, Olson declares: I won’t tell them about the buck
Spring 2007
The Southern Register
Southern Register Spring 2k7
5/13/07
1:04 PM
Page 31
2007 Young Authors Fair Sarah Frances Hardy
Junior Auxiliary members Amy Harbison (left) and Heather Trost with students (from left) Annabel Terry, Ellie Hinton, and Virginia Perkinson, ready to serve refreshments for after-school autograph party at Square Books Jr.
Sarah Frances Hardy
The 2007 Young Authors Fair held in conjunction with the Oxford Conference for the Book was a complete success. The morning started out with Rosemary Oliphant-Ingham (Hesse’s biographer) interviewing Karen Hesse in front of approximately 450 Oxford-area fifth graders. The interview also included readings by the students of passages from Out of the Dust, the book each child had read beforehand. Following the interview, Laurie Halse Anderson spoke to 450 ninth graders about her novel Speak. After her talk, she was asked questions written by the students about her books and her writing career. For lunch, Hesse and Anderson were treated to the Lafayette County Literacy Council’s box lunch on the grounds of Rowan Oak with several members from the community. Afterwards, they were given a private tour of Faulkner’s home, before heading to Square Books Jr. to sign books for a large and eager crowd of parents and children alike. Hesse and Anderson signed for hours, talking and laughing with the students. Hesse was presented with a handmade quilt created by eight second graders from Oxford Elementary School. She was quite touched by this gesture. Hesse and Anderson finished by signing stock for the store and each having a quiet dinner in town before departing. LAUREN LANZA
In Her Own Words... To hear more about Laurie Halse Anderson’s Oxford trip, visit the author’s blog www.halseanderson.livejourna l.com/131640.html#cutid1.
The Southern Register
Authors Laurie Halse Anderson (left) and Karen Hesse autographing books at Square Books Jr. after school; quilt in background made for Hesse by local second graders
Spring 2007
Page 31
Southern Register Spring 2k7
5/13/07
1:04 PM
Page 32
Mississippi Delta Literary Tour Portfolio March 19–22, 2007
Harvey B. Herman
Indianola native Steve Yarbrough, who has made the Delta the setting of several of his award-winning works of fiction, including Visible Spirits, Prisoners of War, and The End of California, read from a novel in progress. The reading took place at McCormick Book Inn, where Greenville author Gayden Metcalf read from her new book and bookseller Hugh McCormick talked about local history. The day in Greenville also featured a talk by Kenneth Holditch on Lanterns on the Levy author William Alexander Percy and Mary Dayle McCormick’s guided tour of the town, including a stop at the cemetery to see Percy’s grave site and the statue he erected for his father, LeRoy Percy.
Charles McLaurin told about his experiences since moving to Indianola and Sunflower County in the early 1960s to register blacks to vote and serving as campaign manager for Fannie Lou Hamer in her bid for Congress at the National Democratic Party Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
Harvey B. Herman
Harvey B. Herman
Jimmy Thomas, Center staff member and coordinator of the Mississippi Delta Literary Tour, stands by the historic marker at Club Ebony in Indianola, where the group had dinner and enjoyed hearing the blues.
Jimmy Thomas
(right) Indianola native Marion Barnwell, in a presentation at the Henry M. Seymour Library, talked about the town as the source of the 1930s classic studies Caste and Class in a Southern Town by John Dollard and After Freedom by Hortense Powdermaker; as ground zero during the Mississippi civil rights movement of the 1960s; and as home of bluesman B. B. King, longtime New York Times food editor and cookbook author Craig Claiborne, and novelist and shortstory writer Steve Yarbrough, among others. Barnwell taught English at Delta State University for many years and is the editor of the anthology A Place Called Mississippi and coauthor of Touring Literary Mississippi.
Jimmy Thomas
Luther Brown (center), director of the Delta Center for Culture and Learning at Delta State University, and the tour group visited the grave site of bluesman Robert L. Johnson (1911–1938) at Little Zion Missionary Baptist Church near Greenwood. Afterwards, the group stopped at the Tutwiler Community Education Center on the way to Clarksdale for lunch and a presentation during which Kenneth Holditch discussed Tennessee Williams and his connections with The Mississippi Delta as his childhood home and as a source for his plays.
Page 32
Spring 2007
The Southern Register
Southern Register Spring 2k7
5/13/07
1:04 PM
Page 33
Richard Howorth, mayor of Oxford and owner of Square Books, opens the first session of the Oxford Conference for the Book dedicated to the late author Larry Brown (1951–2004). Participating is the “Larry Brown: Friends and Writers” session are (from left) author Kevin Canty, who befriended Brown when he was visiting writer the University of Montana; Ellen Douglas, Brown’s creative writing teacher at the University of Mississippi; Jerry Johnson, chief of the Oxford Fire Department and Brown’s colleague as a firefighter; Steven Rinella, a student in Brown’s class at Montana; and Howorth.
Mary Annie Brown, the author’s widow, and their son Billy Ray (pictured here) spoke during the closing session with Charles Reagan Wilson, moderator, and Lynn Hewlett, Brown’s friend from childhood.
Doug McLain
Doug McLain
Appearing on the “Writers Remember Larry Brown” panel moderated by journalist Curtis Wilkie were (from left) authors Rick Bass, Jill McCorkle, and Andre Dubus III. Missing from the photograph is William Gay.
Doug McLain
Doug McLain
Author Ellen Douglas signing books after the “Larry Brown: Friends and Writers” panel
Mark Your Calendars!
April 3–5, 2008 15th Oxford Conference for the Book Dedicated to Zora Neale Hurston www.oxfordconference for the book.com/
The Southern Register
Shane Brown, a teacher, coach, and musician, reminisced about his father and his love of music.
Doug McLain
March 31–April 3, 2008 5th Mississippi Delta Literary Tour Based in Greenwood Visits to Cleveland, Marigold, Greenville, Clarksdale
Harvey B. Herman
Oxford Conference for the Book Portfolio March 22–24, 2007
Actors Arliss Howard and Debra Winger (above), who starred in the film of Larry Brown’s book Big Bad Love, were on the “Larry Brown on Stage and Screen” panel with director Richard Corley, who collaborated with Brown on the stage version of his novel Dirty Work, and Gary Hawkins, whose documentary The Rough South of Larry Brown was shown at the conference along with Big Bad Love, 100 Proof, and The Rough South of Harry Crews.
Spring 2007
Page 33
Southern Register Spring 2k7
5/13/07
1:05 PM
Page 34
Garst Gift to Tutwiler Community Education Center Funds Spiritual and Gospel DVD Friends of the Center John and Edna Garst put their support where their passion is: in rural Mississippi music. During the 2006 Mississippi Delta Literary Tour, the Garsts heard the women of the Tutwiler Community Education Center in Tallahatchie County sing traditional spiritual and gospel songs, and were taken aback by their resonating performance. When the couple learned the group didn’t have any recorded performances, they
made a contribution to finance the production of a Tutwiler Singers CD. “They were just so enthralling,” said Edna. “One was banging on a piano, and those voices were so amazing. It is a beautiful example of someone with a dream, and the Tutwiler Center has given those women a way to contribute to their community. It is something you want to give a few dollars to.” According to John, Sister Maureen Delaney, TCEC’s director, recruited a
The Tutwiler Community Education Center’s DVD is available for $12.00, including postage, by contacting Sr. Maureen Delaney at TCEC.
Tutwiler Community Education Center (TCEC) offers recreation,
education, and enrichment activities to children, teens, and adults in the Tutwiler, Mississippi, area. The Center is also home to the nationally known Tutwiler Quilters, who piece and quilt using the African American quilting style. Their products of bed quilts, placemats, table runners, wall hangings, tote bags, and pot holders are sold at TCEC and many conventions, museums, and churches throughout the United States. TCEC was founded in 1992 to expand the outreach part of the Tutwiler Clinic. Sister Maureen Delaney coordinated the building and development of TCEC and continues to be the director. Sr. Maureen Delaney, SNJM, Director Tutwiler Community Education Center P.O. Box 448, Tutwiler, MS 38963 Telephone: 662-345-8393, Fax: 662-345-2222, E-mail: mdelaney@gmi.net
Page 34
Spring 2007
nun from her order to spend one month in the Tutwiler Center recording footage of the TCEC and the women who work there. The final product is a CD-DVD combination, which captures not only the performances of the Tutwiler Singers, but also the handiwork of the Tutwiler Quilters and the community outreach programs conducted through the Center. “Edna, especially, and I, too, are so impressed with the effort that is going on there and the impact, we hope, that the TCEC can have on the community there,” said John. “They’ll certainly make something from the CD, and create awareness of the Center.” In addition to their support of the Tutwiler Singers, John and Edna established and organized the Annual Old Harp Singing in Athens, Georgia. The Old Harp Singing brings Sacred Harp singers from across the nation to Athens on the fourth Sunday in February to share in a traditional chorus of shape note singing. The annual singing began in 1973 as a celebration of the republication of The Social Harp, a song book John coedited for the University of Georgia Press. “Music was something we always The Southern Register
Southern Register Spring 2k7
5/13/07
1:05 PM
Page 35
Harvey B. Herman
(continued from page 1)
John and Edna Garst swinging on the porch at Elvis Presley’s childhood home in Tupelo.
enjoyed together,” said Edna. “We made a very conscious decision to grow together,” added John, who celebrated 52 years of marriage with Edna during this year’s Delta Literary Tour in March. John, a retired chemistry professor, and Edna, a retired medical technician, are both Mississippi natives who have called Athens home since 1963. While students at Mississippi State University, the couple met by chance in the spring of 1953 when they bumped into each other in the hallway of the chemistry building. “She flashed her beautiful smile and it scared me to death,” recalls John. “She had a beaker in her hand and asked where to find the alcohol. I pointed her in the right direction and ran back into the lab.” Edna recalls that she saw John on campus every day at lunchtime wearing the same threadbare red and black flannel shirt. She would later find out that John was an avid jazz fan and was saving his money for LPs and a new amplifier for his record player. John’s love for music has become as much a profession as a passion, and he has published 10 papers on folk music and sacred harp singing. His studies of the African American ballad “John Henry” have garnered critical acclaim for historically placing John Henry and the context of the tune in Alabama. Edna has also turned recreation into occupation. She is a certified yoga instructor who teaches both the ashram and hatha methods to traditional classes and breast cancer survivors. “We both are very loyal to Mississippi and I’ve always felt that your mission is at home, where you are always needed most,” said Edna. MARY MARGARET MILLER
The Southern Register
Wilson
in our Department of History as the Kelly Gene Cook Sr. Chair of History and Professor of Southern Studies.” Wilson oversaw the expansion of Center work to include the Endowment for the Future of the South, which produces conferences and publications that connect public policy issues and the humanities. During Wilson’s tenure the Southern Foodways Alliance was established, and it sponsors an annual symposium, periodic field trips and day camps, publications, an oral history initiative, and film projects. He also has coordinated a Center initiative on Southern music that includes work with the American Music Archives, recently established on campus to promote research on Southern music. His continued support of the Center’s study of the blues and publication of Living Blues magazine helped make the Center director a permanent member of the Mississippi Blues Commission. A major focus of Center staff the last few years has been preparation of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture and the Mississippi Encyclopedia. Wilson serves as editor in chief for the first and coeditor, with Ted Ownby, of the latter. His new position will enable him to work toward completion of those volumes as well as pursue more active work on planned monographs on the South. The Center’s role in helping to define the interdisciplinary study of the South was augmented by the establishment of the New Directions in Southern Culture book series, which Wilson edits and the University of North Carolina Press publishes. The first volumes in the series have appeared this year. Wilson’s service on the editorial board for the internet journal Southern Spaces tied the Center to the new world of Web-based research on the South. Wilson continued his own research on Southern cultural history, participating in various conferences, symposia, and lectureships that brought the Center’s interdisciplinary focus to broad scholarly and public audiences. He directed two Porter L. Fortune Jr. History Symposia while director, as well as serving on committees to plan the annual Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference, the Oxford Conference for the Book, and the Blues Today Symposium. Author of two important books in Southern history, Baptized in Blood and Judgment and Grace in Dixie, he also coedited collections of scholarly essays on religion and the American Civil War and religion in the recent South. Center outreach activities depend on fund raising, and Wilson worked with the University development office and the Center’s Advisory Committee to organize appeals to potential donors. The Center’s endowments grew in recent years, and the strong support of the development office has helped to stabilize annual giving among the important Friends of the Center donors. Wilson continued to teach a course on the South each semester and worked with many doctoral and master’s students on campus, supervising or serving on the committees of many dissertations and theses. His courses on regionalism and Southern identity, the history of Southern religion, and Southern cultural history are demanding, unique, and popular among students in both Southern Studies and History. His new position will allow more time in the classroom. No details on the search for a new director were immediately available, but the College of Liberal Arts will be responsible for overseeing the search and plans should be made in the coming months.
Spring 2007
Page 35
Southern Register Spring 2k7
5/13/07
1:05 PM
Page 36
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS Jeff Biggers has worked as a writer, educator, radio correspondent, and community organizer across the United States, Europe, India, and Mexico. He has been a commentator on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition and for Pacific News Service national syndication. He is the author of The United States of Appalachia and is a contributor to the forthcoming Literature volume of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture.
Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama, will host its 14th annual Summer Institute of Christian Spirituality comprised of biblical, historical, pastoral, and oral courses led by faculty from its division of philosophy and theology as well as visiting faculty. Session 1 will be held June 3–9, and session 2 will be June 10–16. Contact Pat Warren, coordinator of the Institute, at 251-380-3094 or pwarren@shc.edu.
Tougaloo College’s 11th annual Tougaloo Art Colony will take place July 14–20, 2007, with nationally acclaimed artists teaching- studio courses for artists, teachers, art enthusiasts, and college students. Guest artists will include Jerrie Glaspher (oil and acrylic painting), Napoleon JonesHenderson (enamel compositions), Sonji Hunt (textiles), Mario Robinson (watercolor), and Kathleen Varnell (pottery). Tougaloo Art Colony 2006 is looking for sponsors who will provide scholarships for 20 displaced Mississippi and New Orleans artists. For information, call Art Colony director Johnnie M. Maberry-Gilbert at 601-977-7743. Special free public events include 7:00 p.m. evening presentations on July 14–18 by Art Colony instructors and participants, open studios on July 20, and “The Mother of All Art Auctions” fundraising event in support of a Museum to house the Tougaloo Art Collections on Thursday, July 19, at the Owens Health and Wellness Center. Works by Jere Allen, Mary Hardy, Kay Franz, Jerrie Glasper, Charmagne Andrews, Charles Crossley, Bebe Wolfe, Betsy Liles, Susan Ingram, Paul Campbell, Rachel Ballentine, Hyun Chong Kim, Cleve Webber, Mario Robinson, Lee Ransaw, William Colvin, Lynnette Gilbert, Johnnie MaberryGilbert, Jonathan Green, Kathleen Varnell, Felicia JenningsReese, Ron Koehler, and many other renown artists will be offered during the auction. (Artists may join this cause by e-mailing Johnnie Mae Gilbert at jgilbert@tougaloo.edu or by calling her at 601-977-7743.) For additional information regarding the Tougaloo Art Colony, please contact Minnie Watson at 601-977-7839 or mwatson@tougaloo.edu or visit www.tougaloo.edu/content/ Academics/programs/summer/artcolony.htm.
Page 36
Spring 2007
Mark Camarigg is the former assistant editor and current publications manager for Living Blues magazine. He is also a doctoral student in the Department of History at the University of Mississippi researching Soul Blues music in the American South. Amy Evans is oral historian for the Southern Foodways Alliance. She is also an exhibiting artist, freelance photographer, and cofounder of PieceWorks, a nonprofit arts and outreach organization. She received an M.A. in Southern Studies from the University of Mississippi. 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. Donald M. Kartiganer holds the William Howry Chair in Faulkner Studies at the University of Mississippi and is director of the Faulkner Conference. He is the author of The Fragile Thread: The Meaning of Form in Faulkner’s Novels and is near completion of a book-length study, “Repetition Forward: A Theory of Modernist Reading.” Lauren Lanza is manager of Square Books Jr. in Oxford, Mississippi. Mary Margaret Miller is a second-year Southern Studies graduate student from the Mississippi Delta. She has an undergraduate degree in journalism from the University of Mississippi and works as a freelance journalist. JoAnne Prichard Morris, a board member of the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters, is the coauthor of Yazoo: Its Legends and Legacies and was executive editor at the University of Mississippi Press from 1983 to 1997. Ted Ownby holds a joint appointment is Southern Studies and History. He is the author of Subduing Satan: Religion, Recreation, and Manhood in the Rural South, 1965–1920 and American Dreams in Mississippi: Consumers, Poverty, and Culture, 1830–1998. Jimmy Thomas is managing editor of a new edition of the Center’s Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. He received B.A. degrees in English and philosophy at the University of Mississippi and has worked for publications in Oxford and New York. 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. Steve Yates is the recipient of three fellowships, two from the Mississippi Arts Commission, for his fiction. His stories have lately appeared in Southwest Review and Phoebe and are forthcoming in North Dakota Quarterly and Harrington Gay Men’s Literary Quarterly.
The Southern Register
Southern Register Spring 2k7
5/13/07
1:06 PM
Page 37
Southern Culture Catalog 14th Oxford Conference for the Book: March 22–24, 2007 Larry Brown: Friends and Writers – Richard Howorth, moderator, and panelists Kevin Canty, Ellen Douglas, Jerry Johnson, and Steven Rinella. Color, 65 minutes. DVD1162 . . . . . . $20.00 Friends . . . . . . . . $18.00
Illustrating 2007 Oxford Conference for the Book materials is a Larry Brown portrait made by Tom Rankin in 1996. The portrait is reproduced on posters and Tshirts, which are available from the Center by calling 800-3903527.
Larry Brown on Music – Jonathan Miles, moderator, and panelists Shane Brown, Vic Chesnutt, Clyde Edgerton, Alejandro Escovedo, Robert Earl Keen, Tim Lee, Ben Weaver, and Bill Whitbeck. Color, 71 minutes. DVD1163 . . . . . . $20.00 Friends . . . . . . . . $18.00 Larry Brown on Stage and Screen – Tom Rankin, moderator; Johnny McPhail, monologue; and panelists Richard Corley, Gary Hawkins, Arliss Howard, Debra Winger. Color, 73 minutes. DVD1165 . . . . . . $20.00 Friends . . . . . . . . $18.00 Writing about Larry Brown – Jay Watson, moderator, and panelists Kay Bonetti Callison, Suzanne W. Jones, and Matthew Guinn. Color, 49 minutes. DVD1166 . . . . . . $20.00 Friends . . . . . . . . $18.00
The Endangered Species: Readers Today and Tomorrow – Pamela Pridgen, moderator, with panelists Claiborne Barksdale and Sarah Combs. Color, 58 minutes. DVD1172 . . . . . . $20.00 Friends . . . . . . . . $18.00
Teaching Larry Brown – Margaret-Love Denman, moderator, and panelists Jean W. Cash, John Osier, and Steve Yarbrough. Color, 32 minutes. DVD1167 . . . . . . $20.00 Friends . . . . . . . . $18.00
Readings and Remarks – Authors Thomas Sayers Ellis and Shay Youngblood, with Ethel Young-Minor as moderator. Color, 64 minutes. DVD1173 . . . . . . $20.00 Friends . . . . . . . . $18.00
Editing Larry Brown – Patrick Quinn, moderator, and Shannon Ravenel, presenter. Color, 55 minutes. DVD1168 . . . . . . $20.00 Friends . . . . . . . . $18.00
Celebration of National Poetry Month – Authors Nickole Brown, David Galef, and Kimiko Hahn, with Beth Ann Fennelly as moderator. Color, 50 minutes. DVD1174 . . . . . . $20.00 Friends . . . . . . . . $18.00
Remembering Larry Brown – Charles Reagan Wilson, moderator, and panelists Billy Ray Brown, Mary Annie Brown, and Lynn Hewlett. Color, 49 minutes. DVD1169 . . . . . . $20.00 Friends . . . . . . . . $18.00
Notebooks by Tennessee Williams: “Almost a New Literary Genre” – Margaret Bradham Thornton, presenter, and Ann Fisher-Wirth as moderator. Color, 49 minutes. DVD1175 . . . . . . $20.00 Friends . . . . . . . . $18.00
Writers Remember Larry Brown – Curtis Wilkie, moderator, and panelists Rick Bass, Andre Dubus III, William Gay, and Jill McCorkle. Color, 49 minutes. DVD1170 . . . . . . $20.00 Friends . . . . . . . . $18.00
Readings and Remarks – Carlo Feltrinelli, presenter, and Gary Fisketjon, moderator. Color, 50 minutes. DVD1176 . . . . . . $20.00 Friends . . . . . . . . $18.00
Literature for Young Readers 2 – Readings and remarks by Laurie Halse Anderson and Lauren Lanza as moderator. Color, 56 minutes. DVD1171 . . . . . . $20.00 Friends . . . . . . . . $18.00
The Southern Register
Readings and Remarks – LeAnne Howe with Robbie Ethridge, moderator. Color, 25 minutes. DVD1177 . . . . . . $20.00 Friends . . . . . . . . $18.00
Spring 2007
Page 37
Southern Register Spring 2k7
5/13/07
1:06 PM
Page 38
Civil Rights in the Delta
Photo Courtesy Memphis Commercial Appeal
Journalist Curtis Wilkie in conversation with Patti Carr Black, Emmett Till’s cousin Wheeler Parker, Sumner residents Frank Mitchener and Betty and Bill Pearson, Henry Outlaw of the Delta Center for Culture and Learning at Delta State University, and former Mississippi governor William F. Winter. March 29, 2006. Color, 60 minutes. DVD1148 . . . . . . $20.00 Friends . . . . . . . . $18.00
Scene at courthouse in Sumner in 1955 during the Emmett Till murder trial
“Are You Walkin' with Me?” Sister Thea Bowman, William Faulkner, and African American Culture Overview of programs Sister Thea presented at the annual Faulkner Conference from 1980 through 1989. Produced by Lisa N. Howorth, Center for the Study of Southern Culture, 1990. Color, 30 minutes. DVD 1016 . . . . . . $25.00 Friends . . . . . . . . . $22.50 The Eleventh Oxford Conference for the Book Poster (2001) Poster features Richard Wright photograph by Carl Van Vetchen. M9903 . . . . . . . . . . $10.00 Friends . . . . . . . . . . $ 9.00 The Dain & Cofield Collection Posters High quality 18" x 24" duotone posters featuring timeless photographs of William Faulkner. Dain Poster M1034 . . . $18.95
Faulkner’s Mississippi: Land into Legend Transforms the fiction of William Faulkner’s mythical Jefferson and Yoknapatawpha into the reality of Oxford and Lafayette County, Mississippi, with quotations from Faulkner’s writings correlated with appropriate scenes. The first motion pictures inside Faulkner’s home are presented along with rare still photographs of the writer. Narrated by Joseph Cotton. Script by Evans Harrington. Producer, Robert D. Oesterling, University of Mississippi Center for Public Service and Continuing Studies. 1965. Color, 32 minutes. DVD1069 . . . . . . $25.00 Friends . . . . . . . . . $22.50
William Faulkner Stamp Ceremony A 22-cent Literary Arts Commemorative stamp honoring William Faulkner was issued by the United States Postal Service during a ceremony at the University of Mississippi on August 3, 1987. The DVD of this program includes remarks by author Eudora Welty, Faulkner’s daughter, Jill Faulkner Summers, and others. Color, 34 minutes. DVD1231 . . . . . . $25.00 Friends . . . . . . . $22.50
William Faulkner and Eudora Welty This film features Eudora Welty at the opening session of the 1987 Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference. Welty reads from her story “Why I Live at the P.O.” and answers questions about her work and Faulkner’s. Color, 34 minutes. DVD1104 . . . . . . $25.00 Friends . . . . . . . . $22.50
Cofield Poster M1033 . $18.95 Faulkner’s World Exhibit Poster M1789 . . . . . . . . . . . . . $10.00
Page 38
Spring 2007
The Southern Register
Southern Register Spring 2k7
5/13/07
1:06 PM
J. B. Murry: Writing in an Unknown Tongue; Reading through the Water J. B. Murry, a selfeducated African American visionary from Georgia, celebrates ritual “writing in the Spirit” and water divination. These traditional expressions, derived from African influences, occur throughout the Caribbean, South America, and the American South. This DVD shows Murray performing the rituals and includes shots of some of the paintings for which he has gained national recognition. This short documentary raises issues about the relationship between the spiritual and the aesthetic in the art of religious visionaries. By Judith McWillie/University of Georgia. 1986. Color, 15 minutes. DVD1145 . . . . . . $15.00 Friends . . . . . . . . $13.50 James “Son” Thomas A renowned Delta blues singer, “Son” Thomas was also a gifted clay sculptor. Filmed at his home in Leland, Mississippi, this treatment juxtaposes Thomas’s artwork with several musical performances. It also includes a sequence showing how he worked clay to create his famous sculptures of the human skull. By Judith McWillie/University of Georgia. 1986. Color, 17 minutes. DVD1146 . . . . . . $15.00 Friends . . . . . . . . $13.50 Voices of Perthshire Voices from Perthshire depicts life on a Mississippi Delta cotton plantation from 1938 to 1942, as seen through the home movie camera of Emma Knowlton Lytle. Mrs. Lytle donated the original silent 8mm film to the Southern Media Archive. Producers Karen Glynn and Peter Slade added recorded commentary from both he filmmaker and retired Perthshire farm workers to the film. Voices of Perthshire depicts the full cycle of a cotton crop from breaking the ground, to making a bale, to weaving cloth in the textile mills of North Carolina. (Voices of Perthshire replaces the earlier Raisin’ Cotton production.) Color, 63 minutes. DVD 3001 . . . . . . $25.00 Friends . . . . . . . . . $22.50
Page 39
Southern Culture Catalog The University of Mississippi Barnard Observatory • University, MS 38677 Phone 800-390-3527 • Fax 662-915-5814 Sold To:
International Orders Other video formats may be available. Please call for information.
Name Address City
State
Zip
Country Daytime Phone
❏ Payment enclosed (check, money order, international money order in U.S. currency or international check drawn on a US bank; made payable to The Southern Culture Catalog)
❏ Charge my: ❏ Visa ❏ MasterCard Account # Exp. Date
Signature
How To Order
Delivery
By mail: Southern Culture Catalog Barnard Observatory • The University of Mississippi • University, MS 38677 By e-mail: Credit Card orders only: cssc@olemiss.edu By telephone: Credit Card orders only: 800-390-3527 (Monday-Friday, 8:15 a.m.-4:45 p.m. CST) in the US. Outside the US call 662-915-5993 By fax: Credit Card orders only: 662-915-5814 (Daily, 24 hours a day)
Orders for delivery in the continental United States are shipped by US Postal Service unless other means of delivery are requested. Orders for delivery outside the continental United States are shipped by Parcel Post.
Shipping and Handling Costs United States: $3.50 for first video or other item, $1.00 each additional item sent to the same address. Foreign: $5.00 for each item. Posters. United States: $3.50 for any number of posters sent to the same address. Foreign: $10.00 for any number of posters sent to the same address.
Return Policy
All sales are final. No refunds will be made. If an order contains faulty or damaged goods, replacements will be made when such items are returned with problem(s) noted.
Item #
Title/Description
This form may be photocopied. Faxed orders accepted.
Qty.
Price
Order Total Mississippi residents add 7% sales tax Shipping and Handling TOTAL
Total
Southern Register Spring 2k7
5/13/07
1:06 PM
Page 40
INCLUDE MAILING LABEL WHEN MAKING ADDRESS CHANGES. PRSRT STD Non-Profit Org U. S. Postage PAID Senatobia, MS Permit No. 76
The University of Mississippi Center for the Study of Southern Culture University, MS 38677
Please help us reduce waste and postage costs. Complete this form and return it with your mailing label, or fax it to 662-915-5814.
Please give us your correct information: Name Address
❏ Contact person changed
❏ Name Misspelled
❏ Address wrong
❏ Received more than one
❏ Add my e-mail to your list ❏ Delete me from your list
City State
Zip
E-mail Fax: 662-915-5814 e-mail: cssc@olemiss.edu • www.olemiss.edu/depts/south/
Friends of the Center Your annual donation through our Friends program helps the Center develop and expand our excellent programming. Thank you for your yearly gift to the Friends of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture! I/We would like to contribute $_________ to the Friends of the Center right now. Enclosed is my tax-deductible contribution. Annual Memberships:
Credit Card:
❏ Patron: $1,000 ❏ Sustaining: $500 ❏ Sponsor: $250 ❏ Associate: $100 ❏ Regular: $50 ❏ Student: $25
❑ Visa ❑ MasterCard
Please fill out the information below when returning this card:
Exp. Date
❑ AmericanExpress
Account Number Signature
Name (please print) Address City Day phone
State
Zip
Night phone
MAKE GIFTS TO THE CENTER ON-LINE. Go to www.umf.olemiss.edu, click on “Make a Gift,” and direct funds to the Center for the Study of Southern Culture. Center for the Study of Southern Culture • University, MS 38677 • 662-915-5993 • Fax: 662-915-5814 www.olemiss.edu/depts/south/