Southern Register
3/9/08
10:25 AM
Page 1
the THE NEWSLETTER OF THE
CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF SOUTHERN CULTURE • WINTER 2008
THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSISSIPPI
2008 Oxford Conference for the Book
S
ince 1993, the Oxford Conference for the Book, organized by the Center and Square Books, has brought authors, editors, publishers, educators, literacy advocates, readers, and book lovers to north Mississippi for a weekend of readings, discussions, and celebrations. The 15th Oxford Conference for the Book, April 3–5, 2008, will offer another outstanding program. Beginning on Thursday with a library lunch featuring Mississippi singer and songwriter Tricia Walker, the program will continue through Saturday afternoon with addresses, panels, and readings. A special conference edition of Thacker Mountain Radio, a fiction and poetry jam, a session with four Russian authors, a marathon book signing at Off Square Books, a writing workshop, and an optional literary tour of the Mississippi Delta (March 31–April 3) are also part of the festivities. The 2008 conference is dedicated to writer, folklorist, and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960), who helped bring Southern African American culture to mainstream America. Among the speakers who will discuss Hurston’s life and legacy are Patricia Willis, curator of the Collection of American Literature at Yale’s Beinecke Library, and literary scholars John Lowe, Adam Gussow, Deborah Plant, and Ethel Young-Minor. Authors Jeffrey Renard Allen and Nichelle D. Tramble will talk about Hurston’s influence on contemporary writers. Film adaptations of Hurston’s fiction and a documentary about her life will be shown. There will also be an address by literary scholar Jerry Ward commemorating the 100th anniversary of Richard Wright’s birth, a program marking the 40th anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King Jr., a talk by Masterpiece Theatre producer Rebecca Eaton, and Michael Schmidt’s discussion of his work as editorial director of Carcanet Press Limited, general editor of Poetry Nation Review, and professor of poetry at the
Illustrating 2008 Oxford Conference for the Book materials is Carl Van Vechten’s 1940 photograph of Zora Neale Hurston, used courtesy Carl Van Vechten Trust and the Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. The photograph is reproduced on posters and T-shirts available from the Center by calling 800-390-3527.
University of Glasgow. Local schoolchildren will join the conference audience for presentations by Christopher Paul (continued on page 10)
Southern Register
3/9/08
10:25 AM
Page 2
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 Winter 2008
1 2 3 4 6 8
9 12 13 14 15 16 18 18 19
20 21 25 26 27 31 32 32 33 34 36
2008 Oxford Conference for the Book Director’s Column Center Event in Charleston Fortune Symposium Explores History of American Women 2007 F&Y: “The Returns of the Text” Freeman to Narrate BBC Documentaryof 2008 Tennessee Williams Festival 2008 Mississippi Delta LiteraryTour Ellen Gilchrist to Speak at Conference The Write Stuff for Kids Richard Wright Library Mississippi Reads Richard Wright’s Uncle Tom’s Children Remembering Michel Fabre Gammill Gallery Exhibition Schedule McDonald’s Birdhouses Exhibition Wharton Photographs to Help Gammill Gallery and Documentary Studies In Memoriam: Art DeRosier Reading the South: Reviews & Notes Living Blues Magazine John Work CD Records Black Culture Southern Foodways Alliance News Bar Culture in Louisville, Kentucky Notes on Contributors Regional Roundup Red Barber Remembered 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
I R E C T O R
’
S
C
O L U M N
There is plenty of good news in Southern Studies. MA alumni are getting PhDs and teaching jobs, alumni are making new films and new music and pursuing new ideas, and a few of them are even making some money, perhaps surprising their parents and faculty members. One alumnus is even running for congress. In the academic program, faculty seem to be concentrating on issues of creativity, with Charles Wilson teaching a course on Southern Creativity, David Wharton and Andy Harper offering a new course on making documentary films, and Katie McKee teaching an English course on Southern movies. The faculty are set up for new forms of their own creativity next year, with Wilson and Adam Gussow going on sabbatical, and Nancy Bercaw receiving a prestigious fellowship from the Huntington Library for the year. Friends in the Southern Foodways Alliance and the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation are working out ways to add teaching components to their activities. And the Center’s Advisory Committee, with its chair Michelle Hyver Oakes, is looking into creative ways of supporting the Center. In the midst of interesting ideas come presidential candidates. As you likely know, the presidential candidates are coming to the University of Mississippi in September for their first debate. I’m glad they are coming, but I have been wondering how (and how much) the Center for the Study of Southern Culture should be involved. On one hand, as an important part of campus life, we should be there in the middle of things, talking to journalists, doing what we can to set the agenda and discuss broader contexts, raising the sort of questions Southern Studies can raise about connections between electoral politics and life beyond electoral politics. If, by September of 2008, one or both candidates are not answering questions they should be answering, we should be cultivating an environment to clarify those questions and doing what we can to make them answer them. On the other hand, the history of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture has long benefited from an approach that does not put special focus on elected officials. Our general approach emphasizing that everything is important tends to undercut some of the monumental significance many people see in a presidential debate. Our tendency to study workers, musicians, artists, writers, activists, and just about anybody has meant that relatively few of our students over the years have looked closely at elections or elected officials. To be honest, presidential debates seem a bit too formal, too buttoned-down, too self-consciously momentous to fit comfortably into a program whose students and faculty tend to feel more comfortable with documenting and studying everybody involved in everyday life. So, while we think about the ways the Center for the Study of Southern Culture might enhance the preparation prior to the debate, I find myself imagining what I would do if I had powers far beyond those of an interim director. If Southern Studies could run the presidential debate, what would it look like? First of all, we wouldn’t let candidates get away with repeating tired clichés and catch phrases they had already prepared. Southern Studies students and faculty try to deconstruct language, to see why people say what they say, both for the clear meanings, the symbolic meanings, and multiple meanings for different audiences. If people are dropping words that seem acceptable in some settings but are potentially hurtful in others, we want to be able to make people stop and defend themselves. Second, a Southern Studies version of a presidential debate would ask questions about how candidates understand history. They don’t need to debate historiography or express their views about the arguments of C. Vann Woodward or Eugene Genovese, but they should be able to tell us how history matters, if they see things as ever improving, or declining, or moving in any particular directions, and they (continued on page 7)
Winter 2008
The Southern Register
Southern Register
3/9/08
10:26 AM
Page 3
Center Celebrates 30th Anniversary, Meets New Friends in Charleston
The Southern Register
Michael Oakes
Southern Studies connections to the state of South Carolina are strong. Despite the physical distance between Oxford and South Carolina, University of Mississippi alumni from Southern Studies and History teach at several of the state’s colleges and universities, its scholars frequently travel to do research at the University of South Carolina, and numerous Southern Studies students hail from or did undergraduate work in the state. The Center wants to build on its ties with South Carolinians and engage Friends of the Center throughout the region. Intimate events allow for greater interaction and more in-depth discussion of the Center’s academic and outreach programs. The 30th Anniversary and the New Encyclopedia project are just two reasons for Friends of the Center to celebrate. In early February, the Charleston home of Center Advisory Committee Chair Michelle Hyver Oakes and Michael Oakes provided a fitting venue for such an event. New and old friends gathered to celebrate the Center’s 30th anniversary and discuss the past, present, and future of the Center. The evening was the perfect opportunity for the Center’s Ted Ownby and Ann Abadie, along with Ted Smith from University Development, to expand relationships with Friends of the Center and Ole Miss alumni. Guests enjoyed an extraordinary dinner prepared by Chef Mike Lata of FIG, Charleston’s own 2007 James Beard nominee for Best Chef of the Southeast. A member of the Southern Foodways Alliance, Chef Lata enthusiastically created a special menu for the occasion highlighting the bounty of the Lowcountry along with a few regional treats. Chef Lata’s homage to the Center began with local white shrimp, “modern” pimento cheese sandwiches, and chicken liver pate
Pictured at Charleston event for the Center are, from left, Ted Ownby, interim director of the Center; Mike Lata, chef/owner of FIG; and Michelle Hyver Oakes, hostess and chair of the Center Advisory Committee.
wrapped in bacon by Allan Benton (recipient of the 2007 SFA’s Jack Daniel’s Lifetime Achievement Award). Guests raved throughout the dinner as traditional Southern ingredients such as sweet potatoes, Benton country ham, and South Carolina’s Anson Mills grits were served with a modern twist. The biggest crowd-pleaser was Chef Lata’s historic interpretation of she-crab soup. With lush local blue crab and Carolina Gold Rice base, Chef Lata transported the crowd to another time, an experience no one in attendance will soon forget. Conversation flowed, a veritable gambit of Southern culture: art, architecture, food, history, literature, music, politics, and sports—The New Encyclopedia volumes come to life. The latest news about Center symposia, conferences, and publications was also a hot topic. A Center event would not be complete without scholarship. Ted Ownby “quizzed” the crowd on
Winter 2008
Southern economic progress—at stake, a set of released volumes of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. The dinner concluded with blood orange sorbet and Madeira. Without a doubt, both meal and camaraderie celebrated the past, present, and future of the South and the vital role the Center plays in studying the region’s history and culture. As a result of event underwriting by Michelle and Michael Oakes, 100 percent of funds raised benefit the Center and are designated unrestricted. To date, unrestricted 30th Anniversary gifts have funded graduate student stipends and faculty research. The Center looks forward to future events that allow convivial and substantive interaction with Friends of the Center throughout the South and beyond. To make a 30th Anniversary gift to the Center, please contact Ted Smith, the Center’s development officer, at tjsmith@olemiss.edu or 662.915.5946.
Page 3
Southern Register
3/9/08
10:26 AM
Page 4
Porter Fortune Jr. History Symposium
Glenda Gilmore
Anne Firor Scott
antebellum pedestals. This vision of Southern women, one distinctly at odds with scholarly and popular conceptions, has opened up new directions in the scholarship—new directions that Scott and subsequent generations have explored to remake the field. Debra Gray White, Board of Governors Professor of History at Rutgers University and the incoming president of the Organization of American History, was a coeditor with Professor Scott of the Women’s History Series at the University of Illinois Press. As an Americanist who
Chris Hildreth, Duke Photography
Scholarly investigation of women’s history is transforming our understanding of the human experience. This year’s Porter Fortune Jr. History Symposium, in cooperation with the University Lecture Series and the Department of Outreach, will explore the wealth of current scholarship in American women’s history. The conference, named in honor of the late Chancellor Porter Fortune Jr., will be held March 19–20 at Yerby Auditorium. The two-day conference features a stunning array of ten women scholars. Named “Writing Women’s History: A Tribute to Anne Firor Scott,” the symposium will present examples of the diversity of writing on women’s history as well as emphasize the role that Anne Firor Scott, professor emerita of Duke University, played in launching the field when she published The Southern Lady in 1970. Laura Edwards, professor at Duke University, will be the first speaker with “Down from the Pedestal: The Influence of Anne Scott’s Southern Ladies.” This paper will consider the broad implications of Anne Scott’s scholarship on the field of Southern women’s history. Scott is known for her emphasis on women’s movement “from pedestal to politics” after the Civil War. This paper, however, considers the subtle, but more pervasive influences of Scott’s work, specifically the practical, down-to-earth, can-do attitude that characterizes her female subjects, even the ones consigned to
Crystal Feimster
Registration: Return to Linda Denning, 310 Bishop, Department of History, University of Mississippi, University, MS 38677. Name ___________________________________________________________ Address _________________________________________________________ Institution ______________________________________________________ E-mail address ____________________________________________________
Page 4
Winter 2008
Darlene Clark Hine
The Southern Register
Southern Register
3/9/08
10:27 AM
Page 5
Jacquelyn Dowd Hall
Mary Kelley
Thatcher Ulrich
Suzanne Lebsock
Debra Gray White
specializes in African American and American Women’s history, she is especially interested in issues of identity and the intersection of race, class, gender, and sexuality. She will present a paper entitled “The Million Mom March: The Perils of a Colorblind Maternalism.” Glenda Gilmore, the Peter V. and C. Vann Woodward Professor of History at Yale University, will speak on “From Jim Crow to Jane Crow: How Pauli Murray and Anne Scott Found One Another.” Darlene Clark Hine, Board of Trustees Professor of African American Studies and Professor of History at Northwestern University, The Southern Register
will address “Black Women in White in South Carolina during the Jim Crow Era.” Mary Kelley, the Ruth Bordin Collegiate Professor of History, American Culture and Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan, will speak on “‘Our aim is good, the mind’s best good’: Crafting Subjectivities: Women, Reading, and SelfShaping in America’s Republic.” Suzanne Lebsock, Board of Governors Professor of History at Rutgers University, will present “Storm Stories, 1957.” The paper is built around the life of a woman who lost all nine of her children in a tornado that hit Lebsock’s hometown when the author was in high school. Crystal Feimster, assistant professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Winter 2008
Chapel Hill, will speak on “Rape and the Civil War.” Feimster’s forthcoming book with Harvard University Press raises provocative questions by bringing to light overlooked material about the extent of sexual violence during the Civil War. Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, Julia Cherry Spruill Professor and director of the Southern Oral History Program at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, will speak on “FBI Eyes: Grace Lumpkin, Katharine Du Pre Lumpkin, and the Making of the Left Feminist Tradition.” Readers of the Southern Register should consult the two previous issues for descriptions of the work of Professor Anne Scott and Professor Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Harvard University’s 300th Anniversary Distinguished Professor. Registration for the symposium is free, but space is limited at the Inn at Ole Miss, which is next door to the Yerby Auditorium. For reservations, call 888-486-7666. The Web address is www.theinnatolemiss.com/new. For further information contact Elizabeth Anne Payne at epayne@olemiss.edu or Linda Denning at lmdennin@olemiss.edu. ELIZABETH ANNE PAYNE
Page 5
Southern Register
3/9/08
10:27 AM
Page 6
“Faulkner: The Returns of the Text” Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference • July 20–24, 2008 For three quarters of a century now, Faulkner’s texts have “returned,” to engage a world that at first glance appears to grow increasingly strange to them, yet whose deepest concerns they continue to address, at times with astonishing prescience. The enduring (and perhaps prevailing) constant remains the words Faulkner wrote 1919–1962. The 35th annual Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference, July 20–24, 2008, will explore for five days of lectures and panel discussions how those words have responded to the facts and forces of an evolving world, not so much as reflection or illustration, but as original depiction and interpretation. Appearing at the conference for the first time will be Martyn Bone, University of Copenhagen, Frank Lentricchia, Duke University, Owen Robinson, University of Essex, and Ethel Young-Minor, University of Mississippi. Returning to the conference are James Carothers, University of Kansas, Thadious Davis, University of Pennsylvania, Arthur Kinney, University of Massachusetts, and Theresa Towner, University of Texas at Dallas. Additional speakers and panelists will be selected from submissions to the “Call for Papers” competition. Bone, who has written extensively on “place” in Southern literature, will be discussing Faulkner’s “literary geography”: the “text as landscape” and “landscape as text”; Carothers addresses the text “in conflict with itself,” demonstrating how Faulkner’s relationship to past and current cultural conditions proceeds through “mutually negating anecdotes.” Davis’s paper, entitled “Visualizing Light in August,” will concern itself, among other things, with an intertextual relationship between this novel and Ralph Ellison’s Juneteenth. Kinney, among whose eight Faulkner books is a collection of materials on the Sartoris family, will discuss Flags in the Dust and aristocracy. Lentricchia, a widely published critic, editor, and novelist, will study “April Eighth, 1928,” the final section of The Sound and the Fury. Robinson explores Faulkner’s “textual New Orleans”—his New Orleans fiction, including Mosquitoes and Absalom, Absalom!—while Towner, coauthor of Reading Faulkner: Collected Stories, will present The 14th annual Southern Writers, Southern Writing Graduate Student Conference will be held at the University of Mississippi July 17–19, 2008. 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 35th 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 swswgradconference@gmail.com. Page 6
Illustrating the 2008 Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference poster and program is a photograph of William Faulkner made by his friend Phyllis Cerf.
Winter 2008
The Southern Register
Southern Register
3/9/08
10:27 AM
Page 7
“The Weird Stuff”: commentary on some of Faulkner’s lesser-read stories. Young-Minor will examine race and religion in The Sound and the Fury. More than Faulkner’s published fiction will be on display at “The Returns of the Text.” The Archives and Special Collections section of the John Davis Williams Library will be exhibiting a recent acquisition, the William Bacher/William Faulkner Correspondence, including letters between the Hollywood producer and the author concerning the gestation of the novel A Fable, the outline of which Faulkner wrote on the walls of the “office” at Rowan Oak. Also on the program will be a special presentation by Willie Faulkner, an African American from Memphis, who has been studying for years the genealogy of the Faulkner/Falkner
family, beginning with its origins in North Carolina. Arkansas filmmaker Chris Cranford will show his documentary Brother Will and Colonel Jim, a series of interviews in which Jimmy Faulkner talks about his famous uncle. The University Museum will present an exhibition, William Chistenberry Site: Possession, a collection of photographs and drawings of the South. Other program events will include “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, and a discussion of “Collecting Faulkner” by Seth Berner. There will also be guided daylong tours of Northeast 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, University of Mississippi, University, MS 38677-0879; 662-9157283; fyconf@olemiss.edu. For information on the conference program, course credit, and all other inquiries, contact the Department of English, Box 1848, Bondurant Hall, University of Mississippi, University, MS 38677-1848; 662-915-7439; fyconf@olemiss.edu. For on-line registration and details on housing and travel, visit us at http://www.outreach.olemiss.edu/events/ faulkner. DONALD M. KARTIGANER
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 $2.50 postage and handling. Mississippi residents add 7 percent sales tax. Please use the order form on page 35. Credit cards orders also may be made by calling 800-390-3527.
(continued from page 2)
should give us past examples of public life at its best. As a historian I am pleased when discussions of Southern history become part of public discussion, but I am also disturbed at how quickly many people want to put those discussions aside. A brief argument among presidential candidates about whether we should honor Martin Luther King Jr. alone, or if we should honor Martin Luther King Jr. and his political allies, made clear how seldom political journalists and historians interact, because historians The Southern Register
Director’s Column
would have known how better to ask that question. Third, we would know that some discussions within a debate should take a while. As people who read Faulkner, we don’t want two-minute answers with one-minute responses. Fourth and finally, since we know that participating in a debate is a performance, Southern Studies would analyze the relationship between the performance itself and the rest of the event—the audience, the setting, the timing. Spoken language matters, body Winter 2008
language matters, storytelling matters, drama matters, and we should study the debate as a show and not just as an exchange of position statements. Some people might think that studying a presidential debate the same way we study a church service or a musical event or a novel or a meal would trivialize the debate, but I hope a Southern Studies approach might help us see the presidential debate as something that might be as interesting as everyday life. TED OWNBY Page 7
Southern Register
3/9/08
10:27 AM
Page 8
Actor Morgan Freeman to Narrate BBC Documentary of 2008 Mississippi Delta Tennessee Williams Festival
Collection of Richard Freeman Leavitt
Page 8
Collection of Richard Freeman Leavitt
The 16th annual hometown celebration of America’s great playwright Tennessee Williams has been selected for a BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) Radio 2 documentary narrated by Academy Award–winning actor Morgan Freeman, and promises to be a greatly expanded showcase of the arts and the cultural heritage of the Mississippi Delta. Dates are September 26–27, 2008. With an audience ranging from 13 to 17 million in the United Kingdom and via the Internet, the prestigious program will focus on the links between Tennessee Williams and Clarksdale, its influences on his works and today’s generation of young writers and actors. Legendary characters from his great Delta plays— Big Daddy, Brick, and Maggie from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof; Amanda Wingfield from The Glass Menagerie; Blanche Dubois and Stella from A Streetcar Named Desire; and Val Xavier with his blues guitar and snake-skinned jacket from Orpheus Descending—will dominate live drama presentations and captivate audiences experiencing front porch plays and theater center stages. “This festival is fantastic; we have always liked the idea of telling his [Williams] story, of giving people an understanding of how important and relevant his works remain today,” comments BBC producer Carmel Lonergan, who traveled to Clarksdale in mid-February to initiate arrangements. “He touches people,” she continued. “It’s powerful storytelling— more powerful than walking into a cathedral.” The successful 2007 festival so attracted and impressed a corps of travel writers from Great Britain as well as visitors from London, including Paul and Susan Moser, that it reached the ears of BBC decisionmakers. In a letter, the Mosers praised the festival for “meeting interesting and knowledgeable people in such an informal
setting. Being able to wander from porch to porch for performances was like nothing I had ever experienced and will certainly never forget. I was so impressed how the town encourages performances from their children, creating a love of the theater and a pride in Williams.” The 2008 festival will focus on Williams’s play Orpheus Descending, which had its premiere on Broadway in 1957. Dealing with the eternal struggles Winter 2008
of good and evil, life and death, salvation and damnation, light and darkness, cleansing and corruption, this play was first called Battle of Angels. A story of loneliness, passion, betrayal, and revenge, it recreates the Orpheus and Eurydice legend and places it in the heart of the Mississippi Delta. Just who is the itinerant outsider Val Xavier who enters the TorrenceMercantile Store of Two River County and sets the action of the play in motion with his overwhelming sexuality? Is he Val as “Stud for Hire,” “Snakeskin,” the “Fugitive Kind,” an erotic “Saint Valentine,” Orpheus, “Xavier/Savior,” or just a neophyte shaman? Various interpretations have been made in the play’s history on stage, on film, beginning with the 1959 screen adaptation under the title The Fugitive Kind, and in an opera version that had its world premiere in 1994 at the Lyric Opera in Chicago. 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 student actors and a drama competition, with prizes totaling $2,500 for the winners. 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 should 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 The Southern Register
Southern Register
3/9/08
10:28 AM
Page 9
Jimmy Thomas
Mississippi Delta Literary Tour, March 31–April 3 Organized by the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, this annual spring tour focuses on the Mississippi Delta’s legendary blues, writers, and food—along with its tumultuous history. Based in Greenwood, with day trips to Greenville and Clarksdale, this year’s tour will take a close look at Cleveland, seat of Bolivar County and home of Delta State University, and will include a stop in Tutwiler and a visit to McCartys pottery in Merigold. Literary scholar Kenneth Holditch will give talks on Tennessee Williams, the author of the play A Streetcar Named Desire W. Kenneth Holditch, during a presentation at and the screenwriter of the film the Cutrer Mansion in Clarksdale last spring, discussing Tennessee Williams and his Baby Doll, and on David Cohn, connections with the Mississippi Delta as his author of Where I Was Born and childhood home and as a source for his plays Raised, a meditation on the relationship between blacks and whites in the Mississippi Delta during the 1930s and ’40s. Author and critic Marion Barnwell will discuss Keith Frazier Somerville’s Dear Boys, a collection of letters to soldiers overseas during World War I. Dorothy Shawhan will read from her fiction and discuss her novel, Lizzie, and her biography of Cleveland native Judge Lucy Somerville Howorth. Hillary Jordan will read from her debut novel, Mudbound, the story of two soldiers—one black and one white—who return home to the Mississippi Delta after World War II. Other speakers will be artists William Dunlap and Nan Sanders, photographer Maude Schuyler Clay, and scholars Luther Brown, Henry Outlaw, and Ted Ownby. The Delta tour is $475 per person for all program activities, eight meals, and local transportation. The fee does not include lodging. Remember to sign up early. Only 35 spots are available, and they will go fast. Group accommodations are offered at the Alluvian, in downtown Greenwood (www.thealluvian.com). Rooms at the Alluvian require a separate registration and are priced at a discounted rate of $155. Call 866-600-5201 and ask for the “Literary Tour” rate. Rooms have also been set aside at the Greenwood Best Western, 662-455-5777, or the Hampton Inn, 662-455-7985.
The Tutwiler Community Education Center’s Spiritualettes singing during the 2007 Delta Literary Tour
The Southern Register
Winter 2008
Page 9
Jimmy Thomas
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. Scholars are invited to submit papers for possible presentation at the festival. Papers on any topic related to Williams and his work are eligible for consideration. Presentations should be no longer than 20 minutes. Authors whose papers are selected for presentation will receive free lodging during the festival and access to all buffets and receptions. The deadline for submissions is August 30, 2008. To enter, send a completed paper (7–8 pages) or an abstract (250 words) to Colby H. Kullman, Department of English, The University of Mississippi, University, MS 38677. Supported by grants from Coahoma Community College and other groups, the festival is free and open to the public. For brochures and more information contact Coahoma Community College’s Public Relations Department at 662621-4157 and check the festival’s Web site at www.coahomacc.edu/twilliams for updates on the 2008 program and news and photographs from the 2007 festival.
3/9/08
(continued from page 1)
10:28 AM
Page 10
OCB
Curtis and Margaret McMullan, awardwinning authors of books for young readers. Educator and literacy advocate Elaine Scott will moderate a session on readers with panelists Claiborne Barksdale of the Barksdale Reading Institute, Daniel Born, program officer and editor of the Common Review at the Great Books Foundation, and librarian Pamela Pridgen. Author
Jonathan Miles will moderate a panel with Dwight Garner, senior editor of the New York Times Book Review; Fredric Koeppel, book review editor of the Memphis Commercial Appeal; and Peder Zane, book review editor and
Susan Choi
Sallie Bingham
Sigrid Estrada
Southern Register
Jeffery Renard Allen
Miriam Berkeley
CREATIVE WRITING WORKSHOP, APRIL 2, 2008 Margaret-Love Denman, former director of the creative writing program at the University of New Hampshire and current coordinator of offcampus writing programs at the University of Mississippi, will offer a special workshop in conjunction with the 2008 Oxford Conference for the Book. The daylong workshop, titled “Mining Your Raw Materials,” will take place Wednesday, April 2, at the Downtown Grill on the Oxford Square. The workshop is open to 20 writers. The workshop fee of $250 includes evaluation of up to 20 double-spaced pages submitted beforehand, a private 20-minute session with Margaret-Love Denman the instructor during the April 3–5 conference, attendance at all conference events, lunch and refreshments on Wednesday, dinner on Thursday, and a box lunch on Friday. Winter 2008
The Southern Register
Perry Smith
Page 10
Susan Hazen-Hammond
The Library of America published Zora Neale Hurston: Novels and Stories and Zora Neale Hurston: Folklore, Memoirs, and Other Writing in 1995. “These groundbreaking works, suffused with the culture and traditions of AfricanAmericans and the poetry of black speech, are the reason Zora Neale Hurston is now recognized as one of the most significant modern American writers,” says Cheryl A. Wall, editor of the volumes. “These books bring Hurston a long way from the smudged photocopies that used to circulate, like samizdat, at academic conventions, and usher her into the national literary canon in highly respectable hardback,” critic Claudia Roth Pierpont observes in her New Yorker essay on February 17, 1997. “She is the fourth African-American to be published in this august series, and the fifth woman, and the first writer who happens to be both.” “The greatest pleasure of Hurston’s writing is that you never know what she’ll say next or how she’ll say it.” —Newsweek, February 13, 1995
Southern Register
3/9/08
10:28 AM
Page 11
books columnist for the News and Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina, and a member of the Board of the National Book Critics Circle. Other visiting speakers, in addition to those mentioned, are artist and arts commentator William Dunlap; journalist Hank Klibanoff; historian Houston B. Roberson; poets Rob Griffith and A. Van Jordan; and fiction writers Sallie Bingham, Susan Choi, Ellen Gilchrist, and Jack Pendarvis. The conference is open to the public without charge. To assure seating space, those interested in attending should preregister. Reservations and advance payment are required for two optional events: a cocktail buffet on Thursday ($50) and a box lunch on Friday ($10). Call 662-925-5993 or visit www.oxfordconferenceforthebook.com
Tricia Walker
Tony Phipps
Deborah G. Plant
Jerry W. Ward Jr.
for more information or to register for conference programs. The University of Mississippi and Square Books sponsor the conference in association with the Junior Auxiliary of Oxford, Lafayette County-Oxford Public Library, Lafayette County Literacy Council, Oxford Middle School PTA, Mississippi Library Commission, and the Mississippi Hills Heritage Area Alliance. The 2008 conference is partially funded by a contribution from the R&B Feder Foundation for the Beaux Arts, and grants from the Mississippi Humanities Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Mississippi Arts Commission, the Oxford Convention and Visitors Bureau, and the Yoknapatawpha Arts Council.
J. Peder Zane
For tourist information, contact: Oxford Convention and Visitors Bureau 102 Ed Perry Boulevard • Oxford, MS 38655 telephone 800-758-9177 662-232-2367 • fax 662-232-8680 www.oxfordcvb.com
For information about books and authors, contact: Square Books 160 Courthouse Square, Oxford, MS 38655 telephone 800-468-4001• 662-236-2262 fax 662-234-9630 www.squarebooks.com
For more information concerning the conference, contact:
Center for the Study of Southern Culture T H E U N I V E R S I T Y O F M I S S I S S I P P I P.O. Box 1848, University, MS 38677-1848 • telephone 662-915-5993 • fax 662-915-5814 • e-mail cssc@olemiss.edu www.oxfordconferenceforthebook.com
The Southern Register
Winter 2008
Page 11
Southern Register
3/9/08
10:28 AM
Page 12
The Write Stuff for Kids
Margaret McMullan
a Newbery Honor Award and the Coretta Scott King Award. After the success of “The Watsons” Curtis returned to Flint, Michigan, with Bud, Not Buddy, a Depression-era tale of 10-year-old orphaned Bud Caldwell, who runs away from a foster home to find the man whom he believes is his father, jazz musician Herman Calloway, a nightclub owner in Grand Rapids. Throughout his journey, Bud meets a motley crew of characters before finally finding a home. Bud, Not Buddy won the 2000 Newbery Medal as well as the Coretta Scott King Award. All Oxford-area fifth-grade students will each receive a free paperback copy of Bud, Not Buddy to read together and study prior to Curtis’s visit. Curtis’s third book, Bucking the Sarge, is set in contemporary Flint, Michigan, and follows the adventures of 15-year-old Luther, his mother, Winter 2008
Patrick O’Connor
Page 12
Christopher Paul Curtis
James Keyser
Each year the Oxford Conference for the Book showcases two writers who specialize in books for young readers. All participating Oxford-area fifth- and ninth-grade students receive personal copies of novels from the selected authors (courtesy of the Junior Auxiliary of Oxford, the Lafayette County Literary Council, and Square Books Jr.) and also have a chance to hear the authors speak about their work during the conference. Last year’s authors were Laurie Halse Anderson (Out of the Dust) and Karen Hesse (Speak). Other notable authors from past Young Authors Fairs include John Green, Mildred D. Taylor, T. A. Barron, and Sharon Draper. The 2008 young people’s authors are, for fifth graders, Christopher Paul Curtis, and for ninth graders, Margaret McMullan. Christopher Paul Curtis has written six books for children and young adults, several focusing on young African American boys growing up in Curtis’s own hometown of Flint, Michigan. Curtis was born in 1953, and though as a boy he was an avid reader, he couldn’t find books that “were about me.” After graduation from high school, Curtis spent 13 years working in a Buick plant while attending college classes at night. He began writing to escape the noise of the factory. His first book, The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963, was published in 1995, and five novels later, it is still Curtis’s favorite, for two reasons: “One, I love the story, and two, I was working in a warehouse unloading trucks when it was finally published and because of that book I no longer work in a warehouse unloading trucks.” The Watsons Go to Birmingham—1963 tells the story of the “Weird Watson” brothers, 10-year-old Kenny, the story’s wide-eyed narrator, and 13-year-old troublemaker Byron (“officially a teenage juvenile delinquent”), who travel with Momma, Dad, and little sister Joetta to Birmingham, Alabama, to visit their grandmother in 1963, just in time for violence to strike very close to home. Heralded by the New York Times as “marvelous . . . [and] both comic and deeply moving,” Curtis’s debut novel was the first book to simultaneously win both
A.K.A. Sarge, his best friend, Sparky, and Shayla, the love of his life. All Luther wants to do is escape from under his mother’s thumb and hightail it out of Flint, and with a little help from his friends (and a pit bull named Poofy) he might just pull it off. Curtis’s newest novel, Elijah of Buxton, is about a boy named Elijah, the son of escaped slaves who fled the South to the town of Buxton, across the border in Ontario, Canada. Freeborn Elijah and his friend Leroy find themselves on a dangerous adventure back to America to track down a crook and hopefully free a family. In addition to his young-adult fiction, Curtis has written two stories in the Mr. Chickee series about a mysterious blind man and the all-kid Flint Future Detectives, Mr. Chickee’s Messy Mission and Mr. Chickee’s Funny Money. Curtis lives and writes in Ontario with his wife and two children. Margaret McMullan is the recipient of numerous awards for her novels, three of which are for young readers. McMullan spent her early childhood in her birthplace of Newton, Mississippi, but her family moved to Chicago when she was 10. Perhaps this significant South-to-North transition can explain why many of her young protagonists have an abiding connection to their homelands. McMullan’s books seem to be about place and that ties that bind us all, often fiercely, to home. In My Mother’s House is the story of Elizabeth, a teenage girl growing up Catholic in the Chicago suburbs. Her family’s Austrian ancestry has been kept carefully under wraps by Jenny, Elizabeth’s mother and a survivor of the Holocaust. When Elizabeth dedicates herself to uncovering her Jewish heritage, she makes some incredible, and often unsettling and shameful, discoveries of her family’s role in the Second World War. This sweeping novel crosses generations and continents, and was a 2003 finalist for the Midland Authors Best Book of the Year. All Oxford and Lafayette ninth graders will receive copies of In My Mother’s House to read and discuss in The Southern Register
Southern Register
3/9/08
10:29 AM
Page 13
SALLY CASSADY LYON
The Southern Register
Ellen Gilchrist to Speak at Book Conference National Book Award winner Ellen Ellen Gilchrist Gilchrist agreed to come home to Mississippi for the 15th Oxford Conference for the Book because the timing was good, she says. Gilchrist, who lives part time on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, will make her first book conference appearance this year. When the Vicksburg native is not spending time with her family at her home in Ocean Springs, Gilchrist lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas, where several years ago she honed her fiction under the instruction of Bill Harrison and others in the MFA program at the University of Arkansas. Although she didn’t complete the coursework for the MFA, she learned enough to publish a well-received collection of short stories, In the Land of Dreamy Dreams, in 1980, soon after leaving the program. Her second book, the story collection Victory over Japan, won the National Book Award for Fiction in 1984. Gilchrist’s other published works include two poetry collections, a book of essays, six novels, and 13 short story collections, including her Collected Stories, which appeared in 2000. Also published that year was Falling through Space, the personal narratives that first aired as a series of commentaries on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition. In 2000 Gilchrist joined the faculty of the MFA program at Arkansas, in part, she says, so that she might feel closer to her grandchildren. “I started teaching the year my oldest grandchild went to Duke,” she says. “Teaching has allowed me to enter the world of my grandchildren. It’s wonderful to be and talk with people that age.” In addition to teaching, Gilchrist is still writing. In May, Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill will release A Dangerous Age. Gilchrist’s seventh novel and her first work of longer fiction in more than a decade, the book tells the story of three female cousins from a tradition-rich Southern family as they attempt to cope with an ongoing war. If previous critical reception is any indication—the Washington Post has said that Gilchrist should be considered a “national cultural treasure”— this novel will join the ranks of first-class contemporary fiction with Gilchrist’s many other books. JENNIFER SOUTHALL
“Ellen Gilchrist is one of America’s most celebrated and respected authors, a classic writer in the tradition of Eudora Welty, Flannery O’Connor, and Elizabeth Spencer.” —ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL CATALOG “To say that Ellen Gilchrist can write is to say that Placido Domingo can sing. All you need to do is listen.” —JONATHAN YARDLEY, WASHINGTON POST
Winter 2008
Page 13
Photo by Franke Keating. Courtesy University Press of Mississippi
class before hearing McMullan speak at the conference. In How I Found the Strong, Shanks Russell, a Mississippi boy on the brink of adolescence, is not allowed to enlist into the Confederate Army. Instead, he must fight the war on the home front with his mother and the family’s single slave, Buck. As the fighting rages on, Shanks’s world falls apart around him, and he begins to ask himself big questions about war and freedom. How I Found the Strong won numerous awards, including the 2006 Fiction Award from the Mississippi Library Association, the Indiana Best Young Adult Book of Fiction, and was named a Booklist Top Ten First Novel for Youth and the American Library Association (ALA) Best Book for Young Adults. The 2007 follow-up to How I Found the Strong, When I Crossed NoBob, tells the tale of 12-year-old Addy O’Donnell, whose infamous extended family has lived for generations in the No-Bob holler. Addy’s parents abandon her, and she is ultimately taken in by her teacher, Frank “Shanks” Russell (the grown-up boy of How I Found the Strong) and his wife. As hard as Addy tries, she cannot completely shake the hold her O’Donnell relatives in the No-Bob have on her, but when she witnesses the brutal murder of a black child, she must finally take a side. In addition to her historic novels for younger readers, McMullan’s first book, When Wharhol Was Alive, is a novel for adults about the New York fashion magazine world during the 1980s. Margaret McMullan is a professor of English at the University of Evansville (Indiana) where she lives with her husband and their young son. All Oxford-area fifth and ninth graders will have the opportunity to meet with Curtis and McMullan during the Friday morning Literature for Young Readers panels at the Ford Center on campus. Students, teachers, parents, and other fans of the authors’ work are invited to attend a book signing at Square Books Jr. on Friday, April 4, at 3:30 p.m.
Southern Register
3/9/08
10:29 AM
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, was Go Down, Moses by William Faulkner. The 2008 book is Uncle Tom’s Children by Richard Wright, who was born on a plantation near Natchez, Mississippi, on September 4, 1908, and who, like Faulkner, is recognized as one of America’s foremost writers of the 20th century. “It is strategic that Wright’s first collection of short stories be given attention in Mississippi during his centennial year,” said Wright scholar Jerry W. Ward Jr., “because the stories are quintessentially Southern and provocative. They cast light on the necessity of reexamining literary renditions of rural life in Mississippi and the segregation-bound South of the early 20th century, for they tell us much about the nexus of art and history.” However, Ward notes that reading Wright offers more than a visit to the past: “When Mississippians have read Uncle Tom’s Children, many of them may confess that the substance and aesthetics of the stories still confront Mississippi, the South, and the world in the 21st century.” The Mississippi Library Commission has helped publicize the project by distributing 800 posters and 30,000 bookmarks illustrated with a 1943 Wright portrait by photographer Gordon Parks and the jackets of six editions of Uncle Tom’s Children published between 1938 and 2008. Tracy Carr, Specialized Reference Manager and Center for the Book Coordinator for the Mississippi Library Commission, coordinated
Mississippi Reads Page 14
Richard Wright, Gordon Parks, May 1943 (Farm Security Administration–Office of War Information Photograph Collection, Library of Congress). Uncle Tom’s Children jackets, from top: original edition, Harper & Brothers, 1938; Perennial Library, 1965; Perennial Library, 1989; Library of America edition, 1991; Perennial edition, 2004; Harper Perennial, centennial edition, 2008.
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.
Winter 2008
Copies of the Mississippi Reads poster are available to individuals for $10.00 each plus $2.50 postage and handling. Mississippi residents add 7 percent sales tax. Send all orders to the Center for the Study of Southern Culture with a check, made payable to the University of Mississippi, or with Visa or MasterCard account number and expiration dates. Credit card orders also may be made by calling 800-390-3527.
The Southern Register
Southern Register
3/9/08
10:29 AM
Page 15
distribution of posters and bookmarks and is the contact for libraries participating in the project. Nearly 250 libraries and bookstores throughout the state are making copies of the book available to patrons, and many are sponsoring discussion groups, readings, talks, and other programs about Uncle Tom’s Children. Assisting with the project are Pamela Pridgen, director of the library at Hattiesburg and chair of the board of the Mississippi Library Commission, and Dorothy Fitts, director of the Lafayette County and Oxford Library, who is responsible for the project’s Web site and e-mail. Kenaz Shun Worthem, formerly on the Oxford library staff and now automation specialist/ programmer for the U.S. District Courts, Northern Mississippi District, designed the Faulkner and Wright pages. The First Regional Library System provides the server for the Web site. “Uncle Tom’s Children: A Guide for Readers and Teachers” by Jerry Ward is available on the Mississippi Reads Web site, and details about the Wright Centennial are located at http:// richardwrightat100.ku.edu/events.html.
Mississippi Reads Contacts WEB SITE www.mississippireads.org E-MAIL misssissippireads@gmail.com
Richard Wright Library In April of 2006, the City Council of Jackson, Mississippi, voted unanimously to rename South Hills Library of the Jackson/Hinds Library System the “Richard Wright Library” in honor of the famous Mississippi author Richard Wright. The Richard Wright branch joins an impressive lineup of other branches named for important Mississippians including Eudora Welty, Fanny Lou Hamer, Margaret Walker Alexander, and Willie Morris. For the one-year anniversary of the renaming, the Richard Wright Library celebrated. Children from Key Elementary School heard the story Richard Wright and the Library Card by William Miller, the true-life account (taken from a scene in Wright’s memoir Black Boy) of a young Richard Wright, who wasn’t allowed to use the whites-only public library as a boy. Following the reading, Jerry W. Ward Jr., a distinguished scholar and professor of English and African World Studies at Dillard University, spoke on “Reading Richard Wright in the 21st Century: Libraries and Cultural Literacy.” Perhaps the event’s crowning moment was hearing the beautiful words of Julia Wright, Richard Wright’s daughter, who resides in Paris. “Dear friends of Richard Wright: I began preparing the centennial two years ago and have found such an amount of labour of love in the rising national and international networks for the celebration next year that I know my father is smiling. I can only begin to imagine what he would have written in anger about the ravages of his native land in the wake of a mismanaged Katrina. In fact, my goal is to direct as many of his books back to his main source of inspiration. Wright’s book, his life story, his spirit will come home to roost and your inauguration of a library in his name today is proof of it. My father had a fascination for heroes who managed to attend their own funerals born from his readings of Mark Twain and fleshed out in The Outsider. He is present amongst you at the hour of his rebirth in the homeland where he suffered but where he also discovered meaning. His friend, the regretted poetess Gwendolyn Brooks, said before she died: ‘Art hurts. Art urges voyages. It is easier to stay home.’ At this moment, I long to be with you and it is painful to stay home. Thank you and bless you.” CAROLYN MCCALLUM Jackson/Hinds Library System
As Mississippians read Uncle Tom’s Children, they should be prepared to engage stories, as James T. Farrell remarked, which contain bitter truths and bitter tragedies. Nevertheless, they will also discover moments that illuminate the human will to endure. To be sure, our perspectives on the book are sharpened by Zora Neale Hurston’s comment that Wright “serves notice by his title that he speaks of people in revolt, and his stories are so grim that the Dismal Swamp of race hatred must be where they live” (Saturday Review of Literature, April 2, 1938). Hurston justly noted that the young Wright did not have a good ear for dialect, although his book did contain “some beautiful writing.” Attention to the beautiful writing can produce shocks of recognition.
—JERRY W. WARD JR., “UNCLE TOM’S CHILDREN: A GUIDE FOR READERS AND TEACHERS” The Southern Register
Hinds County Supervisor Peggy Hobson Calhoun reading Richard Wright and the Library Card, a children’s book by William Miller, to students from Key Elementary School, located next door to the Richard Wright Library in Jackson
Winter 2008
Page 15
Southern Register
3/9/08
10:29 AM
Page 16
Remembering Michel Fabre
Page 16
William Ferris
I first met Michel Fabre in 1978 when I was teaching in the Afro-American and American Studies Programs at Yale University. Michel was a legend who was admired for his fine biography The Unfinished Quest of Richard Wright and for his encyclopedic knowledge of African American writers. Michel and his wife, Genevieve, were doing research at Yale in the Beinecke Rare Book Library, and we discussed my plans to move from New Haven to Oxford, Mississippi, where I had been hired to direct a newly created Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi. The Fabres were very interested in the Center, and both agreed to serve as international advisors to its programs. Thus began a friendship that enriched my life over the years in more ways than I can count. Michel impressed me with his quiet, thoughtful presence. He listened intently to each person with whom he spoke, and he did so with a wry smile and a gleam in his eye. Behind his smile I knew that ideas were churning. From our first meeting at Yale, I felt that Michel was a kindred spirit, and each time we visited—in New Haven, Oxford, Paris, Moscow, and Washington—magical worlds unfolded. During the fall of 1979, I spent a week in Paris lecturing as part of a twomonth lecture tour in Europe that was organized by the United States Information Agency. I had the honor of visiting Michel’s seminar at the University of Paris, where I spoke to his students. Michel’s seminar dealt with black writers and folklore, and the students were deeply engaged with writers like Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, and Ralph Ellison. After the seminar Michel invited me to have dinner in his home, where he and I helped Genevieve prepare the meal. We peeled pears in the kitchen and spoke about how we might work together in the future. Being in Michel’s home was an especially moving experience for me. After a lovely dinner, Michel took me
Michel Fabre, in Paris, Mississippi
into his office and shared some of the priceless photographs, letters, and manuscripts he had gathered during his research over the years. He opened each file lovingly and explained the significance of its contents. Showing Winter 2008
me his correspondence with Margaret Walker Alexander, he said, “Margaret probably doesn’t even remember writing me these letters, but I keep them and treasure them.” During the summer of 1979 Michel The Southern Register
3/9/08
10:29 AM
Page 17
William Ferris
Southern Register
Michel Fabre, talking with Margaret Walker, author of The Daemonic Genius of Richard Wright, during “Mississippi’s Native Son: An International Symposium on Richard Wright,” held at the University of Mississippi in November 1985
and Genevieve came to Oxford for the first of several visits they made at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture. They arrived with their student Sylvie Marchand, who had decided to enroll in the Center’s undergraduate major in Southern Studies. As he descended the steps of the small commuter plane at Oxford airport, Michel looked around and remarked “C’est vraimant le but du monde la!” (“It’s really the end of the world here!”) For the next week we explored the countryside around Oxford. We swam in Sardis Lake and then got stuck on a muddy road driving back to Oxford. The next morning we enjoyed hot biscuits served by Louise Smith at Smitty’s Restaurant. After breakfast Michel was surprised and pleased to see that Richard Howorth carried both English and French language editions of William Faulkner’s work at Square Books. In a gesture toward his homeland, we spent an afternoon in Paris, Mississippi, where we visited with a local farmer and admired the community’s tiny post office. Several years later Michel and Genevieve returned to Oxford as Ford Foundation Visiting Professors of Southern Studies at the Center. During their stay, they led seminars for visiting faculty who taught at black and women’s institutions in the Deep South. On one memorable Oxford evening The Southern Register
we were invited to dinner at the home of John and Regan Hailman. John wrote a regular column on wine for the Gannett newspaper chain and was doing research on his book Thomas Jefferson’s Wines. John’s wife is a gourmet chef, and together the couple created a Jeffersonian dinner with appropriate wines selected in honor of their French guests. While teaching in Oxford, Michel introduced me to the Memphis literary worlds of his old friends Levi and Debbie Frazier. Through their Blues City Cultural Center, the Fraziers use theater to enrich the lives of prison populations in West Tennessee. They had corresponded with Michel for many years and were thrilled to have him nearby. In 1991 Michel and I traveled to Moscow, where we both spoke at a symposium on Richard Wright that the Center for the Study of Southern Culture cosponsored with the Gorky Institute of World Literature. While in Moscow drama critic Maya Koreneva gave our group a tour of the Kremlin and recalled how as a child her father took her to stand outside the hotel where Paul Robeson was staying in Moscow. To their delight Robeson opened his window, walked onto the veranda, and sang several spirituals for his admirers below. Michel listened quietly then mentioned how much Winter 2008
Richard Wright had admired Robeson. In 1992 Michel organized a historic conference at the University of Paris on “Blacks in Europe.” The conference focused on black expatriate artists in Paris and was inspired by Michel’s book From Harlem to Paris: Black American Writers in France, 1840–1980. The weeklong event was cosponsored by the American Studies Program at Columbia University, the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi, the Dubois Institute at Harvard University, and the University of Paris. Over 500 speakers and visitors came from throughout the world to attend a rich venue of programs that featured Ernest Gaines, Henry Louis Gates, Danny Glover, Kenneth Kinnamon, and Julia Wright. Events were held throughout Paris, and Richard Wright’s widow, Ellen Wright, joined Michel at a ceremony commemorating the home where she and Richard Wright had lived in Paris. The final night of the conference Ellen and her daughter Julia invited me to join the Fabres for dinner in her home. Over dinner we spoke of Malcolm X, for whom Julia’s son is named, and I mentioned my friendship with Alex Haley and the importance of his Autobiography of Malcolm X. Later that night Julia called me at my hotel to say she had just read in the New York Times that Alex had died. It was a sad note on which to leave Paris after a program that reflected both the scholarly interests of Michel and the esteem in which all of the participants held him. In 2000, Michel and Genevieve visited me at in Washington at the National Endowment for the Humanities, and we recalled the many happy times we had shared over the years. We promised to again gather at their kitchen in Paris, to peel pears together, and to share other adventures in the future. Michel’s vivid imagination, his keen wit, and his amazing knowledge of the black experience were unique. Far more than a friend, Michel was my soul mate, and I am proud to join many others in saying thanks for all he did to make this world a better place and in sending condolences to his beloved Genevieve and their family. WILLIAM FERRIS Page 17
Southern Register
3/9/08
10:30 AM
Page 18
McDonald’s Birdhouses Exhibition
DAVID WHARTON
Rob McDonald
Currently on exhibit (through April 4) in the Gammill Gallery is Birdhouses, a portfolio of 23 photographs by Rob McDonald. McDonald, who is professor of English and Fine Arts and associate dean for Academic Affairs at Virginia Military Institute, has worked on a larger series he calls Southern Places for several years, and the Birdhouses portfolio is an outgrowth of that project. Almost all of the images on exhibit were made near his current home in Lexington, Virginia, or come from close to his boyhood home of Marion, South Carolina. It is no surprise, then, that McDonald characterizes his birdhouse photographs as “a personal exploration of the relationship between place and identity: meditations on home,” or that he references Gaston Bachelard’s description of a nest as “the origin of confidence in the world.” McDonald also writes that his “worldview is colored by an obsession with place. It dominates my sense of everything. I am always trying to locate a person, an object, a structure—to connect it to its source.” His birdhouse photographs reveal his curiosity about places of origin and his delight in the rich variety of places that can be called home. Self-taught as a photographer, McDonald holds a doctorate in American literature and specializes in the literature and culture of the American South. His publications include Southern Women Playwrights: New Essays on Literary History and Criticism, Reading Erskine Caldwell: New Essays, and an edition of Caldwell’s letters. His newest book is Birdhouses, a limited-edition, fine press portfolio of his photographs designed, hand-made, and published by Horse and Buggy Press in Durham, North Carolina.
Welcome
Exhibition Schedule January 15–April 3, 2008 Rob McDonald Birdhouses April 6–May 30, 2008 Southern Studies Documentary Students Photographs of Mississippi Places June 2–August 29, 2008 Melody Swaney Golding Katrina: Mississippi Women Remember 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.
Page 18
Winter 2008
The Southern Register
Southern Register
3/9/08
10:30 AM
Page 19
Wharton Photographs to Benefit Gammill Gallery and Center’s Documentary Studies Program David Wharton has been photographing the rural South since he came to teach at the Center in 1999. To showcase Wharton’s talent and nine years of service to the Center, a dozen of his landscapes are now available for purchase. Proceeds will benefit the Gammill Gallery and the Center’s Documentary Studies Program. The black-and-white images will be available in various sizes. They are gallery-quality digital prints, made from high-resolution scans of the original medium format (2" x 3") negatives and printed with Epson’s pigment-based (three-level black) UltraChrome K3™ Ink technology. For more information about the prints or to order, please call 662-915-5993 or email us at cssc@olemiss.edu. Look for the images on our Web site soon (www.olemiss.edu/depts/south).
1. Church and Cotton Field, Coahoma County, Mississippi, 1999. 2. Okra Madonna, St. Charles Parish, Louisiana, 2001. 3. Confederate Memorial, Okolona, Mississippi, 2001. 4. Church and Speeding Pickup, Bolivar County, Mississippi, 2001. 5. Tractor, Cotton Wagon, and Church, Coahoma County, Mississippi, 2001. 6. Storefront Church, Drew, Mississippi, 2003. 7. Rural Cemetery and Cotton Field, Tensas Parish, Louisiana, 2003. 8. Gentle Store, Limrock, Alabama, 2003. 9. Cotton Gin, Como, Mississippi, 2004. 10. Cotton Wagon and Church, near Waterproof, Louisiana, 2004. 11. Abandoned Church, Brunson, South Carolina, 2005. 12. Midville Warehouse, Midville, Georgia, 2006. David Wharton
Abandoned Church, Brunson, South Carolina, 2005
The Southern Register
Winter 2008
Page 19
Southern Register
3/9/08
10:31 AM
Page 20
In Memoriam: Art DeRosier (1931–2007) Arthur Henry DeRosier Jr., a former University of Mississippi vice chancellor for academic affairs, was born in Norwich, Connecticut, in 1931. After graduating from Norwich Free Academy, he served for four years in the United States Air Force as an airplane radio operator. He began his career in higher education by enrolling in classes while stationed at Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, ultimately receiving his Bachelor of Science degree, with a major in history, at the University of Southern Mississippi in 1953. He then studied at the University of South Carolina, where he received his MA and PhD degrees, in history, in 1955 and 1959. He was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa at the University of South Carolina. His first academic appointments were at Converse College, the Citadel, and the University of Southern Mississippi, where he was an assistant professor of history. In 1965 he became professor of history and assistant graduate dean at the University of Oklahoma. In 1967 he moved to East Tennessee State University as dean of the graduate school; in 1972 he was named vice president for administration. Dr. DeRosier became vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Mississippi in 1974. During his tenure here he provided dynamic and visionary leadership. He led the rewriting of tenure and promotion policies and probably did more than any other individual to stress the importance of research. He created the first distinguished professorships at the university, leading to the appointments of John Pilkington and Chalmers Butler. He encouraged people to dream and supported those dreams when possible. When history professor Robert Haws and philosophy professor Michael Harrington submitted a proposal for the development of a Center for the Study of Southern Culture, he liked the idea immediately, sold it to the academic deans and the chancellor, Page 20
and somehow found the necessary funds for its establishment. De Rosier left the university to become president of East Tennessee State University in 1977. Following a successful career there, he moved to the College of Idaho as president. He loved the liberal arts in particular and led small colleges with energy and passion, and in 1987 became president of Rocky Mountain College in Billings, Montana. The college was in debt, enrollment had dropped significantly, and accreditation was threatened. DeRosier doubled enrollment, raised funds to create a healthy endowment, and increased the school’s academic reputation. DeRosier never gave up his interest in scholarship. He published scores of journal articles, gave numerous presentations, and wrote approximately 10 books, three after retiring in 2002. He died on November 15, 2007. DeRosier’s continuing interest in scholarship and the University of Winter 2008
Mississippi is also evidenced by some entries on Native American history that he wrote for the Center’s Mississippi Encyclopedia, which will be published next year. GERALD WALTON
The Southern Register
Southern Register
3/9/08
10:31 AM
Page 21
Reading the South Form and Fantasy: The Block Prints of Walter Anderson. Edited by Mary Anderson Pickard and Patricia Pinson. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007. 224 pages. $48.00 paper. Encountering the watercolors, murals, and carvings of Walter Anderson (1903–1965) for the first time is a transformative experience. What was seen and shaped by the prolific Ocean Springs, Mississippi, artist transforms the perception and imagination of the viewer of his art. Whether it is a child swimming, or the determined, muscular motions of people walking in New Orleans, or pelicans in flight, Anderson’s creations have so profound an effect, his appreciators see their own worlds differently. After absorbing Anderson’s Horn Island paintings, how can one perceive a pine tree at sunset without seeing in its bark the pulsating energy Anderson bestowed? In addition to the typing paper, canvases, wood, clay, and walls Anderson adorned, he carved linoleum to produce more than 300 linocuts. Among these were the first monumental block prints in American art. When Picasso produced his first large prints in 1952, Anderson’s six-foot fairy tale linocuts were already hanging in museums in Memphis and New York. Between 1933 and 1950, when American printmakers were restricted by the size of paper and competition rules, Anderson was carving blocks ranging in size from 6" x 4" to 6' x 4'. Gulf Coast flora and fauna, myths, fairy tales, and legends inspired the images, which he offered as affordable art. Form and Fantasy: The Block Prints of
Walter Anderson allows a thorough survey of nearly all of Anderson’s prints, 60 in full color and 200 black-and-whites. As with all the other media he utilized, Anderson brought to the linocut a sensibility informed by wide reading in Western classics of mythology, fable, and folklore. Cinderella, the Billy Goats Gruff, Europa and the Bull are but a few of the subjects that appear. The linocut allowed Anderson inroads along his constant pursuit of portraying the animals, birds, fish, and plants of the Gulf Coast. In the book pelicans soar with a lean draftsman’s line. But also birds, plants, and fish appear in the symbolically charged, seemingly PreColombian stylings that Anderson often employed. Biographer Christopher Maurer (Fortune’s Favorite Child: The Uneasy Life of Walter Anderson) quotes Anderson writing this of “nostalgia” in his journals: “It is the undertow after the wave has broken on the beach, and unless man can be fish, bird, beast, as
well as man, he may not escape.” In all of the supplely rendered creatures in the linocuts, emotion and image work by their own logic, and Anderson burns away our romantic perceptions and nostalgia to get at an ideal form of a sailfin molly, or a tern, or a cat, or a bee. After long engagement with his art, the viewer cannot think of a jay or a frigate bird without Anderson’s bold archetypal form coming first to mind. Anderson restores to nature its primal power, and in the linocuts he brings back to humankind some of our primitive and mythic force. In every print depicting human actors there is a joy of motion and a liveliness few other artists have managed in two-dimensions. In his superb biography, Maurer writes of the lasting impression young Anderson retained from viewing prehistoric cave paintings in France. Maurer posits that the artist’s encounter with this primitive art innervated Anderson’s vision of action and motion. The people in Anderson’s linocuts exhibit muscular strength and seem to stride, to lift, to climb, to bear work and hardship in fluidity. This charged activity in the linocuts is shorn of the bulging and flexing and straining in the work of the only other artist of human motion capable of keeping pace with Anderson—Thomas Hart Benton. Maurer points out in Fortune’s Favorite Child that Anderson’s pelicans appeared alongside Benton’s work at the Whitney Museum of American Art. That museum’s publicity for the 1951–1952 exhibit groups Anderson with the “younger artists” whose “decorative drawings are
Book Reviews and Notes by Faculty, Staff, Students, and Friends of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture
The Southern Register
Winter 2008
Page 21
Southern Register
3/9/08
10:31 AM
Page 22
Reading the South continued
distorted for greater expressiveness.” It seems even the great Whitney Museum found Anderson’s art inexpressibly energetic! It has taken years and many books and writers to begin an understanding of the abundance in this Mississippi artist’s legacy. Form and Fantasy now brings focus to his achievements in his many linocuts. The book includes essays by Mary Anderson Pickard, the artist’s elder daughter, and by Patricia Pinson, editor of The Art of Walter Anderson, with a chronology by Maurer. For those familiar with his paintings, Form and Fantasy will prove an expansive awakening to the depth of his talent. For those unfamiliar with his art, the book will open the world of Anderson’s prints in the same way Walls of Light and A Painter’s Psalm revealed his murals, and in the same way The Art of Walter Anderson, Birds, The Horn Island Logs, Illustrations of Epic and Voyage, and A Symphony of Animals offered his many other pathways toward new perception. STEVE YATES
Sister. By Nickole Brown. Granada Hills, Calif.: Red Hen Press, 2007. 112 pages, $18.95 paper. In the debut collection from Kentucky poet Nickole Brown, readers experience the pleasures of poetry—the illuminated moment reverberating—as well as the pleasures of the novel—the narrative unfurling, driven by complex central characters. That’s because the book is conceived as a novel-in-poems, each addressed to the speaker’s much younger sister. The poems tell the story of the girls’ childhoods, but these are not the bucolic scenes of country life one might expect from
Page 22
speaker imagines herself while in utero covered “with an okra fuzz of hair,” sees her mama sleeping “curled tight/ like the sole of a house shoe hot from the dryer,” grows into a teenage girl collecting “precious, breakable things,” including a boyfriend’s “speed skate laces and his sister’s stolen/ champagne flute of Mardi Gras beads.” Rich with images, brave with difficult truths, and retrained enough to avoid melancholy, this is a collection readers will enjoy. BETH ANN FENNELLY that description. Instead, the book is harrowing, an unflinching portrayal of a dysfunctional family and its dangerous legacies. Although Sister belongs clearly in the confessional tradition, Brown avoids many of confessionalism’s pitfalls, most importantly the stance of speaker as professional victim. Brown achieves this partly through her skill at noticing nuances of character, partly through her stance of not exonerating the narrator herself. The strongest of these poems conjure the Plath of “The Applicant” or “Edge”; in fact, one imagines the woman who wrote “The woman is perfected/ Her dead/ body wears the smile of accomplishment” would look with favor on Brown’s “Barren Lake,” in which she writes “I thought of my girlhood, how I was the catch-/ of-the-day, how I was once a lean nymphet/ swimming in the cradle of his fist, how even then I waited/ arched on a plaque for someone to come/ and spray the gold back onto my dead body/ to make it perfect again.” The true strength of this collection is not its compelling subject matter but Brown’s imagistic skill. The setting of her native Kentucky is richly present, but the details go beyond accidents of landscape to reveal a vision of a place deeply inhabited—Brown’s
Winter 2008
High Cotton: Four Seasons in the Mississippi Delta. By Gerard Helferich. $25.00. New York: Counterpoint, 2007. 308 pages. $25.00 cloth. There a few items—air, soil, and liberty among them—that are so common we fail to appreciate their usefulness. The familiarity of cotton belies the complexity in bringing a boll to maturity and a bolt to market. Like the old ads said: Cotton is the fabric of our lives. The production of cotton is intertwined with our nation’s history. The British demand for cotton fiber was a significant factor in the settlement of the American colonies and the motivation to tame land in what is now the Southeastern United States. Cotton was also at the center of our young nation’s deepest disgrace. Slavery was the inexpensive labor that made the farming of cotton a viable enterprise. Both the Northern and Southern economies of the time depended on it. It was grown in the South and milled in the North. Today Mississippi ranks second in cotton production to Texas, and 80 percent of Mississippi’s crop is harvested in the Delta. The story of these 7,000 square miles in
The Southern Register
Southern Register
3/9/08
10:31 AM
Page 23
Reading the South continued
northwest Mississippi, as Helferich correctly asserts, rests almost solely on a single plant, “Cotton is the starting point from which the rest of the Delta’s narrative flows.” If High Cotton were a linear narrative from seed to gin, this would be a dry row to hoe. But the influences and impact of this plant are as varied as the bends in the Mississippi River. The birth of the blues is an example of one tributary that the author explores for several pages, “given the bitter realities of life here, it’s not surprising that the tortured howl known as the blues arose in the Mississippi Delta, among the first American blacks born in nominal freedom.” A concise history of the blues follows. “I ain gon raise no mo cotton,” is the refrain in one early lyric. Machinery, meteorology, chemicals, economics, and dabbling in futures, “contracts to deliver a certain quantity of . . . cotton on a specified date at an agreed-on price,” are all a part of the survival of a cotton farmer. Were High Cotton nothing more than a textbook recitation of the mechanics of cotton farming in the Delta, it would be arid reading. Wisely, we are brought into this world through four seasons of following Zack Killebrew, a farmer that began with next to nothing and has increased his acreage and, more importantly, survived, in a rapidly changing industry dominated by large corporate farms. The story begins in spring, with the harbinger that “if Zack’s cotton comes up short in quantity or grade, he can end the year hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.” Though true, as Helferich points out, there are federal subsidy programs as a safety net. As the year progresses, it is clear that the threat of failure is not what propels Zack, but an inexplicable love for the art of growing a crop and bringing it to market. We meet many personalities throughout, from farm laborers who show up for work when the mood strikes, to dedicated operators who live at the gin for months to process all of the cotton correctly and expeditiously. If there is a weakness in the book, it stems from the lack of eavesdropping on the conversations between Killebrew and the characters he encounters as he goes about his business. The local hangout is the Rib Depot (which later closes), a place where he shares a “cup of coffee before heading out to work.” It would have added texture to know what the discussions were. High Cotton is pure Mississippi. The toil, the risk, the stubbornness, the belief that a better day is around the corner, and the doggedness to succeed when many others would fail is in the blood. Bigger yet, it is purely American. SCOTT NAUGLE
The Southern Register
Winter 2008
Page 23
Southern Register
3/9/08
10:32 AM
Page 24
Page 24
Living Blues Magazine Philip K. Ensley, DVM
Although the University of Mississippi has gained acclaim for its tailgating in the Grove during football seasons, another unique asset to the campus, Living Blues magazine, is probably less known to even the most informed Ole Miss fanatic. Living Blues, a bimonthly publication, is the oldest blues magazine of note and has been in production since 1970. Although the magazine was based in Chicago during its first stages of infancy, the university bought and relocated it to the Oxford campus in 1983. With the 40th anniversary approaching in 2010, Living Blues continues to thrive, said Mark Camarigg, publications manager. “It’s safe to say that we’re the blues magazine of record. One of the things we strive to do is get the facts right.” Editor Brett Bonner added, “Living Blues has documented the lives of blues artists both big and small. From B. B. King to T-Model Ford, we give everyone the same level of respect and give them the space to tell their story whatever it is.” From Howlin’ Wolf to more obscure blues musicians, Living Blues strives to cover most if not all assets to the blues community, while still attempting to maintain an academic style. “The idea is that we have scholars and a relationship with musicians, and we can take a scholarly look at the music,” Camarigg said. “We just published an article where one of our writers uncovered the birth date of Texas bluesman Blind Lemon Jefferson using WWI draft card information. Come to
Musician HoneyBoy Edwards (seated) with Living Blues editors (from left) Jim O’Neal (1970–19), David Nelson (1992–2000) , Scott Barretta (2000–2003), and Brett Bonner (2003–present)
find out, even his tombstone has the wrong date,” said Bonner. In essence, the magazine brings people together through the annual blues symposium each February, which Camarigg describes as a “cultural examination of the blues.” However, this year, the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, which officially hosts the symposium, has expanded its reach and has teamed with
Winter 2008
Dominican University in Chicago and is planning to hold the event in May. “The symposium is a great opportunity to get people together and provide scholarship for issues that have happened in blues music,” Camarigg said. Issues like the influence of racism on musicians help describe the effect it has on African American culture itself and the creative artistry that can develop from it, Camarigg added.
The Southern Register
Southern Register
3/9/08
10:33 AM
Page 25
In addition to attracting blues scholars like Paul Oliver, Barry Lee Pearson, and David Evans, the magazine has an abundance of international subscribers as well, said 23-year-old graduate student worker Miranda Cully. “We have tons of international subscribers and getting the magazine to them is quite a challenge.” While communicating with readers from France, Argentina, and the Netherlands, Cully said the magazine has helped her with her studies. “My concentration is Southern religion, and blues is far from what I study, but I think it makes me a more well rounded Southern Studies student. Plus I love working here,” she said. Another student worker, 21-yearold undergraduate Stuart Coleman, said that even though Living Blues is a The Southern Register
far cry from his major in geological engineering, his job as database manager has prepared him for the “real world.” “I’ve been here for four years since I was a freshman and have enjoyed being a part of it. This is a great magazine, and it is growing in popularity,” he said. The magazine is self-sufficient and operates like a business, said Camarigg, who deals with the more business aspect of the publication. “We can’t take out loans and our commercial appearance makes obtaining grants difficult. Ideally, we can take advantage of the University’s resources to enhance the marketing of Living Blues. However, even an efficient Web site is quite expensive relative to the magazine’s operating budget.” Living Blues is mostly publicized through Winter 2008
word of mouth, MySpace, e-mail blasts, and retail stores like Barnes and Noble and Borders and has a circulation of over 20,000 readers, both Camarigg and Cully said. “There are some definite challenges,” Camarigg said. “Until recently we used to shelve in Tower Records, but when Tower Records went out of business, all music magazines took a pretty big hit.” Another obstacle Camarigg spoke of is the decline in CD sales. Since the music industry is more reluctant to release CDs, the need for advertisement declines. When advertisement declines, small, genre-specific publications like Living Blues that thrive solely on advertisements and subscripts suffer. “There was a big surge [in blues music] in the early1990s, but the record companies just aren’t releasing CDs anymore,” he said. Bonner added, “We are turning more and more to alternative funding. The state of Mississippi sponsored an issue three years ago. This year we are doing a Chicago blues issue sponsored by the City of Chicago. These are tourismdriven issues. Hopefully we’ll be able to do more of these in the future.” Although there is a struggle to further publicize Living Blues in the grander scheme of things, Camarigg insists that in the blues genre, they are continuously in the limelight. “We have a fanatical audience, which can be a good thing or a bad thing,” he said, laughing. “They’ll let us know if we make a mistake, but they also give us a great deal of support.” ALEX MCADAMS Page 25
Southern Register
3/9/08
10:33 AM
Page 26
John Work III: Recording Black Culture Spring Fed Records In 2005 Vanderbilt University Press issued Lost Delta Found, which collected previously unpublished manuscripts on Delta blues and folklife written in the 1940s by Fisk University professor John Wesley Work III, sociologist Lewis Wade Jones, and graduate student Samuel C. Adams Jr. These men, all African American, had worked with Alan Lomax on the Clarksdale-area study that resulted in the first recordings of Muddy Waters, David “Honeyboy” Edwards, and others, but until recently their work on this project had received scant attention, most notably in Lomax’s own written recollections of the events. The editors and introduction authors were Robert Gordon, author of the Waters biography Can’t Be Satisfied, and Bruce Nemerov, who had previously conducted research on Work for a radio documentary. Nemerov is also the compiler and author of the lengthy liner notes for John Work III: Recording Black Culture, which explores The coproducer of John Work III: Recording Black Culture is Evan Hatch, a graduate (2002) of the Southern Studies master’s program, who has worked since late 2002 as a folklorist for the Arts Center of Cannon County, Tennessee. Hatch’s work at the Arts Center has included the creation of multiple exhibits and the reissue of 18 CDs of old-time country field recordings on Spring Fed Records. He is currently the president of the Tennessee Folklore Society. John Work III: Recording Black Culture won a Grammy award in February 2008 in the liner notes category, and in December Hatch was quoted in a lengthy New York Times article about the CD. The Grammy award is a major coup for Hatch, who more or less started Spring Fed Records to reissue old recordings. To order John Work III and other CDs, contact springfedrecords.com. Page 26
the wide range of field recordings Work made on his own accord. Work’s grandfather John Work, who was born a slave, reportedly helped train some of the first members of the Fisk Jubilee singers, while his father, John Work II, led the group and was a musicologist who published collections of religious songs. Work followed in his father’s footsteps, but broadened his scope to include African American secular music, and was in this sense a pioneer among African American music scholars. In the late ’30s he began using a Presto disc cutter to record songs in the field, and in 1940 published the volume Folk Songs of the American Negro. Nemerov’s notes address in detail the different forms of music that Work gathered, as well as how financial considerations severely constricted the amount of music he could record. The CD is divided in terms of genre, and begins with two tracks of African American string band music—“Poor Black Sheep” and “Texas Traveler”— by banjoist Nathan Frazier and fiddler Frank Patterson, both virtuosos who Work paired for the 75th anniversary ceremonies for Fisk. Work’s interest in older forms of music is also expressed here through a fine example of a work song, “My Captain’s Angry” by Al Washington, which he captured while on vacation in South Carolina. Although Work was eager to record such relatively archaic forms of music, Winter 2008
much of his work involved charting—without romanticism— how music changed over time to suit modern audiences. This is displayed here most notably in his samples of religious music. Three tracks capture the rough-hewn quality and odd timing of older forms of congregational singing, while his work with African American sacred harp singers is represented by a track from a Dothan, Alabama, group. These can be compared with his examples of quartet singing, a relatively modern phenomena that was changing dramatically at the time Work was collecting it. Five tracks capture music including the beautiful a capella harmonies of Murfreesboro high school singers, the modern, pianoaccompanied drive of a female group, and the professionalism of the Fairfield Four (“Walk around in Dry Bones”), whom Work recorded in their home church several years before they achieved national acclaim. Blues is also represented here in two tracks that collectors will not want to be without. One of Work’s greatest finds was Macon, Georgia’s Joe Holmes, represented by his previously unissued “Ain’t Gonna Drink No Mo’,” which evokes the lighter-themed blues of Robert Johnson. Sadly, little is known of Holmes, and it’s a mystery why he didn’t appear on commercial records. The other treat is a cleaned-up version of one of the Clarksdale-area interviews with Muddy Waters on which the voices of both Work and fiddler Son Sims have been restored. This historically important issue of Work’s field recordings is enhanced by the lengthy and meticulous notes of Nemerov, who interweaves his commentary with notes from Work’s various writings. The 26-page booklet is beautifully designed, and is illustrated with many vintage photos, Work’s original notes, and ephemeral items. SCOTT BARRETTA The Southern Register
Southern Register
3/9/08
10:33 AM
Page 27
SOUTHERN FOODWAYS REGISTER The Newsletter of the Souther n Foo dways Alliance “Tracing the evolution of cornbread from suppone to spoonbread is in some ways similar to studying history through an examination of fossils and other artifacts.” —John Egerton
The SFA Calendar The lottery for the annual SFA symposium is the bane of our existence. We hate turning people away from our collective table. But we also believe that expanding the attendance beyond the current limit of around 250 people would negatively impact the quality of interaction among symposiasts. And so, a few years back, the SFA board of directors began expanding its roster of events. We have added Potlikker Film Festivals (three- to four-hour romps of film, food, poetry, and music), as well as Camps (same mix, more experiential, and one to two days long) and Field Trips (less self-directed, and longer, say two to three days). And then there are lagniappe events, like the annual Taste of the South shindig at Blackberry Farm (which raised $62,000 for the SFA this year!). Following is the lineup of coming attractions; the list by no means complete but it’s what we know for sure, more or less: March 28–29: High Museum Wine Auction (www.atlantawineauction.org) in Atlanta featuring a Cork and Pork Seminar (with poet Kevin Young) and a grand dinner with, among others, Mike Lata and Kathyrn King. May 23–25: Camp Chicago, an examination of what happens when Southern culture (and Southern cookery) decamps for the North. Expect blues. Expect barbecue. Expect to ride the El and hang at West Town Tavern and the Hideout. May 29–June 1: Franklin Food and Spirits Festival. Staged—in Tennessee—by our friends at Jim ’N Nick’s, this first-time event is taking shape rapidly. Like the High Museum event as well as the Blackberry Farm event, the SFA is consulting on content but not running the show. July 11–13: Louisville: Blue Grass and Brown Whiskey. We’ll pay homage to Kentucky farmers, fry fish in Germantown, learn to play the game of dainty, and cook from the Blue Grass Cookbook. October 22–23: Delta Divertissement, Greenwood, Mississippi. Our annual debauch in the Delta is the ever popular prequel to the symposium. Our H.Q. is the Alluvian Hotel; our intent is experiential learning. October 23–26: The 11th Southern Foodways Symposium, Oxford, Mississippi. Our focus this year is “drinkways.” We’ll start with water; move on through iced tea, buttermilk, and beer; and, of course, talk of (and sample) wine and whiskey.
From the President: Southern Food 101 You know the response you will get when you tell your family and friends that you are headed to a symposium, a day camp, or a field trip on Southern foodways. “What’s a foodway?” they ask. You carefully explain, “Foodways (plural) is the study of food. Webster’s defines it as the eating habits and culinary practices of a people, region, or historical period. Folklorist Charles Camp defines foodways as the intersection of food and culture.” Your friends listen politely and say, “Gee, I wish I could go to that kind of conference!” Now, imagine you are a college student. Your parents call and ask what courses you plan to take this semester. You tell them about an interesting seminar that explores regional foodways in America. There is a dull silence on the other end of the line. Then a giggle follows. “Come on—tell me what you’re really taking.” Sigh. Why do people have such a hard time taking the study of food seriously? Could it have something to do with its “dailiness,” or perhaps its association with women? Maybe it is simply too interesting to be considered worthy of study! There’s no question today that food is worthy of study in the academy. More and more institutions of higher learning offer food-related courses in both the social sciences and the humanities. I teach an American Studies seminar at UNC at Chapel Hill, entitled “Cooking Up a Storm: Exploring Food in American Culture.” My colleagues in anthropology, geography, and the honors’ program at UNC also explore the cultural history and importance of food in their courses. Indiana University recently announced a new PhD program in the anthropology of food—the first program of its kind in the world. We are all proud of the important contributions that the SFA has made for nearly 10 years to the field of foodways studies. In the coming months, you will learn about exciting new foodways courses to be taught at the University of Mississippi in collaboration with the SFA and the Center for the Study of Southern Culture. Our symposia already feel like a “mini-degree” program in Southern foodways, so it is high time to start offering courses for credit in the university curriculum. We will keep you posted on these exciting plans. I look forward to seeing you at SFA programs throughout 2008. We have a full schedule of terrific events, so please join us and continue your education in Southern foodways! All the best, Marcie Cohen Ferris, UNC at Chapel Hill
Southern Register
3/9/08
10:33 AM
Page 28
Meet Todd Richards “You know, a lot of African Americans just don’t choose to go to Mississippi. We don’t look at a map and decide to go there; in fact, we have pretty much avoided it. When I found out that I was going to Oxford as the Glory Foods Chef Scholarship recipient, I thought, ‘That’s great news—I get to go to Mississippi as a special guest. That’s a big deal.’ It broke through a little invisible barrier for me, and I loved my time there.” Chef Todd Richards, although young at 36, has been around the stove for a long time. He started working in kitchens when he was 14 years old. Before that, he was standing beside his father, helping to prepare family meals and learning that food brought people together. Richards loved creating something delicious for his family, was inspired by visits to restaurants, and decided to make a career out of cooking. Since then he has worked his way through the gauntlet of line and prep, sauté, fry, grill, and gardemanger; has worked in casual restaurants, done a stint as a cooking school teacher, cooked in fine dining establishments, and even battled on the Iron Chef America stage. To say he gets around good in the kitchen would be an understatement. Currently Richards is the Executive Chef at Louisville’s handsome Oakroom, within the historic Seelbach Hotel. Todd strikes an elegant form in his chef whites, and he takes food and flavor seriously. He also takes location and history seriously, too; he knows who he is, where he is, and where he comes from. While his haute plates at the Oakroom fetch a good price, he is excited to think that there might be a return to regular folks cooking real food. “I believe that there is a cooking renaissance happening—that people see the need for a down-home meal. I hear talk about comfort food, and to me it translates to more than just what is on the plate; I believe that people really need comfort right now—socially, economically, politically, and physically. Home-style comfort food helps with some of that. While I love cooking high-end food, I am happy to see people turn to traditional comfort food to bring some joy to their lives.”
SFA Contributors
TIMOTHY C. DAVIS is a Charlotte, North Carolina, native currently living in North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. An MFA student at Queens University, he has written for magazines including Saveur, Christian Science Monitor, and Mother Jones. M ARCIE C OHEN F ERRIS , 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. 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.
Fred Sauceman
2007 Glory Foods Chef Scholarship Recipient
Theresa E. Potter, director of sales promotion and marketing for Glory Foods of Columbus, Ohio, presents the William F. Williams Glory Foods Chef Scholar Award to Todd Richards, executive chef at the Seelbach Hilton in Louisville, Kentucky.
This past October, when Richards crossed the Mississippi state line and joined the SFA at the annual symposium, he was pleased to find a group that was thoughtful about food. Jessica Harris’s homage to the late-great black chefs of early America stirred Richards, and he had more than a couple of people turning around to wink at him when she asked “Where are our great black American chefs today?” “I really felt like the entire group that was in attendance at the symposium was there in a spirit of not just fun and eating, but in a spirit of learning and also reconciliation. I felt like we all have the same concerns when it comes to food and culture. Of course, y’all are crazy, too—I mean to sit on the top of an open-air bus in the freezing cold to get some catfish was extreme, but it was fun and everyone was so nice and welcomed me to the group.” Richards knows that the SFA is a lively organization and does important documentary work, but he also gets our real desire to “gather at the table in a spirit of reconciliation.” Chef Richards understands that many times there are barriers and stigmas that African Americans have to get through to feel comfortable “back in the kitchen.” He is proud to work in an industry that not only provides jobs to ambitious young black women and men, but could also become a place of honor and stature—a trade that provides a catalyst for working things out. “When you sit down and eat together, you have to talk. If you have a problem with someone at the table, it gets talked about and hopefully worked out. The world’s problems could be solved over a dinner table. I believe that’s true and I am happy to be a part of something that can heal that way.” ANGIE MOSIER
Southern Register
3/9/08
10:33 AM
Page 29
BOOK NOTES Gumbo Tales: Finding My Place at the New Orleans Table By Sara Roahen, W. W. Norton & Co., 2008, $24.95. The best writing about food grows from a place and a personality, and Sara Roahen’s book is a wonderful example of the intersection of the three. Roahen, a Wisconsin native, came to New Orleans so her husband, Matt, could attend medical school at Tulane. She immediately fell in love with the cooking of the city and resolved not only to eat as much of it as possible but also to understand it. The opening chapter on gumbo chronicles her transforming experience with this definitive New Orleans dish from her initial anxiety “into curiosity and even desire”—a good summary of her method as she explores sazeracs, sno-balls, po-boys, mirlitons, crawfish, oysters, red beans and rice, café au lait, pho (yes, pho), ya-ka-mein, and other delicacies of her adopted city. She explores by eating, joyfully and obsessively eating, by reading the requisite literature, and, most important, by getting to know the people who have grown up on and continue to cook this traditional and evolving cuisine. It’s a cast of characters
that includes Miss Dot, who presides over Domilise’s; Ashely Hansen, who now runs her family’s Sno-Blitz shop; Marie Fagot, who prepared a traditional Sicilian St. Joseph’s Day dinner for 400 of her neighbors and friends each year; and Pableaux Johnson, who cooks red beans and rice for a revolving group of lucky friends every Monday evening. The most appealing of this appealing cast is Sara Roahen herself, who takes obvious joy in her subject. Sara Roahen the narrator is much like the Sara
Roahen many of us have come to know at Southern Foodways Alliance events—friendly and open, appealingly self-deprecating, inquisitive with just the right amount of obsession, intelligent, finely observant, and never snide. She not only makes you want to go to New Orleans and eat, but to eat with her. (Disclosure: Roahen serves on the SFA board.) Hurricane Katrina interrupted Roahen’s writing and research for Gumbo Days, and a sense of loss, sometimes temporary, sometimes permanent, runs through this book. No matter, Roahen has faith that “ a flood cannot destroy the most interesting and ingrained food culture in my country,” and that New Orleans will continue to teach us “about connecting with people by cooking and eating together.” TOM HEAD
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 nonprofits/artisans ❏ $500 corporation
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, VISIT US AT OUR WEB SITE: www.southernfoodways.com or call John T. Edge, SFA Director, at 662.915.5993 or via e-mail at johnt@olemiss.edu
Southern Register
3/9/08
11:17 AM
Page 30
Vegetarian Soul Food? There’s an old Sanford and Son episode (“Funny, You Don’t Look It”) in which that show’s grumpy protagonist Fred G. Sanford, tired of everyone walking all over him, proclaims himself the king of his salvage empire. Always eager to help out, Fred’s pal Bubba suggests that Fred pay a local company to trace his roots. Fred is, as it turns out, descended from kings: Ethiopian Jewish African kings, that is. Hilarity ensues as Fred traces his ancestry (which, as it turns out, is nothing more than a scam). And viewers learn a valuable, tied-up-in-22 lesson: never judge a black junkman by his Judaica. Which, in an admittedly roundabout sort of way, brings me to Charleston’s Soul Vegetarian Cafe and Exodus Takeout, a restaurant that conjures Garvey as readily as it does gravy. Run by the African Hebrew Israelites, Soul Vegetarian’s cuisine is more or less soul food—African in origin, like so much of the area’s cuisine—except sans the
meatstuffs. The only vegan restaurant in North Charleston, Soul is located behind a daycare center on Rivers Avenue. What’s on the menu? Garlicky mac and cheese, black-eyed peas, kale, collards, candied sweet potatoes, cornbread, blueberry cheesecake, and pineapple upside-down cake. And barbecue tofu. Those who don’t like tofu, made of the ever-Southern soybean, have yet to have it cooked properly. There’s also vegan lasagna, vegan gyros (admittedly not all that Southern, but then again, we do have a large Greek population), tofu falafels, a barbecued “twist” on whole wheat pita served with medium spicy sauce and homemade mustard, and more. Perhaps the biggest shocker? Nothing is made with milk or meat, and nothing is fried. Lunches usually are under $10 a
person—drink and dessert included— and dinners only a couple bucks more. The African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem Community’s Soul Vegetarian South Complex: 3225-A Rivers Avenue in North Charleston, South Carolina. Phone: 843-744-1155. TIMOTHY C. DAVIS
The Southern Foodways Alliance and UGA Press invite you to an oyster dinner celebrating the release of Cornbread Nation 4: The Best of Southern Food Writing edited by Dale Volberg Reed and John Shelton Reed hosted by Chef John Currence of City Grocery Oxford, Mississippi Friday, April 4, 2008 Advance reservations required. For more information, e-mail sfamail@olemiss.edu or visit www.southernfoodways.com
Southern Register
3/9/08
10:34 AM
Page 31
Bar Culture in Louisville, Kentucky An SFA Oral History Project Text and photographs by Amy Evans
Louisville is awash in bourbon. And beer. It’s is a drinking person’s town, due in no small part to the state’s bourbon heritage and the city’s nicknamenamesake brewery, Falls City. This is where the Old Fashioned was invented. It’s where Al Capone dodged the law during prohibition, ducking out of the Seelbach Hotel through secret passageways. And it’s where barkeeps plied their customers with rolled oysters and bean soup to keep them coming back. Louisville’s private clubs, hotel bars, and neighborhood taverns are rich with drinking history and lore, and there’s always time for another round. In January SFA oral historian Amy Evans bellied up to many a bar in Falls City, chatting up bartenders, bar owners, and bar patrons, gathering their stories one drink at a time. She met with John C. Johnson, 50-year employee of the Pendennis Club, where the Old Fashioned was born. Greg Haner, fourth generation owner of Mazzoni’s, talked about his family’s 100-plus year history of making and serving rolled oysters. Edward Winfield shared stories of the legendary Seelbach Hotel and the muchloved Louisville bartender, Max Allen
Bill Tinker
Joy Perrine
John C. Johnson
Jr., whom he had the opportunity to learn from before he passed. While Louisville’s cocktail culture is steeped in history, it’s also rife with innovation. Jerry Slater, director of the Seelbach’s Oakroom restaurant, has created the savory Bufala Negra cocktail made with basil, balsamic vinegar, bourbon, and ginger ale. Joy Perrine of Jack’s Lounge, inspired by the rum infusions she was exposed to as a bartender in St. Croix, has developed an entire menu of infused bourbons. And, of course, there are the regulars. Bill Tinker, a 50-year patron of Check’s
The Southern Register
Winter 2008
Café in Germantown, is an encyclopedia of neighborhood history. He’s also responsible for bringing together the neighborhood taverns for the Schitzelburg Walk, a progressive night of drinking that happens each fall—just one of the reasons he was voted Schnitzelburg’s Number-One Citizen. These and other oral history interviews were collected as part of the SFA’s upcoming Blue Grass and Brown Whiskey Field Trip to Louisville, July 11–13. Visit www.southernfoodways.com for more information and to register. Look for the interviews to appear online this spring. Page 31
Southern Register
3/9/08
10:34 AM
Page 32
NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS SCOTT BARRETTA is the former editor of Living Blues. He is a freelance writer and consultant, a sociology instructor at Ole Miss, the host of the Mississippi Public Broadcasting program Highway 61, and a researcher and writer for the Mississippi Blues Trail. 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 MA in Southern Studies from the University of Mississippi. B ETH A NN F ENNELLY received a 2003 National Endowment for the Arts Award and a 2006 United States Artist grant. She has published two books of poetry, Open House, which won the 2001 Kenyon Review Prize, and Tender Hooks, as well as a book of essays, Great with Child. Her third book of poems, Unmentionables, will be published in April 2008. She is an associate professor at the University of Mississippi. WILLIAM FERRIS is a professor of history, an adjunct professor in the Folklore Curriculum, and associate director of the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He previously served as chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities and director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi. DONALD M. K ARTIGANER holds the William Howry Chair in Faulkner Studies at the University of Mississippi and is director of the Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference. He is the author of The Fragile Thread: The Meaning of Form in Faulkner’s Novels and is coeditor of Theories of American Literature and seven volumes of proceedings of the Faulkner Conference. SALLY CASSADY LYON is a Gulfport native and Sewanee graduate. She lives in Oxford with her husband, Dalton, an orange tabby cat, Patty MacTavish, and a dog, Scout. She works at the Center, as the director’s assistant. ALEX MCADAMS is a sophomore English and journalism double major and works for the Daily Mississippian as a senior staff reporter, columnist, and copy editor. Her writing has also appeared in American Music Press magazine, Hails+Horns magazine, and several travel publications for What Media Group Productions, based in Sydney, Australia, for which she interned in 2007. C AROLYN M C C ALLUM is executive director of the Jackson/Hinds Library System. Of the 15 libraries in the system, four are named for Mississippi authors: Eudora Welty (main library), Margaret Walker Alexander, Willie Morris, and Richard Wright.
Page 32
S COTT N AUGLE is a regular contributor to the Sun Herald and other publications. He opened Pass Christian Books in 2003. Hurricane Katrina swept away the building that housed the bookstore, but not the business. The new store opened in Pass Christian/DeLisle on November 1, 2006. TED OWNBY, interim director of the Center, 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. ELIZABETH ANNE PAYNE is the author of Reform, Labor, and Feminism, coeditor of Mississippi Women: Their History, Their Lives, and director of the Making Do, a project that documents the lives of women in north Mississippi through interviews, photographs, brief biographies, and video excerpts. She is professor of history at the University of Mississippi. JENNIFER SOUTHALL is director of annual giving at the University of Mississippi, where she received a bachelor’s degree in English in 1992. Before returning to Ole Miss in 2004 as a communications specialist, she worked as a teacher and editor. J IMMY T HOMAS is managing editor of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. He received BA degrees in English and philosophy and an MA in Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi and has worked for publications in Oxford and New York. G ERALD W. WALTON began teaching English at the University of Mississippi in 1959 and held a variety of positions during the next 40 years, including dean of the College of Liberal Arts and provost and vice chancellor for Academic Affairs. He is currently compiling a photographic history of the institution. DAVID WHARTON is assistant professor and director of documentary projects at the Center, where he teaches courses in Southern Studies, fieldwork, and photography. He is the author of The Soul of a Small Texas Town: Photographs, Memories, and History from McDade. S TEVE YATES of Flowood, Mississippi, has fiction forthcoming in TriQuarterly and elsewhere. He is the recipient of two grants from the Mississippi Arts Commission for his short stories and a novel in progress. He has published stories and novel excerpts in Southwest Review, Missouri Review, Ontario Review, and many other journals.
Winter 2008
The Southern Register
Southern Register
3/9/08
10:34 AM
Page 33
Remembering Red Barber, 1908–2008
The 25th Annual International Country Music Conference will take place on May 22–24, 2008, at Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee. Belmont University is located at the south end of Music Row. The program will begin with a keynote address by Ryan Brasseaux and Kevin Fontenot dealing with the 80th anniversary of the first Cajun recording. Other presentations will deal varied aspects of the history and contemporary status of country music. The Charles K. Wolfe Memorial panel will focus on a 40th anniversary retrospective of the publication of Bill Malone’s Country Music U.S.A. Malone will be a panelist. Saturday will feature a special session on the 75th anniversary of the death of Jimmie Rodgers. To register for ICMC 2008, please send a check ($100 U.S.), made payable to ICMC, to James E. Akenson, Box 5042, Tennessee Technological University, Cookeville, TN 38505 USA. For additional information e-mail JAkenson@tntech.edu.
On February 16, 2008, Columbus, Mississippi, celebrated the centenary of one of its illustrious native sons, Walter Lanier “Red” Barber. Considered one of the seminal figures in sports broadcasting, Barber made his indelible mark as a radio play-by-play announcer for the Cincinnati Reds (1934–1938), the Brooklyn Dodgers (1939–1953), and the New York Yankees (1954–1966). From “the catbird seat,” Ol’ Redhead called games for the Reds, Dodgers, and Yankees using language he made famous, phrases like “tearin’ up the pea patch” and “I’ll be a suck-egg mule.” During his sportscasting career, Barber covered 13 World Series, four All-Star games, five Army-Navy games, one Sugar Bowl, two Rose Bowls, eight Orange Bowls, and four National Football League championship games. Though there were many firsts throughout his storied career, perhaps none was more significant than the role Barber played in the integration of Major League Baseball by Jackie Robinson. Barber told the story in his 1982 book, 1947: When All Hell Broke Loose in Baseball. In 1981 Barber, by then well into retirement, was introduced to a new generation of admirers by Bob Edwards, host of National Public Radio’s Morning Edition. Each Friday for 12 years Red and the Colonel (as Barber dubbed Edwards) would chat about a wide range of topics. Red Barber was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1978 and into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1995. He lived in Tallahassee, Florida, from 1974 until his death in 1992.
“Sons of the South: Wright, Faulkner, and Gaines” will be the theme of a forum to take place April 3–4, 2008, at Texas Southern University. Presenters will discuss any one or a combination of the works of the authors, their treatment of women as reflected in their work, their impact on race relations in America, and their challenge(s) to the established canon, their continuing influences in America and abroad. For information or to register, contact Dr. Shirley Walker Moore, Department of English,Texas Southern University, 3100 Cleburne – Room 141, Houston, TX 77004; moore_sw@tsu.edu; 713-313-7652.
Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama, will host its 15th 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 1–7, and session 2 will be June 8–14. Contact Pat Warren, coordinator of the Institute, at 251-380-4672 or pwarren@shc.edu.
The Southern Register
Winter 2008
Page 33
Southern Register
3/9/08
10:35 AM
Page 34
The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture Sponsored by THE CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF SOUTHERN CULTURE at the University of Mississippi Published by THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS Chapel Hill
CHARLES REAGAN WILSON General Editor The Center for the Study of Southern Culture is currently in the process of producing The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, consisting of new material based on recent scholarship and updated material first published in the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. The New Encyclopedia is being released as a series of clothbound and paperback volumes over the next several years, making each individual section of the original edition a handy, one-volume guide for those who are interested in a particular subject, as well as making the volumes more accessible for classroom study. Four to six volumes will be published each year, and the entire collection will contain 24 volumes in all.
CURRENTLY AVAILABLE
HB101 ...$39.95 PG102....$19.95
Volume 1, Religion. Samuel S. Hill, editor. An accessibly written, up-to-date reference to religious culture in the American South, with topics ranging from religious broadcasting and snake handing to Native American religion and social activism. A must-have for anyone interested in the increasingly diverse religious landscape of the South. Friends ....$35.96 Friends ....$17.96
Volume 2, Geography. Richard Pillsbury, editor. Grapples with the contestable issue of where the cultural South is located, both on maps and in the minds of Americans, exploring the evolution of geographic patterns of life within the region—agricultural practices, urban patterns, residential buildings, religious preferences, foodways, and language. HB102 ...$39.95 Friends....$35.96 PB102 ....$19.95 Friends....$17.96 Volume 3, History. Charles Reagan Wilson, editor. Examines the evolution of southern history and the way our understanding of southern culture has unfolded over time and in response to a variety of events and social forces. Topics range from early settlement, slave culture, and Reconstruction to the civil rights movement and 20th-century politics. HB103 ...$39.95 Friends ....$35.96 PB103 ....$19.95 Friends ....$17.96 Volume 4, Myth, Manners, and Memory. Charles Reagan Wilson, editor. Addresses the cultural, social, and intellectual terrain of myth, manners, and historical memory in the American South, examining such matters as the Old South and the Civil War; stereotypes and traditions related to sexuality, gender, and family; and specific subjects and objects of myth, including the Confederate flag and Graceland. HB104 ...$39.95 Friends ....$35.96 PB104 ....$19.95 Friends ....$17.96
Volume 5, Language. Michael Montgomery and Ellen Johnson, editors. Explores language and dialect in the South, including English and its numerous regional variants, Native American languages, and other non-English languages spoken over time by the region’s immigrant communities. Entries discuss ongoing changes in the pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar of English, as well as naming patterns, storytelling, preaching styles, and politeness, all of which deal with ways language is woven into southern culture. HB105 ...$39.95 Friends ....$35.96 PB105 ....$19.95 Friends ....$17.96 Volume 6, Ethnicity. Celeste Ray, editor. Explores the ways southern ethnic groups perform and maintain cultural identities through folklore, religious faith, dress, music, speech, cooking, and transgenerational traditions. The volume includes 34 American Indian groups, as well as the many communities with European, African, and Asian cultural ties that came to the region after 1600. HB106 ...$39.95 Friends ....$35.96 PB106 ....$19.95 Friends ....$17.96 Volume 7, Foodways. John T. Edge, editor. This volume marks the first encyclopedia of the food culture of the American South, surveying the vast diversity of foodways within the region and the collective qualities that make them distinctively southern. The volume contains 149 articles, almost all of them new to this edition of the Encyclopedia. HB107 ...$39.95 Friends ....$35.96 PB107 ....$19.95 Friends ....$17.96 Volume 8, Environment. Martin Melosi, editor. Examines how the South’s ecology, physiography, and climate have influenced southerners—not only as a daily fact of life but also as a metaphor for understanding culture and identity. Articles address subjects from plants, animals, energy use and development, and natural disasters to the ivory-billed woodpecker, kudzu, the mockingbird, and the South’s national parks and seashores. HB108 ...$39.95 Friends ....$35.96 PB108 ....$19.95 Friends ....$17.96
Southern Register
3/9/08
10:35 AM
Page 35
Books
All New, Limited Number of Copies Available The South: A Treasury of Art and Literature This richly illustrated volume includes wellselected texts and images from more than 300 years of life in the American South. Edited—and signed—by Lisa Howorth. 384 pages; 120 color, 100 black-and-white illustrations. Only a few copies of this 1983 publication are left. Cloth. B1006 . . . . . . . $150.00 Friends . . . $135.00 Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference Proceedings Studies in English, Volume 14 1974 conference papers by Malcolm Cowley, Elizabeth M. Kerr, and David Sansing along with transcripts of discussions by Joseph Blotner, Evans Harrington, and others. Paper. B1020 . . . . . . . . . $25.00 Friends . . . . $22.50
Southern Culture Catalog The University of Mississippi Barnard Observatory • University, MS 38677 Phone 800-390-3527 • Fax 662-915-5814 Sold To:
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)
Studies in English, Volume 15 1975 conference papers by Cleanth Brooks, William Boozer, Carvel Collins, Blyden Jackson, Richard Godden, and Elizabeth M. Kerr along with transcripts of discussions by Victoria Black, Christine Drake, Howard Duvall, Robert J. Farley, Lucy Howorth, Mary McClain, Phil Mullen, William McNeil Reed, Dean Faulkner Wells, and others. Paper. B1021 . . . . . . . . . $25.00 Friends . . . . $22.50
❏ Charge my: ❏ Visa ❏ MasterCard Account #
The South and Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha 1976 conference papers by Daniel Aaron, Michael Millgate, Darwin Turner, John Pilkington, Evans Harrington, Shelby Foote, Linda Weishimer Wagner, Victoria Fielden Black, and Louis D. Rubin Jr. Paper B1022 . . . . $15.00 Friends . . . . $13.50 Cloth B1023 . . . . $30.00 Friends . . . . $27.00
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
The Maker and the Myth 1977 conference papers by Calvin S. Brown, Albert J. Guerard, Louis P. Simpson, Ilse Dusoir Lind, and Margaret Walker Alexander. Paper B1024 . . . . $15.00 Friends . . . . $13.50 Cloth B1025 . . . . $30.00 Friends . . . . $27.00
International Orders
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 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
Qty.
Price
Faulkner, Modernism, and Film 1978 conference papers by Malcolm Cowley, Hugh Kenner, Thomas Daniel Young, Horton Foote, Ilse Dusoir Lind, and Bruce Kawin. Paper B1026 . . . . $15.00 Friends . . . . $13.50 Cloth B1027 . . . . $30.00 Friends . . . . $27.00 Fifty Years of Yoknapatawpha 1979 conference papers by Joseph Blotner, Michael Millgate, John Pilkington, Merle Wallace Keiser, James G. Watson, Noel Polk, and Thomas L. McHaney. Paper B1028. . . . $15.00 Friends . . . . $13.50 Cloth B1029 . . . . $30.00 Friends . . . . $27.00
This form may be photocopied. Faxed orders accepted.
Order Total Mississippi residents add 7% sales tax Shipping and Handling TOTAL
Total
Southern Register
3/9/08
10:35 AM
Page 36
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: (Celebrating our 30th Anniversary)
Credit Card:
❏ Patron: $1,030 ❏ Sustaining: $530 ❏ Sponsor: $230 ❏ Associate: $130 ❏ 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/