WINTER 2017
The Mississippi Encyclopedia to Be Published in May Work on a Center project that began in 2003 is at long last winding up. The Mississippi Encyclopedia—a mammoth collaboration that includes over 1,600 entries, 1,451 pages, and features more than 700 scholars who wrote entries on every county, every governor, and numerous musicians, writers, artists, and activists—will be in print and for sale this May. This is the first encyclopedic treatment of the state since 1907. The volume will appeal to anyone who wants to know more about Mississippi and the people who call it home. It will be especially helpful to students, teachers, and scholars researching, writing about, or otherwise discovering the state, past and present. The Mississippi Encyclopedia is the successful result of numerous collaborations—between the University Press of Mississippi and the Center for the Southern Culture, among the many supporters who contributed to or helped organize the project, among the thirty topic editors from around the state and far beyond it, and among the authors, an intriguing mixture of scholars. The Mississippi Humanities Council and the Mississippi Department of Archives and History helped a great deal, and the University of Mississippi History Department and Law School joined the Southern Studies program in encouraging advanced students to write for the project. Early support came from the University of Mississippi and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Each entry in The Mississippi Encyclopedia provides an authoritative but accessible introduction to the topic discussed. It also features long essays on agriculture, archaeology, the civil rights movement, the Civil War, contemporary issues, drama, education, the environment, ethnicity, fiction, folklife, foodways, geography, industry and industrial workers, law, medicine, music, myths and representations, Native Americans, nonfiction, poetry, politics and government, the press, religion, social and economic history, sports, and visual art. The Mississippi Encyclopedia includes solid, clear information contained in a single volume, offering with clarity and scholarship a breadth of topics unavailable anywhere else. “We hope everyone who picks up the book will find surprises,” said coeditor Ted Ownby. “Any good encyclopedia—and we
think this one is exceptionally good—has detailed, thorough, smart information on topics people want to find. So, from a journalist or traveler to a scholar or teacher to a kid doing a school project, everyone should find ways to use the book. But holding it in their hands, they should find all sorts of things they hadn’t thought to look up. We think it’s revealing that the work starts with Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf and ends with Zig Ziglar and both of those entries seem likely to surprise a lot of readers.” Senior editors Ted Ownby and Charles Reagan Wilson, and associate editor Ann Abadie, began work on the project when Wilson was Center director. “Seetha Srinivasan, then continued on page 32
THE
SOUTHERN R EGISTER
A Publication of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture
•
The University of Mississippi
OX FO R D, M I SSI SSI P P I , U. S.A
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 southernstudies.olemiss.edu www.facebook.com/SouthernStudies Twitter and Instagram: @SouthernStudies
N E W S L E T T E R • P U B L I S H E D Q U A R T E R LY
IN THIS ISSUE Winter 2017 1. The Mississippi Encyclopedia 2. Director’s Column 3. Living Blues News 4. Brown Bag Lunch and Lecture Series 6. The Land of Rowan Oak 8. The Oxford Conference for the Book 11. April Is “Radical South” Month 11. “This Is How We Go about It”: Discussing Hip-Hop in the South 12. Center to Offer New MFA Degree 13. Donna Crenshaw Joins Staff 13. Faculty on the Road 14. Charles Reagan Wilson Honored 15. Nancy Bercaw and the National Museum of African American History and Culture 16. Former Center Director Receives Arts Commission Lifetime Achievement Award 17. Study the South 18. An Interview with David Wharton 20. Southern Foodways Symposium Arts Performances Spin Humanities Narratives 21. Website Documents Center’s Documentary Work 22. Glennray Tutor Returns to Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Poster Series 23. Faulkner’s World 23. Special Issue on Gov. William Winter 24. Alumni and the Law 26. Southern Studies MA Students TwoPeat in 3MT 27. Vicksburg Exhibit and Events 29. In Memoriam 29. Eudora Welty Awards 29. Contributors 28. MIAL 28. Mississippi Humanities Council Announces Recipients of 2017 Public Humanities Awards 30. Reading the South
Register Staff Editor: James G. Thomas, Jr. Graphic Designer: Susan Bauer Lee 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.
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D i r e c t o r ’ s
C o l u m n
• WINTER 2014
Greetings from early January 2017. I am writing this during the final days of the Barack Obama administration and just before Donald Trump becomes president. Should the Center for the Study of Southern Culture have a policy, an approach, a response to the new administration and the directions it represents? We’re not a public policy institute or an advocacy organization. But what we teach in our classes, what questions we ask as scholars, what we choose to document in magazines, films, oral histories, and photography, what we encourage as exciting projects for students, and what we worry about and work and hope for, all take place in a setting where who the president is and what the federal government does sets agendas for action and discussion. My considering the relationship between Southern Studies and the federal government led me to a collection of essays called The Lasting South: Fourteen Southerners Look at Their Home. Edited by the intriguing partnership of literary scholar Louis Rubin and right-wing columnist James J. Kilpatrick and published in 1957, the collection tried hard to define the South as something admirably separate from issues involving the federal government. All of the authors were white men, most were academics, most but certainly not all announced themselves as conservative in their politics, and many said their goal was to think about longstanding features of Southern life and not to think much about issues the Brown v. Board of Education decision raised about schools, race, law, and government. Instead, they emphasized farm life, rural communities and families, religion, definitions of progress, tradition, and values, and the importance of Civil War memories. Recognizing the significance of the Brown decision, the editors wrote in their introduction, “This volume represents an attempt to look behind and beyond the immediate issues that face the South today, of which educational segregation is but the most dramatic among many.” The Lasting South is not a famous, well-studied, or influential volume, especially when compared to other group efforts at South-defining like I’ll Take My Stand (1930) and You Can’t Eat Magnolias (1972). Much of it is either objectionable or kind of bland, and I mention it not to scoff at its authors and their work but to highlight some changes in the practice of studying the South. There are lots of ways that collection differs, I hope dramatically, from how we at the Center (and lots of other scholars and documentary workers studying the South) define our jobs as scholars and teachers. First, it is not likely that we or other scholarly groups organizing conferences and resulting conference volumes will invite only white men to participate, since interest in diversity always means involving a wider range of experiences and perspectives. Second, few scholars today see it as their jobs to look for deep and long-lasting essences of the region or central themes for how to consider the South. Scholars’ commitments to studying things that are changing and to studying multiple experiences and conflicting perspectives means that we are far less likely than the 1957 authors were to seek regional definitions, much less regional virtues. Third, the South-North comparison (or the comparison between the South and the rest of the US) that most authors in The Lasting South made seems today to be something to either question seriously or to reject. Fourth and finally, the contributors to The Lasting South were looking for things that were deeper—more Lasting—in Southern life than issues related to race, education, and government. That, too, seems troubling, and that is where I return to the politics of 2017. There’s not a Southern Studies perspective on continued on page 32
Winter 2017
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Living Blues News
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2010, and by all accounts their lives together were full of joy. Her last post on Facebook was from the night before she died as she and Chuck celebrated their sixth wedding anniversary. Knowing that she had found happiness and joy in life helps to ease the loss I feel right now.
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I interviewed Taj Mahal for his first LB cover back in 1999 in what had to be one of the strangest cover story interviews ever. Taj had played on a Friday night in Memphis as part of the Music Maker tour, and they had a concert the next night in Birmingham. We all spent the night in Memphis, and in the morning my wife and I drove Taj to Birmingham with a tape recorder shoved between the seats. I drove and interviewed the Maestro for three hours rolling down Highway 78 at sixty-five miles per hour. It was a great interview. Taj was a captive audience, and we had nothing better to do for three hours than talk. So, we talked the entire time, globetrotting around through his decades of exploring the blues and music of the world and his discovering the common threads that run through it all. Amy van Singel
Ben Holbrook/Courier Publications
I start this editorial with a heavy heart. Amy van Singel, co-founding editor of Living Blues died in her sleep on September 19. I have known Amy for nearly thirty years and am proud to call her a friend and mentor. Amy and her then husband Jim O’Neal, with the help of several good friends (Diane Allmen, Bruce Iglauer, Andre Souffont, Tim Zorn, and Paul Garon) founded Living Blues in their basement apartment in Chicago in 1970. It was a labor of love and everyone wore a multitude of hats. One of Amy’s favorites jobs was designing the magazine’s layout, which she did through issue 56. Amy’s passion for real blues and real blues musicians was boundless. Throughout her life, she championed the cause of the blues via the pages of Living Blues and for over forty years with her radio program Atomic Mama’s WangDang-Doodle Blues Show. I first met Amy in 1987, the same year I started with LB. She and Jim had recently sold the magazine and had decided to go their separate ways. Jim eventually headed to Clarksdale while Amy remained in Oxford and opened a wonderful little blues record store called Back Forty Records. She hired me to work there on the weekends and fill in during the week. I discovered what a wealth of blues knowledge she had to share, and we soon realized we had a number of other things in common too, including a fondness for cats and gardening. I would housesit for her when she was out of town, taking care of her babies (the cats and a parakeet) and her African violets, eventually inheriting several huge houseplants from her when she left Oxford. We stayed in touch after she moved to Alaska and caught up when we occasionally ran into each other at blues events. Amy went through a lot of struggles in her life, but I was thrilled when she introduced me to Chuck. Amy was beaming and happier than I had ever known her. They got married in
Breaking Out With Marcus Cartwright
® © Issue #245 • Vol. 47, #5
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Willie Green a Step Back in Time
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Sixteen years later we’ve got Taj back again, and he has mastered so many more things, explored so many more sounds and places. His mind never slows down. As he says, “Griot memory is living memory! This is the difference. This is not book learning—this is a living library. It’s a totally different thing.”
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As we say goodbye to the first art director at Living Blues, Amy van Singel, I want to give a shout out to our current art director, Susan Bauer Lee. Susan has no clue about this, but this is the 100th issue she has designed for Living Blues! And at just six magazines a year, that is a lot of years of work. Susan has actually worked here two different times (both of which started by listing her as “temporary” and “interim”), once in the ’90s when David Nelson was editor and then again in 2004 when I became editor. I have been blessed to have her as my creative partner for my entire tenure as editor. Brett J. Bonner SR Editorial Note: Susan is also the designer of the Southern Register. We haven’t counted them, but we imagine she’s designed nearly as many issues of the Register. And we too are indeed grateful.
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Brown Bag Lunch and Lecture Series
FEBRUARY 27 Mary Battle “Promoting Public Awareness of Slavery and Its Legacies in Charleston, South Carolina” In her talk, Mary Battle will describe challenges and opportunities for promoting public awareness of the history of slavery and its race and class legacies in Charleston, South Carolina. Battle’s research focuses on underrepresented histories in Charleston’s twenty-first century historic tourism landscape. Until January 2017, Battle worked as the public historian at the College of Charleston’s Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture, and as the co-director of the Lowcountry Digital History Initiative. She has recently taken a position as a content developer with Ralph Appelbaum Associates, the museum firm charged with developing the upcoming International African American Museum in downtown Charleston. MARCH 1 Kathleen Bond “William Johnson, Diarist: Concepts of Race and Class in Our Understanding of Old Natchez” The series of personal journals maintained between 1835 and 1851 by Natchez barber William Johnson, a free man of color, provide valuable and fascinating insights into the complex world of a prosperous Mississippi river town in the years before the Civil War. In her talk, Kathleen Bond will
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Spring 2017 The Brown Bag Luncheon Series takes place in the Barnard Observatory Lecture Hall during the regular academic year.
discuss how Johnson’s reporting of local, everyday life illuminates our understanding of politics, codes of honor, economics, gender roles, and recreation, and sheds some light into the mind of the diarist himself. Kathleen Bond is the Superintendent of the Natchez National Historical Park. MARCH 8 Benjamin DuPriest “Contemporary Ethnomusicology in the Land Where the Blues Began” Ben DuPriest’s work examines the entanglement of musical pasts and presents in the American South, particularly with respect to issues of race, region, and genre in popular and folk musics. Using the modern-day Mississippi blues scene as an ethnographic case study, his dissertation research addresses ideas about cultural heritage, divergent historical consciousnesses, and the gravity of these phenomena on mechanisms of contemporary musicking. DuPriest is a PhD candidate in ethnomusicology at the University of Pennsylvania. Originally from Atlanta, Georgia, he earned an MA in historical musicology from the University of Georgia in Athens, where he lived, trained, and worked as a drummer and line cook.
Winter 2017
MARCH 22 Carter Dalton Lyon “Sanctuaries of Segregation: The Story of the Jackson Church Visit Campaign” Carter Dalton Lyon’s Sanctuaries of Segregation provides the first comprehensive analysis of the Jackson, Mississippi, church-visit campaign of 1963–64 and the efforts by segregationists to protect one of their last refuges. For ten months, integrated groups of ministers and laypeople attempted to attend Sunday worship services at all-white Protestant and Catholic churches in the state’s capital city. Lyons offers a unique perspective on those tumultuous years. Though most churches blocked African American visitors and police stepped in to make forty arrests during the course of the campaign, Lyons reveals many examples of white ministers and laypeople stepping forward to oppose segregation. Carter Dalton Lyon, Memphis, Tennessee, received his PhD from the University of Mississippi. He teaches and chairs the History Department at St. Mary’s Episcopal School.
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APRIL 6 Ellen Spears “Writing Histories of Environmentalism in the US South” Building on histories of environmental activism in the Southern US, Spears’s talk explores the challenges facing American environmentalism in 2017. Ellen Griffith Spears is an associate professor in the interdisciplinary New College and the Department of American Studies at the University of Alabama. Her research is broadly interdisciplinary, combining environmental and civil rights history with studies of science, technology, and public health. Her book, Baptized in PCBs: Race, Pollution, and Justice in an All-American Town, published in 2014 by the University of North Carolina Press, explores key questions faced by communities that seek to address systemic class and race inequalities and to tackle toxic pollution. APRIL 12 Byron D’Andra Orey “Does the Confederate Flag Make You Sick?” Recently, a plaintiff filed a federal court case alleging that seeing the Confederate flag caused him harm. Using methods derived from psychophysiology, this research systematically examines individuals’ physiological and subconscious responses to the
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Confederate flag to empirically test whether viewing the flag results in a negative response. Byron D’Andra Orey is a professor of political science at Jackson State University. His research interests are in political psychology, biopolitics, and race and politics. He has published over thirty scholarly articles and book chapters and participated in over one hundred professional conferences. As a professor he was selected as the national Teacher of the Year in 2008 and the Mentor of the Year in 2011 by the National Conference of Black Political Scientists. APRIL 17 Wesley Hogan “Recovering the Radical Oral History Tradition within Southern Freedom Movements” Wesley Hogan’s talk will focus on how the impact of the Southern oral history tradition on past and present reform and social movements in the South has been largely overlooked or downplayed. Recovering this radical history allows us to see how the movements of the past—abolitionists, populists, Black Power, environmental justice, immigrant rights, LGBTQ— connect to the presentday activism seen in Southerners on New Ground (SONG), the Dreamers, and the Dream Defenders, to name a few. Wesley Hogan is the director of the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University and teaches the history of youth social movements, African American history, women’s history, and oral history.
Winter 2017
Her book on SNCC, Many Minds, One Heart: SNCC and the Dream for a New America (2007), won the Lillian Smith Book Award, the Scott-Bills Memorial Prize for best work in peace history, and the Library of Virginia nonfiction literary award. APRIL 26 Eva Walton Kendrick “Lobbying the Heart of Dixie: LGBTQ Advocacy in the Alabama State House” As we look ahead to a Trump administration, achieving state nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ Alabamians is more critical than ever. Eva Kendrick will discuss the realities she and her staff have faced and lessons learned in their work to achieve full legal equality for LGBTQ Alabamians. Eva Walton Kendrick serves as the Human Rights Campaign’s Alabama State Manager. Kendrick holds an MA in Southern Studies from the University of Mississippi and a BA in Southern Studies from Mercer University in Macon, Georgia. Her research interests include twentieth-century social history, religious history, and social movements. Kendrick joined the staff of the Human Rights Campaign, the largest civil rights organization working for equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer Americans, in 2014. In her current role, Kendrick leads the state staff in their work to achieve full legal equality for LGBTQ Alabamians, while changing institutions—and hearts and minds—through engagement with corporate and healthcare partners, faith outreach, and community development. Kendrick lives in Birmingham, Alabama, with her wife, Kathryn Kendrick.
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Muscadine Grape Arbor and Log Barn in Fog
The Land of Rowan Oak:
An Exploration of Faulkner’s Natural World A Gammill Gallery Exhibition
e
Just as the landscape surrounding William Faulkner’s house in Oxford, Mississippi, has occupied a piece of my spiritual—and hopefully artistic—life, plants have thoroughly occupied my professional life. Accordingly, the photographs of Rowan Oak and the surrounding grounds are taken through the eye of a botanist exploring and
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documenting the presence and changes in the plants and landscape over more than a decade. Fifty years after Faulkner’s death, this place called Rowan Oak is still a sanctuary and place of beauty. It is my intention for [these photographs] to honor the land Faulkner loved. While his novels have left an indelible legacy in Southern and American letters, the landscape of his beloved home also serves as a record of the botanical history of this remarkable, storied corner of the South. —From the introduction to The Land of Rowan Oak: An Exploration of Faulkner’s Natural World
Winter 2017
Ed Croom Oxford, Mississippi
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Julian Rankin
The Center for the Study of Southern Culture is pleased to host Ed Croom and his photography during this spring semester. The exhibition, The Land of Rowan Oak, currently hangs in the Gammill Gallery in Barnard Observatory. His book of the same name was published in 2016 by the University Press of Mississippi and was nominated for a Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award. The photographs will exhibit in the gallery through March. In addition to being a photographer, Croom is a retired botanist from the University of Mississippi.
Sun Breaking Through the Clouds
Wild Grape in Fog
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Winter 2017
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The Twenty-Fourth Oxford Conference for the Book, March 29–31, 2017 On March 29–31, the Center will welcome poets, novelists, journalists, scholars, and readers from far and wide to Oxford and the University of Mississippi campus during the Twenty-Fourth Oxford Conference for the Book. The three-day event, which is free and open to the public, includes readings, panel discussions, and lectures by award-winning writers, first-time novelists, and celebrated scholars. Events will take place across the UM campus and in Oxford. The conference will begin with a lecture by Jay Satterfield, special collections librarian at the Rauner Special Collections Library at Dartmouth College, and with a free luncheon, sponsored by the Friends of the Library, in the Faulkner Room in Archives and Special Collections in the J. D. Williams Library on the UM campus. Other events on Wednesday and Thursday will take place at the Overby Center for Southern Journalism and Politics on campus, at the University Museum, at Off Square Books and at Southside Gallery on the Oxford Square, and at the Barksdale-Isom House in town. Friday’s panels and readings will take place in the historic Lafayette County courthouse, at
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Unive rsi ty
of
t h e
Mi ssi ssi p p i
•
O xford ,
Drew Lanham; biographers Carolyn J. Brown and Ted Geltner; documentary filmmaker Tom Thurman; American studies professor Sharon Monteith; art historian Beth Batton; UM English professor Annette Trefzer; executive director of the National Book Foundation, Lisa Lucas; foodways writer Toni Tipton-Martin; editorial director of Lee Boudreaux Books, Lee Boudreaux; journalist David Shirley; novelists Peter Heller, Beth Macy, Hari Kunzru, Michael Farris Smith; and comedian-writers Trae “The Liberal Redneck” Crowder, Drew Morgan, and Corey Ryan Forrester. As in years past, Thacker Mountain Radio will host a special Oxford Conference for the Book show at the Lyric Theater on the Oxford Square that will include conference authors and visiting musicians. The show begins at 6:00 p.m. on Thursday, March 30, and the day’s authors will be available to sign books. Each afternoon following sessions Square Books will host book signings for that day’s authors. The Wednesday and Friday signings will be at Off Square Books. There are four special social events on campus and in town this year. On Wednesday, March 29, the Friends of the J. D. Williams Library will host an opening lunch in the Faulkner Room in Archives and Special Collections. The lunch is free, but reservations are appreciated. On Wednesday evening, the gala opening-night cocktail reception/dinner will be held at the historic Barksdale-Isom House. This much-loved opening reception is a lively fundraiser with wonderful food, drinks, and conversation between fellow conference attendees and
Mi ssi ssi p p i
t wen t y - fo ur t h for the
March 29–31, 2017
Sponsored by the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, Square Books, Lafayette County Literacy Council, Friends of the J. D. Williams Library, Overby Center for Southern Journalism and Politics, John and Renée Grisham Visiting Writers Fund, Junior Auxiliary of Oxford, and the Lafayette County & Oxford Public Library. The conference is partially funded by the University of Mississippi, a contribution from the R&B Feder Foundation for the Beaux Arts, grants from the Mississippi Humanities Council and Mississippi Arts Commission, and promotional support from Visit Oxford.
www.oxfordconferenceforthebook.com
Off Square Books, and at the Lyric Theater on the Oxford Square. Conference panels will explore a wide range of topics, including William Faulkner as brand, nature writing, African American cookbooks, the life and work of Harry Crews, working with an editor, literature as activism, and the National Book Award. The full lineup of authors and events will be completed this February. To accompany Satterfield’s lecture, the UM Department of Archives and Special Collections will feature a small exhibit of first editions of Faulkner’s Random House books, Modern Library editions, as well as other noteworthy Faulkner first editions from the collections. In addition to Satterfield, this year’s participants include George Gibson, executive director at Grove Atlantic; poets Ann Fisher-Wirth, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Beth Ann Fennelly, Carolyn Hembree, Alison Pelegrin, and Rodney Jones; memoirist, J.
Winter 2017
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guest writers. A portion of the $50 ticket proceeds is tax deductible. All reservations can be made online on the conference website or by calling 662-915-3374. The conference is pleased to partner with the University Museum again this year to include a session paired with an art exhibition. On Thursday afternoon, the museum will host a session with painter Kate Freeman Clark biographer Carolyn J. Brown, art historian Beth Batton, and co-curators of an upcoming exhibition on Freeman’s work, James
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G. Thomas, Jr. and Annette Trefzer. An opening reception for the exhibition and book signing by Brown will follow the session. This reception is free, and the session is a great opportunity to explore the museum before taking a stroll up to the Square for a poetry reading by Beth Ann Fennelly, Carolyn Hembree, Alison Pelegrin, and Rodney Jones, followed by Thacker Mountain Radio. No registration required. At noon on Friday, the Lafayette County and Oxford Public Library will host a poetry talk and lunch
Winter 2017
with poet Alison Pelegrin. Both the lunch and talk are free, but reservations are required. Two new special events will take place this year. On Thursday evening the conference will present a special screening of Tom Thurman’s documentary film Harry Crews: Guilty as Charged on the UM campus. On Friday night, the conference welcomes the wellRED Comedy Tour to the Lyric Theater. Early in the day, Trae “The Liberal Redneck” Crowder, Drew Morgan, and Corey Ryan Forrester will discuss their new book, The Liberal Redneck Manifesto. The film screening and reading are free, but tickets are required for the comedy show. Tickets can be purchased at the door or in advance at wellredcomedy.com. There will also be a special documentary photography exhibition of works from the books of photographers Ed Croom (The Land of Rowan Oak: An Exploration of Faulkner’s Natural World) and David Wharton (The Power of Belief: Spiritual Landscapes from the Rural South) in the Gammill Gallery in Barnard Observatory. The 2017 Children’s Book Festival, held in conjunction with the Oxford Conference for the Book, will be held again at the Ford Center for Performing Arts on Friday, March 31, with more than 1,200 first graders and fifth graders from the schools
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of Lafayette County and Oxford in attendance. Chris Van Dusen, author of If I Built a Car, will present at 9:00 a.m. for the first graders, and Chris Grabenstein, author of Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library, will present at 10:30 a.m. for the fifth graders. All 1,200 children received their own copy of each book. Those interested in events other than the comedy show can sign up or purchase tickets online at oxfordconferenceforthebook.com/ attend. To purchase a ticket with a check, please e-mail Rebecca Cleary, rebeccac@olemiss.edu, for information. Ticket sales and reservations end March 24. Campus visitors may purchase and print parking passes for $3/day by visiting the conference website, or visitors can purchase a pass for $3/day
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at the welcome center on University Avenue, adjacent to the Grove. The Oxford Conference for the Book is sponsored by the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, Square Books, the University Museum, the Lafayette County Literacy Council, the J. D. Williams Library, the Overby Center for Southern Journalism and Politics, the John and Renée Grisham Visiting Writers Fund, the Junior Auxiliary of Oxford, and the Lafayette County & Oxford Public Library. The conference is partially funded by the University of Mississippi, a contribution from the R&B Feder
Winter 2017
Foundation for the Beaux Arts, grants from the Mississippi Humanities Council and the Mississippi Arts Commission, and promotional support from Visit Oxford. To see a full schedule and learn more about the guest authors, please visit the conference’s website (www .oxfordconferenceforthebook.com) and the conference’s Facebook page. You can register for special events on the conference website or by contacting conference director James G. Thomas, Jr. at 662-915-3374 or by e-mail at jgthomas@olemiss.edu.
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April Is “Radical South” Month The Center for the Study of Southern Culture and the Sarah Isom Center for Women and Gender Studies, in collaboration with other departments and centers at the University of Mississippi, are cosponsoring a series of lectures, roundtables, and presentations in April 2017 under the umbrella “The Radical South.” The month-long series seeks to complicate conventional narratives about the South, Southern identity, race, and romanticized notions of region. Jaime Harker, director of the Sarah Isom Center, said discussions for the series started in 2016 after Governor Phil Bryant declared April to be Confederate Heritage Month. Harker said the goal of the Radical South series is to question the equation of the South with the Confederacy and to broaden our understanding of the South to include the full complexity of the region—past, present, and future. The month is organized into four main themes—cultural movements, racial justice, economic justice, and gender/sexual equity—and features speakers from the University of Mississippi, around the nation, and beyond. For more information about speakers and events, please visit www.theradicalsouth.us.
“This Is How We Go about It”
Discussing Hip-Hop in the South The Center will present “When the South STILL Got Something to Say: A Conversation about Hip-Hop in the South” on Friday, February 10, at 2:00 p.m. in Barnard Observatory. Southern Studies professor Brian Foster will introduce the program, and Regina N. Bradley will talk with writer Kiese Laymon. Bradley is a writer, scholar, and researcher of African American life and culture. She is an alumna Nasir Jones Hiphop Fellow and an assisRegina N. Bradley tant professor of African American literature at Armstrong State University in Savannah, Georgia. Her expertise and research interests include hip-hop culture, race and the contemporary US South, and sound studies. Her current book-length project, “Chronicling Stankonia: OutKast and the Rise of the Hip-Hop South,” explores how Atlanta hip-hop duo OutKast influKiese Laymon ences conversations about the black American South after the civil rights movement. Kiese Laymon earned an MFA in fiction from Indiana University and is currently a professor of English and African American studies at the University of Mississippi. He is the author of the novel Long Division and of a collection of essays, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America. Brian Foster, a University of Mississippi assistant professor of sociology and Southern Studies, holds a bachelor’s degree in African American studies from the University of Mississippi and a master’s degree in sociology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is completing his PhD in sociology, also from the University of North Carolina.
Brian Foster
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Center to Offer New MFA Degree in Documentary Expression
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Becca Walton
Starting in Fall 2017 the Southern Studies program will offer a new Master of Fine Arts degree in Documentary Expression. The new MFA will be a two-year (thirty-hour) graduate program that combines three forms of training. Some classes will emphasize documentary production, with advanced training in photography, film, and audio production. Some classes will emphasize the study of particular subjects. Also, students will spend about half of their hours in the program completing a documentary project of high quality. As the successful proposal for the new MFA degree states, “The degree emphasizes the skills—observing, listening, storytelling, and understanding context and multiple perspectives—that are central to the Southern Studies program. The degree program does not simply teach technical skills to Southern Studies students or teach interdisciplinary techniques to documentarians. Rather, the degree program teaches the intersection of documentary skills and scholarly approaches so students who already have an advanced degree can conceptualize and complete documentary projects of exceptional quality.” A unique feature of this program is that it includes interdisciplinary study of the American South while also requiring that students master some of the skills of documentary work. Students will need to show an academic understanding of their subject as part of doing their films, photography, and audio documentary work. Students can only enter the MFA program if they already have an MA degree in the humanities, social sciences, or journalism. Students with MA degrees in Southern Studies will likely be among the students, but the program
Southern Studies graduate students Rachel Childs, Tori De Leone, and Rebecca Cleary edit a film during the 2016 Summer Documentary Workshop. Documentary filmmaking will be a significant component of the new MFA program.
will accept students with graduate training in numerous disciplines. “This program will offer a new generation of students who are actively studying something specific about the South an excellent opportunity to tell the rest of world what they have learned in new—personal, nontraditional, and exciting—ways,” said David Wharton, the Center’s director of documentary studies. “We are excited to offer this opportunity, particularly because it grows out of the interest our students have increasingly expressed over the years,” said Katie McKee, the Center’s graduate student advisor, McMullan Associate Professor of Southern Studies, and associate professor of English. “They have found photography, oral history, and filmmaking invigorating ways to explore region and place, and this degree will formalize the centrality of documentary work to our curriculum.” “What is exciting and unique
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about this new MFA,” said Southern Documentary Project director Andy Harper, “is that it allows our students to learn documentary methods within the cultural studies framework that the Center has developed for decades. It recognizes and combines a few of the things we do best and allows us to pass those skills on to a new generation of storytellers.” According to Center director Ted Ownby, “The impetus for the MFA degree came from at least three directions. First, Southern Studies faculty and staff have been doing documentary work throughout the Center’s history, dating back to the films and photography Bill Ferris was making in the 1970s. Today, the oral histories, ethnographic work, films, and photographic work of numerous faculty members, along with the filmmakers in the Southern Documentary Project, the interviews and photography of Living Blues magazine, and the oral histories, films, podcasts, and publications of the Southern Foodways Alliance, mean that we are both doing and teaching all sorts of documentary work. Second, many of our students have asked for the MFA or something like it. Several have said they are becoming comfortable with some documentary skills just as it’s time to wrap up their MA theses. Third and more broadly, we live in an age in which technology allows all of us to be documentarians. One could make a good argument that documentary skills represent a new type of literacy. So this MFA degree will bring together people who already know how to study social and cultural issues and turn them loose to do great things.” The program will start on a limited scale in Fall 2017 and have a full range of classes beginning in 2018.
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Donna Crenshaw Joins Staff in Barnard Observatory The Center welcomes Donna Crenshaw, who joined us as a new administrative secretary this January. Crenshaw has worked in universities for the past ten years, two years at the Center for Service Learning and Community Engagement at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee, and before that at the Career Center at the University of Idaho in Moscow. Crenshaw was born in Missouri but was raised on a small farm just outside Omaha, Nebraska. She attended college at MidAmerica Nazarene University in Olathe, Kansas. She and her husband, Scott, who is the senior pastor at Oxford Church of the Nazarene, arrived in Oxford in November 2016. “I love the energy, the people, and the possibilities universities provide—not just for students but for everyone,” Crenshaw said. “The job here at the Center sounded interesting because it’s such a unique department. I know very little about Southern culture, but I wanted to learn about it because I think the key to building relationships with people is to understand their background and culture. I am very glad to be here. I’m very excited, and so far, everyone has been amazing.” When she’s not keeping the Center’s finances in order, Crenshaw enjoys antiques and history. “I’m also very musical,” she said. “I sing and play piano for our church.” She and Scott have one son, Zach, who is a senior IT major at Trevecca Nazarene University in Nashville. Rebecca Cleary
James G. Thomas, Jr.
Donna Crenshaw
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Faculty on the Road The Southern Studies faculty and staff stay busy—both on and off the University of Mississippi campus. This past summer and fall a number of faculty members gave papers and lectures at meetings, conferences, and in classrooms across the country. On August 22, Brian Foster presented “‘Never Been to a Blues Show’: Racial Projects and Epistemologies in a Rural Southern Town” at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association in Seattle, Washington. On September 8, Jodi Skipper delivered the lecture “Reconciling Slavery: Tourism as a Social Force in Holly Springs, Mississippi,” at Mississippi State University as part of their interdisciplinary Race in America lecture series. On October 5, Simone Delerme delivered the lecture “Growing Up Southern: Many People, Many Ways” at the Center for the Study of the New South at the University of North Carolina-Charlotte as part of a cross-center initiative between our Center and theirs to explore the role of Latinos in the South. On October 29, Katie McKee delivered a paper called “Strange Bedfellows: Sherwood Bonner and James Redpath” at the annual BrANCH (British American Nineteenth-Century Historians) conference at Madingly Hall, Cambridge. On November 29, Ted Ownby gave a talk on the history of Habitat for Humanity to Lauren Winner’s American Church History class at the Duke Divinity School.
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Charles Reagan Wilson Honored with Obama Fellowship Charles Reagan Wilson’s international reputation as an expert on Southern culture led to his selection for a fellowship in Germany last November. “As an Obama Fellow, my responsibilities were to give a series of lectures at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, at Johannes Gutenberg University in Gersheim, and at the Philipps-Universität Marburg,” said Wilson, Center director emeritus. “My lecture topics included ‘The American South in the Obama Era’ and ‘Trump’s South.’ That last one was the one stirring up the most interest. I also lectured on ‘Creativity in Southern Culture,’ ‘The Southern Way of Life,’ and ‘Religion in the Civil Rights Era.’” Additionally, Wilson worked with graduate and undergraduate classes as part of the twoweek Obama Fellowship. In 2009, Wilson attended a conference at the University of Mainz on the topic of transnationalism in American studies and presented “The American South in Global Perspective.” He was also there two years ago for the Obama and Transnational Studies Conference presenting “Exploring the South’s Creole Identity: Life Writing from the US South in the Obama Era.” The papers from that conference were published in the fall of 2016 with the same title as the conference. “From these experiences with the conferences and publications, I was invited by the newly established Obama Institute for Transnational American Studies at the Johannes
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Marie Antoon and Charles Reagan Wilson in Marlburg
Gutenberg University in Mainz to be an Obama Fellow,” Wilson said. “Personally, the Obama Fellowship was a wonderful opportunity to present the South as a part of transnational studies to students and faculty, and we had very engaged discussions. I found much interest in the South,” Wilson said. “My wife, Marie, went with me, and we enjoyed exploring Germany, especially by train.” Wilson’s main contact was professor Alfred Hornung, American studies chair in the Department of English and Linguistics at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, whom Wilson met during his first visiting professorship in Germany at the University of Würzburg in Northern Bavaria. The two were assistant professors then.
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Of Wilson’s recent visit, Hornung said, “Charles’s lectures attracted a capacity crowd of students, staff, colleagues, and interested people from the city of Mainz, especially his lecture on Donald Trump and the South, which was very popular right after the American election.” The Transnational American Studies Institute at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, which will soon be officially named the Obama Institute for Transnational American Studies, offers a dynamic and wide-ranging program in both research and teaching for all students interested in topics related to the Americas in a global context. They study the fields of early American studies, indigenous studies, life writing/ life sciences, political and intellectual history, film and media studies, religion and American culture, and materiality. “The American Studies department at Mainz has been the most ambitious and far-reaching program in Europe exploring transnational studies, and it has prominently featured the South in its projects,” said Wilson, who was director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture from 1998 to 2007. “Professor Hornung has been to the Center several times, once bringing his Faulkner seminar from Germany to the Faulkner Conference, and then he was here at the university as a visiting scholar in 2006 and developed a deeper interest in the South.” Rebecca Lauck Cleary
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Nancy Bercaw and the National Museum of African American History and Culture
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Alan Karchmer/NMAAHC
The National Museum of African American The Smithsonian National Museum History and Culture in Washington, D.C. of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) is working to reframe American history, showing it through an African American lens. This newest Smithsonian museum, which opened at the end of September, has been drawing large crowds of all ethnicities and backgrounds. The museum is expected to bring in around five million visitors to its exhibits each year. These past few months have already been monumental for the museum: President Barack Obama spoke at the museum’s opening, Black Panther Founder Bobby Seale recently sat on a panel at the museum, and LeBron artifacts in a way that “I miss the people and the students,” James donated $2.5 tells the story. Bercaw said. “The thing I love about million to the museum. The NMAAHC owns Southern Studies is there’s really a Nancy Bercaw, who about 37,000 objects, great element of fun. I learned so previously worked at the a lot of which come much from everyone because they University of Mississippi from donations. A dress were from all walks of life. They as associate professor sewn by Rosa Parks, an taught me new ways of seeing.” Nancy Bercaw of Southern Studies American Music Award Bercaw has worked on many other and history, played an trophy given to Whitney projects as well. Her first book was integral role in making the idea of Houston, Nat Turner’s bible, and a Gendered Freedoms: Race, Rights, and the this museum come to life, and she pair of slaves’ iron shackles are some Politics of the Household in the Mississippi continues to help keep it running of the artifacts filling the museum. Delta (2003). She edited Gender day to day. Now, she is a co-curator Having artifacts like these and using and the Southern Body Politic (2000) of the museum. first-person accounts are important in and was coeditor with Ted Ownby Bercaw grew up in the telling history from all perspectives, of the Gender volume of The New Washington, D.C. area and rememBercaw told the Washington Post in a Encyclopedia of Southern Culture (2009). bers spending a lot of her childhood recent interview. The knowledge she gained from in museums surrounded by history Bercaw says the museum helps her research, projects, and working in the nation’s capital. “I always people to see history in a different with the Center for the Study of thought museums were compelling,” way. “This is a shared American Southern Culture helps Bercaw with she said. “There’s something about story, and we really can’t understand her job at the museum. She decided a museum when you’re learning our own past without knowing this to move back to the D.C. area and through an experience instead of just much-fuller version of the past,” work with the Smithsonian to share learning from the facts.” Bercaw said. “Our museum brings it all that she had learned. “I wanted to As co-curator she helps to create all together.” be a part of something much bigger and care for the exhibits, like the Bercaw lived in Mississippi for than myself,” Bercaw said. “It was ones she once adored when she seventeen years. While teaching important to share my knowledge was younger. The curator is considSouthern Studies at UM, she worked in a way that it wasn’t just benefiting ered the “intellectual steward” of with professors from different discime but benefiting a lot of people.” the museum and has the responplines and students from all over the sibility of putting together the nation with different backgrounds. Lana Ferguson
Former Center Director Receives Arts Commission Lifetime Achievement Award
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Marcie Cohen
William R. Ferris has long been the preeminent scholar and documenter of Mississippi’s rich culture, music, and folklore. He has been documenting the lives of Mississippians for more than fifty years. On February 16 the Mississippi Arts Commission (MAC) will honor him with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2017 Governor’s Arts Awards. Ferris is a scholar, author, documentary filmmaker, and the founding director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture. For him, the award is linked to the Center in a deep and wonderful way, as well as to the Oxford community. “It’s a tremendous honor, and I know it would never have happened without the work I was blessed to do at the University of Mississippi and at the Center,” Ferris said. “It was a special period in my life that connected me to Mississippi in ways that were very special and very moving, and I know full well that the friendships I was able to share there are a big part of why I was selected for this honor.” The award is an opportunity to look back and appreciate more deeply what one’s life’s work represents, since in the moment, totally engaged and working, it can be difficult to see where things will land, Ferris said, who was at UM from 1979 to 1998. Ferris keeps up with current students and alumni, and said Southern Studies students are leading various areas in new and exciting ways. “I look around the state, the region, and the nation and know there are powerful voices that were shaped at the Center and by the Southern Studies program.”
Bill Ferris
Ferris grew up on a farm south of Vicksburg and developed an early love of storytelling, books, art, and music. In 1997 he became chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities under Pres. Bill Clinton. Since 2002 he has served as Joel Williamson Eminent Professor of History and senior associate director of the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina. The 2017 recipients will be recognized at the twenty-ninth annual Governor’s Arts Awards ceremony at the Old Capitol Museum in downtown Jackson on Thursday, February 16, at 6:00 p.m. A public reception at 4:30 precedes the awards. “When I first found myself out in the cultural landscape of Mississippi’s vast richness, Bill was already there, established and knee-deep in the exploration of art and culture,” said
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Malcolm White, executive director of MAC. “Bill is a pathfinder and an icon of this work, and I am proud to be at the helm of MAC on this occasion of his recognition.” Other award recipients include Sammy Britt, Excellence in Visual Art; Vasti Jackson, Arts Ambassador; Lucy Richardson Janoush, Arts Patron; Jaimoe Johnie Johnson, Excellence in Music; and the Mississippi Opera, Artistic Excellence. “Because these six recipients have made a significant and lasting impact on our state’s arts culture, it is fitting to recognize them during Mississippi’s Bicentennial celebration,” White said. Ferris is the author of ten books, including Give My Poor Heart Ease: Voices of the Mississippi Blues; You Live and Learn. Then You Die and Forget it All: Ray Lum’s Tales of Horses, Mules, and Men; and his latest, The South in Color: A Visual Journey. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Charles Frankel Prize in the Humanities and France’s Chevalier and Officer in the Order of Arts and Letters. The Blues Hall of Fame recognized his book Blues from the Delta as one of the classics of blues literature. Established in 1988, Governor’s Arts Awards are given to individuals and organizations for the excellence of their work in a wide variety of art forms, including visual, literary, and performing arts, and community development through the arts in Mississippi. Rebecca Lauck Cleary
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Study the South Publishes Work on William Faulkner and Mississippi Delta On November 28, Study the South published a new essay by University of Wisconsin-Platteville assistant professor Phillip Gordon. The essay, “The Delta and Yoknapatawpha: The Layering of Geography and Myth in the Works of William Faulkner,” presents a view of William Faulkner’s life and work as connected to the Mississippi Delta. The best-known setting for William Faulkner’s work is of course the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, set in the hills of North Mississippi, but Faulkner also spent time in the Mississippi Delta, both in person and on paper. In various ways, Delta natives and those with close ties to the alluvial region— such as Ben Wasson, William Alexander Percy, and Phil Stone—significantly affected Faulkner’s life and career. As a result, the Mississippi Delta’s impression on Faulkner influenced much of his fiction in the 1930s and ’40s. The Delta crops up in novels such as The Wild Palms, Go Down, Moses, and Absalom, Absalom! and in stories such as “The Bear,” “Red Leaves,” “A Justice,” and “A Courtship.” Unfurled, these novels and stories present a Faulknerian history of the Delta, and in “The Delta and Yoknapatawpha,” Phillip Gordon bridges the narrow divide between these two Mississippi regions that were so significant to the work of Mississippi’s most celebrated author.
Phillip “Pip” Gordon is an assistant professor of English and the gay studies coordinator at the University of Wisconsin-Platteville. Gordon received his PhD in English from the University of Mississippi, and he wrote his dissertation on representations of homosexuality in the works of William Faulkner. He is currently trying to convert that project into a book. He has published essays on AIDS narratives and on depictions of suicide and bullying in recent LGBT young adult fiction, and he has done archival work on Mississippi author Hubert Creekmore. A native of Jackson, Tennessee, he currently resides in Mineral Point, Wisconsin.
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Call for Papers Study the South A Center for the Study of Southern Culture Publication Study the South, a peer-reviewed, multimedia, open-access journal published by the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi, announces a general call for papers. Study the South exists to encourage interdisciplinary academic thought and discourse on the culture of the American South. Editors welcome submissions by faculty members, advanced graduate students, and professional scholars doing work in the fields of history, anthropology, sociology, music, literature, documentary studies, gender studies, religion, geography, media studies, race studies, ethnicity, folklife, and art to submit article abstracts or complete manuscripts. Final manuscripts and projects must attempt to build upon and expand the understanding of the American South in order to be considered for publication. To submit an original paper for consideration, please e-mail James G. Thomas, Jr. at jgthomas@olemiss.edu. Submissions must be previously unpublished. For questions or additional information, please contact: James G. Thomas, Jr. at jgthomas@olemiss.edu, or at 662-915-3374. Study the South is available via the Center’s website at www.studythesouth.org.
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Bolivar County, Mississippi
The Power of Belief:
An Interview with David Wharton In 2016, Southern Studies professor and documentary photographer David Wharton published The Power of Belief: Spiritual Landscapes from the Rural South with George F. Thompson Publishing. The book consists of 146 photographs from Wharton’s work over the past 15 years, along with an introduction by Charles Reagan Wilson. Ted Ownby discussed the book with Wharton, beginning with the question of how it might have differed from Wharton’s earlier books, Small Town South and The Soul of a Small Texas Town. Ted Ownby: Before this book, you did two very different books on small town life in the South. How was a photography project on religion different from those projects? David Wharton: It falls into the
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same category of the earlier books in that they had to do with rural and small-town life, looking at the physical aspect of what we assume to be an important part of small-town life in the South—religion, traditional religion, traditional Christian religion. I think most of my work is about people and the way they’re linked to the world around them in the present. In this particular project, so much of what was photographed is left over from the past, so the question is, how do people who are in the present deal with these images that come from their cultural past? I’m not sure this book answers that question, in fact I’m sure it doesn’t, but I think it raises that question. We know the South is changing all the time, rapidly, but there’s one thing that seems to stay constant—the
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actual physical aspects of religious life that are there for everybody to see. Ownby: The subtitle of the book is Spiritual Landscapes from the Rural South. Is that your term, “spiritual landscapes,” and what does it mean? Wharton: Yes, in a general sense a landscape photograph is any photograph that doesn’t include people. When we talk about “cultural landscapes,” we talk about things that people have made. “Spiritual landscape” is a narrower category. It has to do with spirituality, and in this case about very traditional religion in the South. My previous book about small towns had to do with what I thought of as “townscapes,” and both just narrowed the category of landscapes to be more specific.
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little bit, went to reunions and some other events. With only a couple of exceptions, all the pictures of people in church settings and baptisms are of people I know and of events where I’d been invited.
Montgomery County, Mississippi
Ownby: What can you describe about the process of going out and looking for spiritual landscapes? As you went out looking, what was on your mind? Wharton: I wasn’t looking specifically for these kinds of landscapes, because these photos were done simultaneously with my work for the small town book. I’d go to small towns and drive back roads. And I was attracted to churches, cemeteries, and religious signage, and then, of course, in this particular book, there are some actual worship scenes that aren’t landscapes, per se. I liked being surprised; it’s always fun to come around a bend in the road and have a vision presented to you. Sometimes you drive all day and don’t see much that you want to photograph, but there are some places and moments that just knock you out. Sometimes you just see something that electrifies you. Ownby: Did you feel an urge to show something new or different from what other documentary photographers had done? Wharton: I didn’t feel it had to be different. I felt it had to be mine, which in some cases was different. A lot of it didn’t necessarily have to do with a documentary impulse—a lot of it had to do with what’s beautiful, or what strikes me as beautiful. Sometimes even ugly things can be
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Ownby: Did putting the book together help you think about the difference between religion and spirituality? Wharton: I think spirituality is more a presence than a practice. The practice of spirituality is what we call religion. Spirituality is present for all to see throughout the rural South and can’t help but affect one’s life, if only subliminally. Religion, on the other hand, requires a conscious decision to subscribe to certain beliefs and engage in certain practices. The subjects in these photographs can also serve as constant reminders, even to the irreligious, of the possibility of spiritual realities beyond those of the physical world.
beautiful, in a curious kind of way— something about being there in the present moment. There’s almost a Zen sort of thing to it. When you’re seeing right, it’s not about the subject matter. It’s about presence, about being there in that moment. Ownby: How did you get to know the people in church settings that you photographed? Did you become a kind of friend and photographer? Wharton: A friend, Jan Murray, introduced me to the pastor and some of the church members at Hurricane Creek Baptist Church, a few miles north of town. I first went to photograph a wedding there and took a lot of pictures and brought pictures back and kept coming, photographing a little bit at first, got to know people a
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Ownby: Part of Southern Studies has to do with people in the South wanting to disabuse the people studying them of the difference between presuppositions and a deeper reality. Did you have people assuming what they thought you were after? Wharton: I think invitations to baptisms have to do with that. I know some people are aware that there are photographic traditions of taking pictures of baptisms. Some people were aware enough of that to assume I would want to photograph them. I was flattered to be asked, and I got some good pictures from it. Also, some gospel singing events, invitations came from people who assumed that would be something I would want to photograph. People who came to know me, I think, trusted I wasn’t just skimming pictures off the surface. All photos by David Wharton
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Glennray Tutor Returns to Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Poster Series This summer’s “Faulkner of his personal collection. and Money” conference “When I recently contrib( July 23–27) is noteworthy uted my working research for reasons that go beyond collection of Faulkner the broad applicability and books and materials to timeliness of its topic or the United States Military THE ECONOMIES OF the international reputaAcademy at West Point,” YOKNAPATAWPHA AND BEYOND tions of its distinguished he reflects, “I should have keynote speakers. “Faulkner sent the painting along and Money” also marks with them. But it gives me the return of Oxford artist such a smile when I see Glennray Tutor to the it that I want to enjoy its series of colorful posters warm ambience for a while that have for decades longer.” provided Faulkner and Will Varner’s Grocery helps Yoknapatawpha with an illuminate the convergence iconic public face. For 2017, of natural landscape, mateTutor, whose work also rial culture, social geogadorns the posters from 1988 raphy, and economic life to 1993, will be represented at the heart of Faulkner’s by his whimsically named, imaginative world and of The University of Mississippi appropriately themed canvas, the historical world of North Faulkner & Yoknapatawpha Conference Oxford, Mississippi, July 23–27, 2017 Will Varner’s Grocery. Mississippi that he drew The story of the painting from in creating it. As such, reaches back to 1993, when the painting offers an anticiFaulkner scholar M. Thomas patory window onto a host Inge commissioned Tutor to of questions and concerns paint a picturesque country that should figure promistore from rural Lafayette County. why I objected in the first place” to nently in this summer’s reflection Inge additionally requested that the renaming the store. Eventually, “just and conversation about “Faulkner artist change the store’s actual name a few years ago,” he asked Inge to and Money.” to “Will Varner’s Grocery,” in honor return the painting. “He did,” said Discount rates for the conferof the fictional establishment that Tutor, “and with his approval, I ence are available for groups of appears in several Faulkner works, changed the name of the store in the five or more students. Inexpensive most notably The Hamlet, as the hub painting. I also varnished the painting dormitory housing is available of social life in the Yoknapatawpha and reframed it into a much better for all registrants. Contact Justin County village of Frenchman’s Bend. frame. And shipped it back to him.” Murphree at jcmurphr@olemiss. Tutor was initially troubled by the Needless to say, Inge was edu for details. For other inquiries, request. “I did not want to substidelighted, not only with the painting contact Jay Watson, director, at tute a different name for the grocery itself but with the tale of its creation jwatson@olemiss.edu. More conferstore,” he recalls, though he can no and re-creation. “The experience ence information is available on the longer remember the reason why. So has given me a wonderful story to conference website at www.outreach. “we went ahead with the commistell about an artist who changed his olemiss.edu/events/faulkner/index. sion, without the name change.” As mind and did a revised edition of html#class. the years went by, however, Tutor his own painting. I know of no other came to question his decision, “espestory like it.” Inge now considers Jay Watson cially since I couldn’t remember Will Varner’s Grocery one of the gems
FA U L K N E R AND MONEY
GLENNRAY TUTOR, Will Varner's Grocery, oil on canvas, 16 x 24 inches, 1994, Collection of M. Thomas Inge, Ashland, Virginia
The University of Mississippi announces the Forty-Fourth Annual Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference. The conference is sponsored by the Department of English and the Center for the Study of Southern Culture and coordinated by the Office of Outreach and Continuing Education.
For more information: Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference, Office of Outreach and Continuing Education, Post Office Box 879, The University of Mississippi. University, MS 38677-0879. Telephone: 662-915-7283. Fax: 662-915-5138. Internet: www.outreach.olemiss.edu/events/faulkner Bronze busts of William Faulkner and Chickasaw chief Piomingo by William Beckwith; Photos by Robert Jordan / University Communications
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Faulkner’s World: The Photographs of Martin J. Dain
Martin Dain
A Traveling Exhibition The photographs of Martin Dain provide a unique journey into the world of William Faulkner. Taken between 1961 and 1963, Dain’s photographs portray Faulkner at home as well as provide a comprehensive look at the people and cultural traditions that inspired him. This collection provides an extraordinary window through which to view community history and from which to reflect on culture and change in Oxford and the surrounding area. As the exhibition discusses and interprets the legacy of William Faulkner, it also provides an opportunity to prompt community dialogue. The exhibition opened at the University of Mississippi in 1997 and traveled for two years as part of the Faulkner Centennial Celebration, had an encore tour in 2007 in conjunction with the Mississippi Reads project administered through the Mississippi Library Commission, and is once again available, this time for libraries, museums, and cultural centers in Mississippi and surrounding states. Faulkner’s World: The Photographs of Martin J. Dain was curated and produced by the Center for the Study of Southern Culture. The exhibition has thirty-six 16" x 20" black-and-white photographs and four text panels, presented in 24" x 30" frames. Persons interested in scheduling the traveling exhibition of Dain photographs should contact Margaret Gaffney by e-mail (mmmg@olemiss.edu) or telephone (662-915-5993).
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Center Associate Director Edits Special Issue on Gov. William Winter The Southern Quarterly has published a special issue dedicated to understanding the life, accomplishments, and legacy of former Mississippi governor William Winter, who has spent the last seven decades creating and encouraging radical change in the politics and social climate of his home state. In addition to serving Mississippi as a representative, state tax collector and treasurer, lieutenant governor, and governor, William Winter has been active as a historian, as a member and president of various boards (including the editorial board of the Southern Quarterly), as a college and seminary trustee, as a promoter of the arts, and as a fierce champion for racial reconciliation. The issue, guest edited by Center associate director for publications James G. Thomas, Jr., opens with a new interview with Governor Winter conducted by Jake McGraw focusing on the governor’s political triumphs, his laments on the state’s continued public and political “erosion of support for public schools,” and his hopes for Mississippi’s future. Following this spirited interview are eight articles about Governor Winter and the Democratic Party in Mississippi, his work on the Education Reform Act, his role as both politician and historian, his leadership in supporting the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, his pivotal roles in the Natchez Literary and Cinema Celebration and the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation. The issue also contains an article on Elise Winter, “A New Kind of First Lady.” Of great historical and archival value, too, is the inclusion of a political comic book used to help voters understand Governor Winter and his ideas, released during his unsuccessful 1967 campaign for governor. Two book reviews, by Charles Reagan Wilson and by Erica Van Schaik, complete the volume. Summing up the importance of this special issue, Thomas observed, “Governor Winter’s legacy is defined by his work on racial and educational equality. This issue puts his political philosophy, political discourse, and governance in context.”
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Southern Foodways Symposium Arts Performances Spin Humanities Narratives For the past seven years, the Southern Foodways Alliance (SFA) has staged morning performances that leverage humanities themes to explore and express foodways. These Sunday Sessions offer new and challenging ways and humanities means, rooted in arts performance, to think about the American South. From ballet to street theater, from a puppet show to an oratorio, SFA Sunday Sessions have proved secular church services for symposium attendees. Beginning in 2009, the SFA has grappled with racism and class shaming and other malign responses to our heterogeneous place. At the Lyric Theater, on Sunday mornings, SFA symposium attendees have also celebrated beauty and grace and the power of the common table. Our latest commission—a folk opera, In These Fields, which debuted in October of 2016—was made possible by a multiyear SFA gift commitment from the Cockayne Fund. In the years to come, SFA has great plans to share these humanities narratives through arts performances, commissioned for the symposium and then broadcast to broader audiences. In advance of that rollout, here’s a recap of previous themes:
In these Fields (2016) For our most recent symposium, Sam Gleaves and Silas House wrote a meditation on corn and the role it has played in the history and culture of the South over the last 175 years. The play is packed with historical and cultural touchstones, including the horrors of Indian Removal and enslaved agricultural labor, to the Great Flood of 1927 and the 1962 University of Mississippi riots, including corn shucking parties and moonshine distilling, and fights for LGBT Rights. In addition to historical grounding, Gleaves and House gesture toward a future South we can all hope for: a place of unity instead of division.
Let Us Now Praise Famous Cooks (2015) Ernie Mickler of Palm Valley, Florida, wrote a book, White Trash Cooking, that brought to life working-class whites through recipes like smoked mullet and hummingbird cake.
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From 2014, Repast. Bruce Levingston (left) and Justin Hopkins
Price Walden, who also composed Leaves of Greens, worked with Mickler’s personal papers to develop a song cycle that made explicit how issues of class have riven the South.
Repast (2014) Repast, an original oratorio, set in civil rights movement– era Mississippi, told the tragic, true, and emboldening story of Booker Wright, owner of Booker’s Place nightclub and waiter at famed restaurant Lusco’s. Laying bare the dualities of black life, Wright spoke in opposition to the injustices he suffered in the Delta town of Greenwood, where he lived and died. Repast collaborators included composer Nolan Gasser, bassbaritone Justin Hopkins, University of Mississippi Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College Artist-in-Residence Bruce Levingston, and librettist Kevin Young.
Dinner with Edna Lewis (2013) Novelist and playwright Shay Youngblood of Dallas, Texas, conceived this one-woman play. Raised in a farm community in rural Virginia, Edna Lewis was the granddaughter of slaves. How did Lewis become America’s pastoral voice for the late twentieth century? Dinner with Edna Lewis answered that question in a long flashback that began with dinner preparation and closed when an extended Southern family took places at the table.
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Grime and Glory (2012) Using interviews from the SFA oral history archive and props like a baseball hat, an apron, and a pair of gloves, Kimi Maeda and Lyon Hill of Columbia, South Carolina, developed a puppet show that translated the action of salting and cooking a pig into sand art, which was projected above a barbecue pit installation, using a live video feed.
Leaves of Greens (2011) Price Walden—then a University of Mississippi undergraduate student—wrote this oratorio, which celebrated and elevated greens and the people who have long cooked and eaten them. The text was supplemented by traditional hymns. Walden focused on relationships with relatives, Southern mythology, and agrarian ideals. Costumes from designer Natalie Chanin, complemented the performance. The pianist was UM professor Amanda Johnston, and the piece was performed by students in UM’s vocal music program.
Website Documents Center’s Documentary Work The Center launched Mississippi Stories in the summer of 2016. The site features documentary work by Center faculty, staff, students, and alumni. Our mission was to create a space where documentary media in all forms—photography, film, sound, oral history, narrative—would be accessible to the public and a resource for scholars. We will add new stories each month.
Here are some of our recent stories: • “Teaching Photography in Tutwiler, a Photo Story,” by Southern Studies MA Alumna Mary Blessey
Postcard Benediction (2010) Jessica Harris, the scholar of African American foodways, wrote this dramatic street vendor monologue, set against a background of market postcards from Africa, the Caribbean, and the South. Accompanied by music by Chicago artist Theaster Gates and the Black Monks of Mississippi, Postcard Benediction explored black craft through the life of Dave the Potter, the famed antebellum folk potter.
• Brothers, a short film by Rex Jones of the Southern Documentary Project on a new public health initiative based in Mississippi barbershops • A short film about Oxford’s first Pride Parade, by Documenting the South in Film student Lacey Russell
Pork Songs (2009)
• An archival oral history interview, filmed by Eric Feldman and Joe York, of the late Bishop Duncan M. Gray Jr. by Charles Reagan Wilson
Choreographer Trey McIntyre worked with a cache of pork songs—collected by author Roy Blount Jr.—to develop a suite of dances. Among his inspirations was “Chitlins” by Huey Piano Smith, a calypso romp in which sashaying Ballet Memphis troupe members chanted, “Gimme gimme chitlins.” These performances began in Oxford, but they don’t end here. Repast, our 2014 commission, made its New York City debut this past May when Bruce Levingston and Justin Hopkins performed the oratorio at Carnegie Hall. In These Fields, which played a Lexington, Kentucky, benefit for the Hindman Settlement School in December of 2017, will return to the stage during the Appalachian Food Summit in 2018. If you would like to restage an SFA production please reach out to us via info@southernfoodways.org. We would love to work with you to share these stories of this place we call home. In the telling of tales through performances like these, the SFA aims to offer new means of apprehending our place and new paths to driving a progressive and inclusive future for the region.
• An oral history interview by Becca Walton and Andy Harper of State Senator David Jordan telling the story of attending the trial of Emmett Till’s murderers Contact coeditors Sara Wood (sara@southernfoodways.org) or Becca Walton (rwalton@olemiss.edu) with any questions.
James B. Willoughby
The Southern Register
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Practice Makes Perfect: Alumni and the Law The connections between Southern Studies and the law might not seem obvious, but many BA and MA alums have gone on to law school before practicing law, or teaching and commenting about law, or even making laws. Here we talk to five Southern Studies alumni about their transitions from Southern Studies to law school and their choices about life with degrees in both Southern Studies and law. Brock Herrington knew he wanted to go to law school since he was a teenager, and choosing a graduate program that did not require a specific area of study allowed him more freedom to choose what he wanted to study as an undergraduate. “I was a journalism major until I took Southern Studies 101 during my sophomore year,” said Herrington, who earned his BA in 2008. “It was the first time that my ideas about the South and what it means to be ‘Southern’ were challenged. My plan to go to law school actually influenced my decision to switch my major from journalism to Southern Studies because I knew that I could study something that interested me, rather than something I thought I was supposed to study.” Herrington said, “My advice to Southern Studies students would be the same that I would give to any person considering law as a career: Make sure you are choosing the profession for the right reason,” Herrington said. “Try to get some actual experience at a law firm or a legal organization before going to law school. Law school is an expensive and arduous journey, and that’s only the beginning. I have many peers who regret the decision to attend law school and/or become attorneys. However, if you have the desire and the drive, it is a very
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Brock Herrington
Amanda Brown
fulfilling profession that allows you to help people in a unique way.” Herrington is an associate attorney at Meyer, Olson, Lowy, & Meyers, LLP, in the Greater Los Angeles area, where he practices family law, dealing with child custody and visitation, child and spousal support, and division of property. “The interdisciplinary nature of Southern Studies helped prepare me to practice law by allowing me to focus on more than one subject and teaching me that to be knowledgeable in one field, you must have a broader general knowledge of several seemingly unrelated fields,” Herrington said. “Furthermore, most of the classes
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I took as part of my Southern Studies course load required a lot of reading and writing, as well as critical thinking. These skills are crucial for law students and practicing attorneys.” Amanda Brown is associate general counsel for LifePoint Health, a healthcare company based in Brentwood, Tennessee, with seventytwo hospital campuses in twenty-two states. She is legal counsel for eight of those hospitals in the Virginia and North Carolina markets and works closely with them on a daily basis on hospital operations, regulatory, and compliance matters. She decided to become a lawyer to empower herself to better effect change. “I knew I wanted to be able to contribute in a meaningful way to my community and to do good work that would help improve the lives of others,” Brown said. “While there are certainly numerous ways one can do those things, I felt that being an attorney was the best fit for me.” At LifePoint Health, her job is fulfilling because she knows the work she does helps to make quality healthcare available to residents of communities—most of which are rural—who might not otherwise have access to the services they offer. For Southern Studies students considering law as a career, Brown said the opportunities are endless. “If your passion is civil rights, for example, you can absolutely transition your experience in the Southern Studies program into a legal career through advising advocacy groups, representing victims of civil rights violations, holding a political office, becoming a law professor, or any number of other
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avenues,” said Brown, who earned her BA in 2004. “As a Southern Studies student, you are uniquely prepared to be successful in law school. You have already learned how to think critically, how to analyze and discuss all facets of an issue, and how to communicate your thoughts clearly in writing. The only difference between the Southern Studies program and law school is the subject matter—the required skill set is the same, and I believe Southern Studies students have a distinct advantage because they have already honed those skills.” Mark Herrod attended law school at the University of Mississippi after earning his BA in English/ Southern Studies in 2006, and his JD in 2009. Now he has transitioned out of the field of law and is a senior project manager at DSi, a Nashville, Tennessee-based forensic data collection and eDiscovery company. He used to work with eDiscovery review and production as an attorney, but today he uses that firsthand knowledge to help clients with a variety of eDiscovery strategies. “I suggest that Southern Studies students seek out young lawyers, those well advanced in their career, and even those, like me, who have transitioned out of practice,” Herrod said. “Find out what each person finds fulfilling about his or her job and see how that aligns with your outlook on work and life.” Herrod said his background helped him in and out of his roles as an attorney and now with DSi. “Lawyers who litigate medical cases must learn medicine. Same for those who litigate cases involving business, and so on. A good lawyer, even one who specializes in a specific practice area, will be constantly learning throughout her or his career—often subjects that were not a part of their undergraduate training.”
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Mark Herrod
Reagan Wilson telling me to ‘use the active voice, not the passive voice.’” Regardless of a lawyer’s specialty area, a legal career involves the skills of “issue spotting,” communication, and a deep understanding of people, and he said he is a better lawyer today as a result of his Southern Studies background. “The program is a perfect environment for learning these skills,” Dye said. “The interdisciplinary nature forces you to communicate with a wide variety of people rather than people with perhaps a Bryan Dye more singular focus. The ability to spot the real issues, and communicate effectively about them to wildly varying groups of people, is an essential skill whether you are addressing a jury, a congregation, ninth graders, or a graduatelevel class studying Faulkner.”
After earning his Southern Studies MA in 1996, Bryan Dye taught ninth grade Mississippi studies at Olive Branch High School. But he was always interested in studying law, and he felt that both his graduate work and the teaching experience would be helpful. Now, he is the city attorney for the city of Olive Branch. “Ultimately, the Southern Studies program, teaching ninth graders about Mississippi culture and history, and handling legal matters for a Mississippi municipality are all interrelated—the links are the people involved in each of these areas and learning what makes a community work and how to help it be successful,” Dye said. “I see the legal field as a natural extension of a program like Southern Studies. A legal career includes, on a practical, instinctual level, so many of the issues that we addressed theoretically or academically in the graduate Southern Studies program. Every time I write a memo to a client or a brief to a court, I can hear Charles
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Although the path to her current position was a winding one, Ellie Campbell said that her MA in Southern Studies in 2006 is the degree she values most highly. “Not only did it give me a framework for thinking critically about the world and how I live in it, but it also introduced me to a community of scholars, activists, and educators whose work I greatly admire and hope to contribute to in the future,” Campbell said. She also completed an MA in American studies at King’s College London, then returned to the University of Mississippi to work in the Department of Archives and Special Collections at the J. D. Williams Library for two years, followed by a year working for the library at the South Austin campus of Austin Community College. While she enjoyed some aspects of library work, she was not sure what she wanted to do next. “I had thought of applying to PhD programs, but the recession made academic work more precarious.
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Don Cole
Ellie Campbell
Rebecca Lauck Cleary
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Farewell but Not Goodbye On December 10 in Barnard Observatory, Center staff, faculty, and friends gathered together to wish Sarah Dixon Pegues a fond farewell. Sarah retired at the end of 2016 after thirty-five years of service at the Center. We celebrated with cake and hope to see her at future Center events.
Southern Studies MA Students Two-Peat in 3MT Second-year master’s student George McDaniel George McDaniel placed second in the University of Mississippi’s Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition in November. His thesis is “Unshuttering the Past: The ‘Servant’s Quarters’ at Rowan Oak.” McDaniel re-centers the narrative on the lives of the African Americans who lived in those servant’s quarters and reinterprets the physical space itself. The 3MT competition is a research communication competition developed by the University of Queensland, where graduate students have three minutes to present a compelling oration on their thesis and its significance. The event, sponsored by the UM Graduate School, challenges students to consolidate their ideas and research discoveries so they can be presented concisely to a nonspecialist audience. Last year, Southern Studies student Amanda Malloy was the grand prizewinner.
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Rebecca Lauck Cleary
My father is a lawyer, so I grew up around that work, and I thought at the time that I might be able to combine my background in Southern Studies with a law degree to do some kind of nonprofit work. I went to the University of Alabama’s School of Law and started working for the law library as a faculty research assistant.” She was delighted to find that she could use both her academic and professional background in that position, and she decided to become a law librarian. On any given day she is preparing to teach legal research classes, assisting faculty research, helping students with classwork and papers, working the reference desk, fielding circulation issues, or working in the law library archives. “In my experience, Southern Studies students are often willing to think outside the box and might be interested in these other career paths,” Campbell said. “Research the field, have an idea of the kind of work you want to do, and use your time in school to build strong relationships with law faculty, staff, and local attorneys. Southern Studies was great training in handling a wide variety of academic work, and it gave me the skills to think critically and to ask questions about our society and our laws.”
Vicksburg Exhibit and Events Highlight Lebanese American Community and Culture The Center for the Study of Southern Culture and the Moise A. Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies at North Carolina State University are pleased to announce a collaborative effort to engage, learn from, and explore the history and memories of Mississippi’s Lebanese American community. The project includes a month-long residency of The Lebanese in America traveling exhibit from February 10 to March 3 at the Southern Cultural Heritage Center in Vicksburg, including a reception on Friday, February 17, and a community oral history workshop, panel discussion, and film screening on Saturday, February 18. The Lebanese in America traveling exhibit comprises eight narrative panels with photographs, graphics, and QR codes linked to supplementary materials and an e-reader. The panels describe the history, conditions, and impact of Lebanese immigration nationally, offering a framework in which to consider the substantial Lebanese immigration to the Mississippi Delta and beyond between the 1880s and the end of World War I. The exhibit opens the weekend prior to the fifty-seventh annual Lebanese dinner hosted by St. George Antiochian Orthodox Church in Vicksburg, which will be held on Monday, February 13. St. George is the oldest Syrian-Lebanese Orthodox congregation in Mississippi. The community oral history workshop will include speakers and interactive discussion on such topics as conducting family oral histories, ethical considerations in oral history, digitization and archiving
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techniques, and using oral history as a tool to explore the particular shared histories and experiences of Lebanese Americans in Mississippi and throughout the South. There also will be a screening and discussion of the documentary Cedars in the Pines, which documents the
An Exhibition Exploring 150 Years of History Southern Cultural Heritage Center, Vicksburg February 10 - March 3 FREE & OPEN TO THE PUBLIC
lebanesestudies.ncsu.edu/Vicksburg.php
Lebanese immigrant experience in North Carolina through oral history and photography. The significant contributions of individuals of Lebanese and Syrian descent in Mississippi have been studied and celebrated in many ways, including the folk art of Ethel Wright Mohamed, which chronicles her married life with Lebanese merchant Hassan Mohamed, the role of Natchez mayor John J. Nosser during the civil rights era, and the historic tenure of Chancellor
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Robert Khayat at the University of Mississippi. This project continues examining the multigenerational history and present-day experience of Syrian and Lebanese immigrants and their descendants in the state. “We hope this month-long event will serve as the pilot for a larger, participatory oral history, documentary, and archival project to better understand and make visible the Lebanese immigrant experience in Mississippi across the generations,” said the Center’s James G. Thomas, Jr., whose great-grandparents immigrated to Mississippi from Lebanon in the late 1800s. His work on Lebanese immigration to the state has been published in Southern Cultures and in Ethnic Heritage of Mississippi: The Twentieth Century. “Our immediate goal is to provide a forum for community members to gain a deeper understanding of their shared histories and experiences,” said Akram Khater, director of the Khayrallah Center. “We plan to use the workshop opportunity to gage community interest in additional project components, such as a webbased oral history archive, a regionally focused documentary, or a curated regional museum-quality exhibit.” Supported in part by the Mississippi Humanities Council, the exhibit, reception, and the workshop will be free and open to the public, though workshop registration is encouraged for planning purposes. Workshop materials will be provided. For more information, visit lebanesestudies.ncsu.edu/ Vicksburg.php.
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Mississippi Humanities Council Announces Recipients of 2017 Public Humanities Awards The Mississippi Humanities Council has announced recipients for its 2017 Public Humanities Awards, which recognize outstanding contributions by Mississippians to the study and understanding of the humanities. These recipients will be honored at a public ceremony and reception Friday, February 10, 2017, at the Old Capitol Museum in Jackson. Jodi Skipper, UM assistant professor of anthropology and Southern Studies, will receive the Humanities Scholar Award this year. Other award recipients are Peggy Prenshaw, Richard Grant, Museum of the Mississippi Delta, and David Morgan. Twentynine recipients of the 2016 Humanities Teacher Awards, which pay tribute to outstanding faculty in traditional humanities fields, will also be honored at the event.
Jodi Skipper “This work of this year’s winners reflect the power of the humanities to understand who we are as Mississippians and human beings,” said Stuart Rockoff, executive director of the Council. “In their own way, they have all helped to move Mississippi forward through thoughtful examination of our state’s history and culture.” The Council invites all Mississippians to join them at their 2017 Public Humanities Awards ceremony and reception at 5:30 p.m. Tickets for the awards ceremony and reception are $50 each and
may be purchased by sending a check to the Mississippi Humanities Council, 3825 Ridgewood Road, Room 317, Jackson, MS 39211 or online at www. mshumanities.org. Information about the awards and the reception is available at www.mshumanities. org or 601-432-6752. The Mississippi Humanities Council is funded by Congress through the National Endowment for the Humanities to provide public programs in traditional liberal arts disciplines to serve nonprofit groups in Mississippi.
Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Announces Awards Nominees The Board of Governors of the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters (MIAL) is pleased to announce its nominees for awards to be presented at its thirty-eighth annual awards banquet to be held in Cleveland, Mississippi, on Saturday, June 3, 2017. These juried awards will be presented for works first shown, published, or performed in 2016 in the categories of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, visual arts, photography, classical music composition, and contemporary music composition. All nominees must have significant ties to Mississippi. Judges for each category are from outside the state. Fiction nominees are Rick Bass, Julie Cantrell, William Dunlap, Melissa Ginsburg, Becky Hagenston, Katy Simpson Smith, Brad Watson, and Steve Yates. Nominated for the nonfiction award are Jim Dees, Ellen Gilchrist, Darren E. Grem, Robert Hamblin, Donald C. Jackson, Rheta
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Grimsley Johnson, Robert P. Jones, Beverly Lowry, Teresa Nicholas, Chris Offutt, David Sansing, Charlie Spillers, Jason Ward, and Martha Wyatt-Rossignol. The poetry nominees are Kendall Dunkelberg, Richard Lyons, Catherine Pierce, and C. R. Resetarits. The category for classical music composition has these nominees: Valentin Mihai Bogdan, James Sclater, and Ayatey Shabazz. In contemporary music composition, Kate Campbell, Dave Jones, Fish Michie and Kristian Dambino, Alex Pieschel, and Tim Lee 3 have been nominated. Andrew Blanchard, Charlie Buckley, Mary Hardy, Bill Jackson, Stacey Johnson, Richard Kelso, Laurin McCracken, Brandon Moon, H. C. Porter, Julia Reyes, and Carlyle Wolfe are the nominees in visual arts. Nominated in the
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photography category are Langdon Clay, Ed Croom, Ann Dinwiddie Madden, H. C. Porter, Kim Rushing, David Wharton, and Steven White. Each winner receives a cash prize and a gift made by a Mississippi artist. Past winners include Eudora Welty, Will D. Campbell, Natasha Trethewey, Samuel Jones, William Dunlap, and William Eggleston. The president of the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters is JoAnne Prichard Morris. Nancy LaForge serves as vice president. Jan Taylor is treasurer, and the executive secretary is Margaret Anne Robbins. Anyone may join MIAL and thus be eligible to nominate in each of the award categories. For more information about membership or about attending the awards banquet, visit the website at www.ms-arts-letters.org. Mary Thompson
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Kay Bell
Eudora Welty Awards Do you have a son who might be the next Richard Wright? A daughter who can channel her inner O’Connor with a flick of a pen? If so, encourage these young people to enter stories and poems for consideration in the Center for the Study of Southern Culture’s annual Eudora Welty Awards. Students must be Mississippi residents. The competition is open to ninth through twelfth graders, and writing should be submitted through students’ high schools. Short stories should not exceed three thousand words, and poetry should not exceed one hundred lines. Winning students will be notified at least a month prior to award presentation. The first-place prize for each category is $500, and the second-place prize is $250. The winners will also be recognized at the opening of the 2017 Faulkner & Yoknapatawpha Conference on the University campus in July. Each entry should be accompanied by the entry form and postmarked by May 5, 2017. Faculty and staff from the Center for the Study of Southern Culture will judge the entries and select the winners. Application and submission requirements will be sent to all Mississippi public and private schools. If you know a Mississippi student currently enrolled in high school outside of the state or who is homeschooled, please e-mail rebeccac@olemiss.edu or call 662-915-3369 for a copy. To see a list of past winners or to download the application, visit http://southernstudies.olemiss.edu/academics/ high-school-eudora-welty-awards/.
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In Memoriam Ron Borne
November 17, 1938–October 18, 2016
Amy van Singel
October 11, 1949–September 19, 2016
Phineas Stevens
December 20, 1917–December 13, 2016
Contributors Brett J. Bonner is the editor of Living Blues magazine. Rebecca Lauck Cleary is the Center’s senior staff assistant and website administrator. She received a BA in journalism from the University of Mississippi and is currently at work on her MA in Southern Studies. Lana Ferguson is a junior print journalism major minoring in Southern Studies from Mechanicsville, Virginia. Ted Ownby, director of the Center, holds a joint appointment in Southern Studies and history. James G. Thomas, Jr. is the Center’s associate director for publications and editor of the Southern Register. Mary Thompson is a board member of the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters. She lives in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Jay Watson is a professor of English at the University of Mississippi and director of the Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference. His publications include Forensic Fictions: The Lawyer Figure in Faulkner, Faulkner and Whiteness, and Reading for the Body: The Recalcitrant Materiality of Southern Fiction, 1893–1985. Becca Walton is the Center’s associate director for projects. James B. Willoughby lives in Mobile, Alabama, where he commits himself to various enterprises, including marionette performance.
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Reading the South Book Reviews and Notes by Faculty, Staff, Students, and Friends of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture
Spirits Rejoice! Jazz and American Religion By Jason C. Bivins. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015. 392 pages. $29.95 cloth. Spirits Rejoice! is one of the most joyful books I have read in years. Raising the questions of how to define both jazz and religion, Jason Bivins, religious studies scholar and jazz musician, analyzes the ways many jazz musicians since the 1950s and 1960s have been finding, creating, and expressing their religions. I expected that a volume on this topic would concentrate on musical uses of religious tradition, including musical traditions, and in fact Bivins provides many examples of musicians who learned to play instruments in Christian churches and learned different sounds and approaches in an array of religions. But the book is not about religion in jazz; it is about jazz as part of a creative search for religious beauty, understanding, and expression. Much of Spirits Rejoice! consists of five- to ten-page profiles of various musicians, musical communities, or musical movements. Bivins studies both the well known and the obscure, and his focus is on multiplicity and innovation. Some of the choices may seem obvious to jazz fans—Sun Ra and his Arkestra, John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme, Albert Ayler, Duke Ellington’s sacred concerts. Many are exciting musicians to consider in a religious context—Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, Mary Lou Williams, Archie Shepp, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Anthony Braxton, Wadada Leo Smith, Steve Lacy. And many of the musicians are new to me: Fred Ho and his Green Monster Big Band, John Carter’s Roots and Folklore, Milford Graves, Steve Coleman, and John Zorn. Most of the musicians Bivins studies are innovative thinkers who practice, explore, experiment with, read about, and sometimes reject Protestantism (with a notable bevy of Pentecostals), Islam, Catholicism, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Bahá’í, and other established religions old and young. Important chapters deal with music and meditation and music and rituals—especially the choosing and creating of rituals. Many of the musicians represent an ongoing syncretism of old and innovative, with new religious and musical terminologies. Some create new religions. A chapter on jazz communities might feel familiar
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to religious historians who study the ways so many American religious groups rise to meet possibilities and frustrations, then expand and innovate, and only sometimes survive. Bivins studies the Association for the Advancement of Creative Music, the Black Artists Group, the Underground Music Association, the Saint John Coltrane African Orthodox Church in San Francisco, and Alice Coltrane’s ashram as something like new denominations, with jazz at the center but only as part of a constellation of movements and meanings. Spirits Rejoice! differs from music scholarship that emphasizes the music industry and the social construction of specific genres. A number of influential and inspired recent scholarly works have analyzed musical forms as constructions that conform at least in part to what the recording industry and music scholars and critics have wanted from certain groups. Thus, hillbilly music or blues
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music emerged as a narrow subset of a larger set of music that people were making—a subset that seemed to define who those people were. Bivins knows that scholarship and contributes to it with occasional discussions of the “Reality of the Sweating Brow,” an image of intense musical athleticism that jazz fans often want of their favorite musicians, especially African American male musicians. But a volume about freedom, seeking, and creativity dwells so much on the musicians that popular opinion and the music industry are not particularly powerful or significant. One might ask if a book on fairly recent jazz, especially the various movements called avant-garde or free jazz or experimental music, has much to do with the American South. The answer, quickly, is yes—the South is there in the birthplaces, in many of the musical and religious traditions the musicians are using as part of their innovations, and certainly in the social issues relevant to jazz—race, violence, insult and respectability, calls for silence and the desire to think and speak as freely as possible, and relationships between music and civil rights. Even more broadly, this seems a great book for considering some of the meanings of the Global South, where Hamlet, North Carolina; Birmingham; Houston; and New Orleans are equally as important as Harlem, Bronzeville, Los Angeles, Paris, Saturn, and beyond. Bivins is not studying roots, not tracing music back to points of origin; instead, he is studying music and religion as an ongoing process. Some readers may find a book that so loves expressions of passionate searching, innovating, “the ineffable,” and the like to be a bit vague. My recommendation, for grasping the excitement that comes with the exclamation point in the title, is to read quickly, with an open mind interested in the journey more than specific conclusions. Finally, one might ask if people without much jazzlistening experience can appreciate this book. Again the answer is likely yes, and to encourage that experience, Bivins supplies a Spirits Rejoice! playlist.
NE W FROM UNIVERSITY PRESS OF MISSISSIPPI
Ted Ownby
Consuming Identity The Role of Food in Redefining the South
By Ashli Quesinberry Stokes and Wendy Atkins-Sayre How food serves as a rhetorical catalyst for discussion in a culture that loves to eat, share, and talk
NE W IN PAPERBACK
Joe T. Patterson and the White South’s Dilemma Evolving Resistance to Black Advancement
By Robert E. Luckett Jr. How white resistance operated and adapted to the sweeping forces of racial change
Trouble in Goshen
Plain Folk, Roosevelt, Jesus, and Marx in the Great Depression South
By Fred C. Smith The untold story of three new deal cooperative farms in the most economically challenged places in the south
Mississippi
The Long, Hot Summer
By William McCord with an introduction by Françoise N. Hamlin The original sociological encounter with the riven demographics of the closed society
To Write in the Light of Freedom
The Newspapers of the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Schools
Save the Date
Edited by William Sturkey and Jon N. Hale A collection and examination of the creative literary work of freedom school students discovering pathways to racial justice
The Twenty-Fourth Oxford Conference for the Book
AVAILABLE AT YOUR LOCAL BOOKSELLER
March 29–31, 2017
www.upress.state.ms.us
www.oxfordconferenceforthebook.com
800-737-7788
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Director’s Column
the director of the University Press of Mississippi, approached the Center about editing a state encyclopedia as other states were beginning to do,” said Wilson. “The Center’s advisory committee was supportive, and we began this long effort, which is now coming to fruition.” Odie Lindsey, who now teaches at Vanderbilt University and is the author of We Come to Our Senses and other works of fiction, began working on the project as managing editor in 2006. James G. Thomas, Jr., the Center’s associate director for publications, was managing editor of the Center’s New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture from 2003 to 2013. Before that project ended, he began working on The Mississippi Encyclopedia project. Now that editorial work on The Mississippi Encyclopedia has wrapped up, the Center is working with the University Press of Mississippi to plan a number of events to publicize and discuss the book. Events will commence in Oxford in May or June, with local bookstore Square Books hosting. Other already-planned events include a special celebration just prior to the Mississippi Book Festival weekend in Jackson and visits to independent bookstores across the state. Those wanting to make suggestions or extend invitations can write to Ted Ownby via e-mail at hsownby@ olemiss.edu.
political matters, except that we study everybody, and that means including people who define problems and try to solve them. Southern Studies seems suited to bring plenty of context to contemporary issues. Voting restrictions in the name of good government? Responding to protests by calling for law and order? Appeals to a Silent Majority? A conservative Alabama senator as attorney general, Texas oil men in charge of energy and international affairs? A businessman with no government experience offering tax cuts to keep businesses in the country? Claiming innocence of the hatefulness that breaks out at political rallies? Right-wing backlash coming after a period with African Americans in leadership positions? These are topics straight out of classes in Southern history and Southern Studies. It isn’t taking sides to discuss these things—it’s simply being alert, reasonable scholars and teachers. Discussion seems likely to change on many of the issues crucial to Southern Studies—immigration, justice and voting rights, sexuality and gender and reproduction, business and labor, the environment, ethnicity, race, and violence, the Global South and multiculturalism, definitions of belonging and not-belonging. It’s hard to think of topics in Southern Studies that do not change with major changes in the state of the world. Southern Studies will face questions of how to do documentary work when there are new concerns about undocumented immigrants, how to study the Latino South while people in power are discussing walls, how to study religion when relationships between religion and government seem especially uncertain. We’ll face continuing questions of how to study, document, and teach about people we may not like with concern and empathy, as well as questions of how to study people whose issues do not seem interesting or relevant to people in power. What we will not do is to ignore national issues as separate from how we study the South. In the midst of so many uncertainties, there is plenty of good Southern Studies news in this issue of the Register. Our students, faculty, and staff, including alums of all three groups, continue to do extraordinary things; the Mississippi Encyclopedia comes out late in the spring, and we look forward to events and discussions about the book; Southern Studies has a new the MFA degree in Documentary Expression, which is open to new students who already have MA degrees. And we’re starting plans for a fortieth anniversary event this summer—keep in touch to learn details. Ted Ownby
Mark Your Calendars! February 10 Hip-Hop South Conversation “When the South STILL Got Something to Say: A Conversation about Hip-Hop in the South” Brian Foster, Regina Bradley, and Kiese Laymon Barnard Observatory
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February 16 Ideas on Tap “Affordable Housing in Oxford” Proud Larry’s Oxford, Mississippi February 25 Food Media South: A Southern Foodways Alliance Symposium Birmingham, Alabama
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March 29 Study the South Radical South Lecture Sharon Montieth Overby Center for Southern Journalism and Politics University of Mississippi March 29–31 Oxford Conference for the Book University of Mississippi and Oxford, Mississippi
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Thank you to those who supported the Center in 2016! This list includes Friends of the Center, donors to Center institutes, and the many supporters of the Charles Reagan Wilson Grad Student Support Fund. For more information on giving, visit southernstudies.olemiss.edu/giving or contact Becca Walton at rwalton@olemiss.edu. Ann J. and H. Dale Abadie Kristie and Charles L. Abney Helen B. and Wadie H. Abraham, Jr. C. Scott Adelman John D. Agricola Aileen Ajootian Ann and Lex Alexander Pamela M. and Lance T. Alexis Carol M. and John S. Anderson Keri B. and Paul C. Anderson Lisa M. and William H. Andrews, Jr. Linda Arrington Teresa and Melvin S. Arrington, Jr. Nancy L. Ashley Melissa H. and Grant H. Ashlin Peter M. Askew Terri and Arnold B. Barefoot Scott M. Barretta Lois A. Barton Beverly Bartow Nathalie Dupree and Jack S. Bass Joseph H. Bates Donald D. Beaver Michael and Stephanie Benedict Eunice M. Benton John P. Besh Gregory L. Best F. Watt Bishop Hannah and Tommy Bishop Carmen and Matthew Bond Jennifer L. and James G. Bordelon Amanda Botelho David R. Bowen Lauren E. Brandon Ralph Brennan Amelia Brock Elizabeth A. Brock Virginia F. and James G. Brooks Andrea Broomfield Tyler Brown S. Griffith and Michael A. Brownlee Travis Burch Bettye M. Butler Terence G. Cady Rebecca and Mark T. Camarigg Elizabeth R. Campbell Mark Canavera
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Winter 2017
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Jay Howington Dorothy M. and Thomas S. Howorth John W. Huey, Jr. Ann W. and Jimmy Hunt Betty H. Jackson Dee D. and John R. Jacobson Anthony W. James Peggy W. Jeanes Linda L. Jenkins Karen G. Johnston and Kirk Johnston Rebecca M. and Robert T. Jolly Jason H. Jones Norman W. Jones Jamie B. and Ernest Joyner III Sally V. and E. Jeff Justis Judith S. Kays Cheryl and Bob Kellermann Gloria and Jerrol L. Kellum Helen H. and Charles Kenwright III Katherine H. Kenwright Judy Kidd Edwin King Joyce E. and David A. King Kat Kinsman Helen G. and John Z. Kiss Merrill H. and Lauren B. Klapthor Mary Konvalinka, In Memory of Phila Rawlings Hach Blair Milligan and Frank Kossen Stephen Kuehl John L. Kuehn Colby H. Kullman Gray Ladd Kristine Lalonde Eugenia Lamar Lucius M. Lampton Amanda B. Landry Larry J. Landry, Jr. P. Walker Lasiter Mary Beth Lasseter Mel Lasseter Dorothy W. and John F. Laurenzo, In Memory of Phineas Stevens Deborah Lee Dianne S. and Edward K. Lee Carroll Leggett Hill B. Lenderman Sylvia G. Lenhoff Marc H. Lerner Andrew G. Leventhal Ellen J. and Thomas M. Levis, Jr. Kimberly L. and Ernest M. Limbo Allen Lind Andrew Lindeman Molly A. Loden Robert C. Long Marcy Loomis Caroline A. and Leighton Lord Deanna and Christopher T. Losson
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Winter 2017
Leslie Pinsof Angel P. Postell Linda R. Pratt Kathryn S. and Andrew P. Prosser Kathy S. and Lee W. Randall Thomas S. Rankin Dale V. and John S. Reed, Jr. Holly T. and Jason A. Reynolds Mary S. Richards Ann and Cliff Richardson Henry C. Ricks, Jr. Linda F. and Michael E. Riley William Riley Lori A. Robbins Drew Robinson Craig Rogers Justin I. Rogers Harry Root Marc Rosen Sue F. Ross Jewett and Alan F. Rothschild, Jr. Gillian and Peter Roy Mark W. Russell Todd L. Savitt Aimee’ L. Schmidt Ron Shapiro Ian Sharp Edward R. Sharpe Peter Sharpe Suzette D. and Overton Shelmire Roberta S. and William S. Sheriff, Jr. Russell G. Sherrill III Joyce A. Sidorfsky Diane Siekmann Shirley and Harry D. Simmons, Jr. Peter Simons John Simpkins Arlene M. and Robert D. Sindelar Gwendoline H. and Jason L. Smith Karlie G. Smith Mary Catherine L. and David O. Smith Pam and Brook T. Smith Robert H. Smith Susan H. Smith Mitchell Snay Rose and Hubert E. Spears, Jr. Lisa K. Speer Meghan Stauts Lisa G. and Adam Stone Albert L. Strickland William Sturkey Ward and James C. Sumner Eric J. Sundquist Tonya Thames-Taylor and Anthony L. Taylor Amelia H. and John S. Thomas Annie W. and James G. Thomas, Jr. Pamela P. and Thomas R. Thomas Fred D. Thompson
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Joseph M. Thompson Mary M. Thompson Lisa R. and John D. Tickle II Carol and James Titley Suzanne Trahan Renna E. Tuten Sissy and Julian Van Winkle Amanda C. and Alexander B. Waddell Rachael Walker Todd Wallar Becca Walton Juliet H. and Gerald W. Walton Susan Grayzel and Joseph P. Ward Charles E. Warren Albert G. Way Elizabeth Webb Brenda J. and William T. West Deborah C. West and Douglas L. Harper David Wharton Mary M. White Sarah E. and William B. Whitley Kathryn L. Wiener Anne J. Wilbourne Marie L. Antoon and Charles R. Wilson R. Brian Wilson Ellen B. Meacham and John W. Winkle Elise V. and William F. Winter Gordon Hicks Wogan
Aaron Wright Elliott H. Young Mariamne B. Young 21c Museum Hotels AC Restaurant Group Alabama Chanin, Inc. Alabama Tourism Department Anson Mills, In Honor of Nathalie Dupree Argyll Foundation Benevity Community Impact Fund Billy Reid Blue Smoke Blackberry Farm Taste of the South Bright Star Restaurant Cathead Distillery Chisholm Foundation City House Restaurant Cockayne Fund The Cohen Family Charitable Fund Commonwealth of Kentucky Crescent Communities Eat Out Often, Inc. Elon University ExxonMobil Foundation The Fertel Family Foundation Greater Birmingham Convention & Visitors Bureau
Greater Williamsburg Chamber & Tourism Alliance Haskell Family Trust The Jefferson Jim ’N Nicks Community Bar-B-Q Lodge Manufacturing The Macintosh, LLC Martin’s Bar-B-Que Joint McIlhenny Company - Makers of Tabasco Nelson’s Green Brier Distillery LLC New South Family Supper Order of the Ossabaw R&B Feder Foundation Royal Cup Coffee Ruth U. Fertel Foundation Salesforce Sapkin Bros. Inc. Sea Island Company Simmons Farm Raised Catfish, Inc. Springer Mountain Farms Square Books Taqueria del Sol The Upperline Restaurant, Inc. Virginia Wine Board Wells Fargo Matching Gift Cntr Whole Foods Market Zingerman’s Community of Businesses
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