New on Mississippi Stories, a lecture by Assistant Professor of Sociology and Southern Studies Dr. Brian Foster: “‘That’s for the White Folks’: Race, Culture, and (Un)Making Place in the Rural South.” Dr. Foster presented the lecture, based on his ethnographic work in rural Mississippi, on October 25, 2017 as part of the Center’s Brown Bag Lecture Series.
New on Mississippi Stories, films created by Southern Studies graduate students Victoria De Leone and Rebecca Lauck Cleary as part of SST 598: Documenting Southern Foodways Class in spring 2017. Southern Foodways Alliance Pihakis Film Fellow Ava Lowrey taught the course.
Assistant Professor of History and Southern Studies Jessie Wilkerson received an award at the recent meeting of the Southern Association for Women Historians (SAWH). Organized in 1970, the organization meets annually and has over 700 members. The SAWH strives to stimulate interest in the study of Southern and women’s history as well to advance the status of women historians.
We’ve just posted a new Mississippi Story, a collection of excerpts from Dr. Andy Harper’s Fall 2016 Documenting the South in Film course. The student films tell stories about education, violence, activism, art, race, sexuality, and music in contemporary Mississippi.
Southern Documentary Project Producer / Director John Rash has just returned from a week of cultural exchanges and discussions as an invited presenter and teacher at Photo Beijing, the largest annual celebration of international photography in Beijing, China.
Living Blues #251 (October/November 2017) features bass player Benny Turner on the cover. Turner is the brother of Freddie King and has spent a lifetime backing some of the best in the blues.
The Southern Documentary Project, an institute of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi, has a new documentary film titled Flag Flap Over Mississippi by director Rex Jones that explores tensions around the divisive Mississippi state flag. There will be a premiere screening and discussion of the film at 6pm on Wednesday, October 25 at the Overby Center for Journalism and Politics on the UM campus. A discussion of the film will follow, with UM professor Ralph Eubanks moderating a discussion with Starke Miller and Carlos Moore, who appear in the film. The screening and discussion are free and open to the public.
The August/September #250 issue of Living Blues celebrates the blues of Clarksdale, Mississippi and the 30th anniversary of the Sunflower River Blues & Gospel Festival.
The Center will host a Brown Bag screening of An Outrage, a documentary film about lynching in the American South at noon on Thursday, October 19 in Barnard Observatory. Filmmakers Hannah Ayers and Lance Warren will introduce the film and take questions. They will also attend Dr. Andy Harper’s Documenting the South in Film class following the screening.
This interview by Scott Barretta originally appeared in the Fall 2017 Southern Register.
Adam Gussow is an associate professor of English and southern studies at the University of Mississippi whose latest book is Beyond the Crossroads: The Devil in the Blues Tradition (University Press of North Carolina), a survey that occupied seven years of research. Gussow has also grappled extensively with the devil in his parallel career as a professional blues musician—for over thirty years he’s recorded and toured internationally with Sterling “Mr. Satan” Magee, a relationship he addressed in his memoir Mr. Satan’s Apprentice.