The Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters has awarded Center publication The Mississippi Encyclopedia its 2018 Special Achievement Award, and John T. Edge, Director of the Southern Foodways Alliance, has received the MIAL Nonfiction award for his book The Potlikker Papers: A Food History of the Modern South.
My fellow Southern Studies MA alum John T and I over many years have talked about how food, shelter, and clothing hold the keys to learning about the lives of southern people, many of whom embody the collision of necessity and creativity that is at the root of cultural studies. In this interview about his new book, The Potlikker Papers: A Food History of the Modern South, we discuss the tension between the essential and the complex, something he brilliantly struggles with as a founder of the academic discipline of foodways, and something I’ve thought about in my own past work in the building arts and research on clothing and fashion in the South.
There has been a Jewish community in Natchez, Mississippi for 175 years—and Robin Amer’s family has been part of it for 160 of them. But now the number of Jews in Natchez has dwindled to only a handful. In this audio story, Robin returns to learn what culinary culture might disappear when they’re gone.
Check out a slideshow of highlights from the SFA’s oral history programming so far in 2016, shown recently at the Fall Symposium. Led by Oral Historian Sara Wood, the SFA tells the stories of the farmers, fisherman, cooks, and entrepreneurs who feed the South, opening discussions of history and identity, and engaging with race, class, gender, and sexuality.
We wanted to share a blog post, written by Ted Ownby, from the SFA’s site.
Alum Katie King to Screen Film at Atlanta History Center Katie King (M.A. 2015) made a documentary film, The Sweet Auburn Curb Market, as part of her studies while in the graduate program at the Center. Katie will screen the film at the Atlanta History Center this Thursday, February 4 at 7pm. A panel discussion with… Read More >
Here, an end of the semester photo wrap-up with second year Southern Studies grad student Sophie Hay, who documents Center events and life as part of her assistantship. Follow the Center on Instagram for more photos by Sophie and others. Snapshots from the Semester Fall semester has been a busy one in Barnard Observatory; the… Read More >
Center journal Study the South has a new article by Jaime Cantrell, “Put a Taste of the South in Your Mouth: Carnal Appetites and Intersextionality.”
Jaime Cantrell’s essay reveals the tactile resonances, social dimensions, and affective possibilities of thinking sex through southern food in fiction and poetry from Dorothy Allison, doris davenport, and Minnie Bruce Pratt.
The Southern Foodways Alliance’s Graduate Student Conference will explore pop culture in southern foodways this Thursday and Friday. The full schedule follows below.
Two Southern Studies assistant professors are getting to use their passports this summer as recipients of the Provost’s Faculty Development Award for Campus Internationalization. Catarina Passidomo heads to Peru May 31–June 10 for “Peruvian Food Systems: Balancing Growth and Preservation,” and Jodi Skipper goes to Senegal June 7–17 for “Islam, Politics, and Culture in Senegal and West Africa.”