The Center for the Study of Southern Culture and Yoknapatawpha Arts Council have teamed up for Mississippi Creates, an event that pairs musical performance with short documentary films providing a glimpse into the creative life and environments of two local musicians; Tyler Keith and Schaefer Llana. This pair of films are part of a larger …
Kelly Spivey presented her Southern Studies M.F.A. in Documentary Expression thesis project “The Bake Sale” at Oxford Community Farmers Market on July 6, 2021. “The Bake Sale” is an audio documentary about the rise in bake sales as a response to recent civil rights violations and police brutality across the United States. To listen to …
If earning a graduate degree seems like a daunting task, imagine obtaining two at once. Martha Grace Mize accomplished this, and will be the first person to earn dual master’s degrees in Southern Studies and anthropology from the University of Mississippi. “I think the Center for the Study of Southern Culture and the Department of …
When the archives closed due to COVID-19, Keon Burns had to change his original idea for his thesis and focus on something closer to home. So he chose a paper he wrote for Catarina Passidomo’s SST 555: Foodways course about his great-grandparents’ grocery store in Bolton, Mississippi. That paper morphed into “Black Grocers, Black Activism, …
Andrea Morales used her photographic lens to focus on Memphis, Tennessee as a place of resistance. While working on her M.F.A. in Documentary Expression, she captured images regarding representation, race, history, and memory titled “Roll Down Like Water.” She successfully defended this thesis project April 19, with her committee W. Ralph Eubanks, visiting professor of …
While doing historical research on her hometown of Altheimer, Arkansas, Southern Studies graduate student Christian Leus stumbled across an article about a 19-year-old girl named Irene Taylor. The girl was murdered in 1939, with her body dumped into the bayou that runs through town. “It turns out, she was a distant cousin of mine!” Leus …
An assignment for a documentary class ended up expanding into a thesis for Christina Huff. In 2019, Huff enrolled in John Rash’s class and had to document a small community. She decided to attend a drag show in Tupelo, Mississippi and reach out to the group of performers. “I had gauged the interest of two …
In this issue: the list of SouthTalks events for spring, a Southern Studies alum puts his degree to work researching New Orleans street names, and Zaire Love interviews Brian Foster about his new book. Click here to access the full publication and read about news from the Center for the Study of Southern Culture. …
Southern drag queen photos by Christina Huff
Celebrating our latest Southern Studies thesis defender Written By Rebecca Lauck Cleary As an international graduate student, Elliot Grime wanted to learn about the culture of the South and better understand the region. For the past two years, he has taken documentary courses enabling him to get first-hand experience interacting with people, places, and the …