Charles Hughes (Rhodes College), Christopher Stacey (Louisiana State University-Alexandria), and Chuck Westmoreland (Delta State University) will present on “Three Histories of Pro Wrestling in the South.” Stacey’s talk, “Rasslin’ and Race in the Mid-South and Memphis Wrestling Territories, 1959–1992,” will examine several wrestlers, including Sputnik Monroe, Rocky “Soulman” Johnson, Ernie Ladd, and the Junkyard Dog,… Read More >

Janet Allured’s lecture, “Methodist Women in the South: Agents of Progressive Change, 1939–2000,” will focus on the influential role that white and black southern Methodist women played in social reform movements not just in the South but in the nation. The mid-twentieth-century Methodist Church’s structure and ideology, she shows, produced social justice leaders like Jessie Daniel… Read More >

In her talk, “Taking the South with Me,” filmmaker Jing Niu will discuss her artistic roots (and influences) in the American South and how her upbringing has influenced her career in the film arts through documentary work, journalism, and now fiction films. Niu is a first-generation Asian American who grew up working in take-out restaurants… Read More >

Amira Rose Davis will present “Sights Unseen: Black Women Athletes and the (in)Visibility of Political Engagement,” a brief history of black women’s athletic activism that focuses on how black women athletes have been hypervisible yet oft-ignored symbols of various political struggles on and off the playing field. An assistant professor of history and women’s gender,… Read More >

In this lecture, Stephanie Rolph will discuss her new book, Resisting Equality: The Citizens’ Council, 1954–1989. Rolph is a native of Jackson and a Millsaps alumna (1999). She earned her MA in 2004 and her PhD in 2009 from Mississippi State University, where she specialized in the history of the American South. An active scholar in post-1945… Read More >

Lisa Richman is interested in the ways images can reinforce, script, or challenge the national imaginary of who is a citizen. Historians and artists have examined the Farm Security Administration-Office of War Information (FSA-OWI) Photographic Collection as a broad and deep account of the Depression-era US experience and as a valuable collection of early documentary… Read More >