Current Courses - Center for the Study of Southern Culture

Current courses (FALL 2021)

Courses listed below are offerings primarily available to undergraduate students, whether seeking general education credits, major/minor credits, or electives.

For a full list of all Fall 2021 Southern Studies courses, as well as courses in other departments that satisfy Southern Studies major/minor requirements, download this printable list of course offerings.

SST101: Introduction to Southern Studies
Tuesday/Thursday 11:00-12:15
Darren Grem

This is an introductory, interdisciplinary course that examines life in the American South (wherever that is) from a variety of perspectives: historical, sociological, political, literary, and musical, among others. As an introductory course, it focuses on two foundational subjects in southern studies: identity and culture. Hence, we will be exploring various regional, racial, gender, and social class identities and examining the diverse peoples, places, and cultures considered “southern.”

SST103: Southern Mythologies and Popular Culture
Tuesday/Thursday 9:30-10:45
Adam Gussow

This course will introduce students to three familiar versions of the mythic South—the pastoral South, benighted South, and plantation South—that have shaped both native and outsider perceptions of the region for several centuries, exploring and critiquing them through a range of popular investments, including literature, music, theatrical performance, film, television, and music videos.

SST110: Slavery and the University
Tuesday/Thursday 1:00-2:15
Jodi Skipper / Jeff Jackson

This course analyzes how university histories intertwine with the history of slavery. It uses the University of Mississippi as its primary site of research and inquiry, and it will examine the legacy of slavery at this and other universities.

SST401: Southern Studies Seminar
Monday 4:00-6:20pm
Ted Ownby

An interdisciplinary seminar that examines the South through a close study of social groups, social structures, and social forces. Particular focus of this seminar changes from term to term.

SST533: Fieldwork and Oral History
Tuesday 9:00-11:30
John Rash

This course provides a term-long analysis of fieldwork techniques and examination of the contemporary South through oral history.

SST536: The Southern Environment
Thursday 1:00-3:30
Andy Harper

This course examines the ways people have discussed the U.S. Southern environment in scholarship, literature, film, music, art, and other forms of expression.

SST538: Advanced Documentary Film (SST537 prerequisite)
Tuesday 1:00-3:00
Rex Jones

This course is a one-semester production workshop building on skills learned in SST537: Documenting the South in Film. Goals include developing advanced documentary practices and completing several assignments intended to illustrate these practices in Southern documentary filmmaking.

SST598: Special Topics — Photographing the American South
Wednesday 4:00-6:30
David Wharton

This course serves as an interdisciplinary study of specialized topics. This term the focus is on photographing the American South.

SST 599: Special Topics — The Mississippi Delta: Exploring the South’s South
Tuesdays 4:00-6:30 p.m.
James G. Thomas, Jr.

Mississippi writer Richard Ford once proclaimed that “what the South is to the rest of the country, the Delta is to Mississippi. It’s the South’s South.” This course, “The Mississippi Delta: Exploring the South’s South,” will introduce students to this fabled yet complicated region through engagement with historical accounts, ethnographic fieldwork, memoir, fiction, photography, and documentary film. We will look at the Mississippi Delta through the lenses of slavery, the Jim Crow era, the civil rights movement, and the contemporary South as a way of placing it within the broader context of the state, the region, and the world. We will begin with a concentration of texts focused on the history of the place. We will then investigate race, ethnicity, and social class in the Delta, and we will complete the course with readings on the cultural expressions—such as the blues—that have come to define Mississippi’s most complex and often-mythologized region.

Additional course descriptions:

ENG776: “Southern Studies and/in the 21^st Century”
Wednesdays 3:00-5:30
Dr. Katie McKee

This course will ask questions about how and why we study “the South” in the 21^st century, taking as its departure point Eddie Glaude’s observation that “the South has the answer to the American riddle.” In the midst of a prolonged health crisis, a crisis in democratic governance, and a crisis centering the need for racial equity and inclusion in the United States, what does “the South” have to teach us and how can we justify studying a place and an idea that has historically nurtured much of our national disunion? And how does “southern literature” operate or fail as a viable parameter of discussion within that context?