Fall 2021 Showcase Williams

Emily Williams

We had to know who we were, we had to know who we weren’t: Jewish Race and Place in the American South

For as long as there have been “Southerners,” there have been southern Jews. An understudied, and to some, an entirely unknown community, Jews have occupied an unsteady, undefined place in the South’s racial binary. They have frequently attained a degree of provisional whiteness, and benefited from the privileges that come with it, only to be periodically reminded that their whiteness is impermanent and contextual. My work seeks to explore both the historical and contemporary Jewish experience of race in the south through photography and oral history. The goals are twofold: to preserve the memory of Jewish communities where they no longer exist, and to understand the Jewish experience today.

Whirlpool Trails

The Whirlpool Trails on the south end of the University of Mississippi’s campus are perhaps the most wild place in Oxford. Stepping off of the main trail leads to a startlingly wide variety of landscapes, given the trail’s small footprint. A bamboo grove hides behind kudzu covered trees, red clay paths pounded by the more adventurous runners are surrounded by wild grasses and scrubby brush. A grove of pines so tall and spindly they should not be able to hold themselves open up into a clearing with a glassy pond. Through this series, I hope to transport the viewer into the most hidden and untamed parts of Oxford.

Emily is an analog photographer interested in documenting Jewish life and history in the south. She is currently working on photographing Jewish sites and collecting oral histories from residents in Mississippi and Louisiana. Emily holds a BA in fine arts and history from Haverford College, and is a current student in Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi.