A few weeks ago we had the premiere screening of a new SouthDocs short about the 1965 Voting Rights in Mississippi, produced in partnership with the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. You can now watch it on the MDAH YouTube page and below. Read more about the film on the MDAH website, too.
GIlder-Jordan Lecture with Theda Perdue Recap Dr. Theda Perdue presented the 2015 Gilder-Jordan Lecture in Southern Cultural History on September 9. Her talk, partially inspired by the religious studies scholarship of Charles Reagan Wilson, was titled “Indians and Christianity in the New South.” On the morning of the lecture, Dr. Mikaëla M. Adams of the …
The October 2015 issue of Living Blues features a cover story on Guy Davis, son of actors Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee. In this revealing interview, Davis sees his music as an extension of his ancestry, reflecting the broad African American experience. Other interviews include a talk with California-based Henry Clement reflecting on his 60-plus year career stretching back to his work as a studio musician for the famed Excello label and part one of a two-part interview with producer and songwriter Quinton Claunch who helped found the Memphis-based Goldwax and Hi Record labels.
Dr. Jodi Skipper and Dr. David Wharton have been documenting and studying black Mardi Gras celebrations in Lafayette, Louisiana for several years. Their research was just published in the Summer 2015 issue of The Southern Quarterly, a publication of the University of Southern Mississippi.
While a Master of Arts degree can be the pinnacle of schoolwork for some students, others continue their foray through academia. Here are a few of the Southern Studies alums who, having decided to pursue a PhD in various fields, are working on or have nearly completed their dissertations. The MA program is known for producing graduates with diverse interests, and these topics reflect that diversity.
On Tuesday, September 22 at 5:30pm, the Mississippi Department of Archives and History will host a screening of a new Southern Documentary Project film, 50 Years and Forward: The Voting Rights Act in Mississippi. The short film is a project of MDAH and SouthDocs, utilizing archival material from a number of MDAH collections to tell Mississippi stories through film.
As part of the spring 2015 documentary photography seminar taught by Dr. David Wharton, students photographed in Oxford and, for the sake of comparison, several smaller towns in North Mississippi.
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.
Last Friday, August 28, was the 60th Anniversary of the murder of Emmett Till in Money, Mississippi. On Saturday, the Emmett Till Interpretive Center in Sumner hosted several commemoration events, including tours of the newly renovated Sumner County Courthouse, where Till’s murderers were acquitted. Faculty members Ted Ownby, Jessie Wilkerson, Jodi Skipper, Katie McKee, and David Wharton attended the commemoration with several grad students. Below