New SFA Oral History Project Looks at Houston

All this week the Southern Foodways Alliance blog will present oral histories from a new project on Houston, Texas.  Amy C. Evans, in her last marvelous act as SFA Senior Oral Historian, looked at how Asian restaurants were redefining Houston foodways. Check out the the project page.  Like all SFA oral history projects, the interviews

SouthDocs Film Tells of Governor Winter’s Battle for Education Reform

The Toughest Job: William Winter’s Mississippi, a documentary directed by Matthew Graves for the University of Mississippi’s Southern Documentary Project (SouthDocs), chronicles the life and career of Mississippi’s 57th Governor William Winter and his fight to pass the 1982 Education Reform Bill. Broadcast Premiere October 2 Mississippi Public Broadcasting will air the premiere statewide broadcast

SFA/Winter Institute Grad Student Conference to include talk by Author of CITIZEN COKE

Beginning this Thursday, September 25, the Southern Foodways Alliance and the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation will host a graduate student conference at the University of Mississippi to study inclusion and exclusion in American foodways. Here’s how the SFA and Winter Institute describe the mission of the conference, which will bring grad students from

Feder Family Gift Supports Study of Southern Music

We kicked off this year’s Music of the South Concert Series earlier this week with a performance by the band Feufollet.  Here, a story from the Southern Register about Ron and Becky Feder and their family, long-time supporters of the Center and its efforts to study music. This article originally appeared in the Spring 2014

Storytime with SouthDocs: Rex Jones Explores the Longleaf Pine

Southern Documentary Project producer Rex Jones is merging a love of nature and storytelling with his latest film about the longleaf pine ecosystem. Jones, who specialized in natural resources media and nature videography while earning an MFA in science and natural-history filmmaking from Montana State University, hopes to incorporate both of his interests in this documentary.

Center Welcomes New Historian Jessica Wilkerson

This fall, the Center for the Study of Southern Culture and the Department of History will welcome Jessica Wilkerson as a new assistant professor of history and Southern Studies. Wilkerson comes to the university from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she completed her doctoral work in the field of women’s and gender history.

Hamilton Wins Prize for Documentary Work

Hamilton’s thesis, “Bottling Hell: Myth-making, Cultural Identity, and the Datil Pepper of St. Augustine,” was the winner of the Ann Abadie Award for Documentary Media. The annual award goes to the Southern Studies student (undergraduate or graduate) with the best documentary film, photography project, audio recording, or website.

Date Set for Broadcast Premiere of The Toughest Job: William Winter’s Mississippi

Attention, Mississippians.  The broadcast premiere of the Southern Documentary Project’s The Toughest Job: William Winter’s Mississippi will be Thursday, October 2 at 8pm on Mississippi Public Broadcasting. The film, made by Matthew Graves, tells the story of former Mississippi Governor William Winter’s career in politics with an emphasis on his hard-fought battle to reform education

Grad Student Receives Summer Internship Grant

Lindsey Reynolds, a Southern Studies graduate student and Nathalie Dupree Graduate Fellow with the Southern Foodways Alliance, received a grant from the Julian and Kathryn Wiener Endowment to fund her summer internship at Garden & Gun magazine in Charleston, South Carolina.