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New STUDY THE SOUTH Essay by Dr. Adam Gussow – “Blues Expressiveness and the Blues Ethos”

By on January 24th, 2018

The blues—as a palette of intense, often contradictory feelings; a range of social conditions heavily inflected by blackness and southernness; an expressive form encompassing literature as well as music; and a philosophical orientation towards experience—are a more complex cultural phenomenon than some realize. This essay unpacks the latter two concepts: blues expressiveness and the blues ethos. Blues expressiveness is constituted by a range of cultural practices, including the AAB stanza, call and response procedure, vocalizations, blues-idiomatic language, and signifying. The blues ethos, too, offers multiple strategies for surviving bad times by refusing to reify the down-ness of the present moment as an inescapable condition, sometimes with the help of harsh, redemptive laughter. In this essay, Adam Gussow draws on a range of lyric, literary, and folkloristic commentary by Langston Hughes, Cornell West, Bessie Smith, Howard Odum, Kalamu ya Salaam, W. C. Handy, Angela Y. Davis, Lonnie Johnson, and many others. The essay also takes an autobiographical turn as Gussow mines his own bandstand and classroom experience with Mississippi-born blues performers Sterling “Mr. Satan” Magee and Bill “Howl-N-Madd” Perry to illustrate the blues ethos in action.

SouthDocs Film Exploring Mississippi State Flag Now Available to View Online

By on January 23rd, 2018

SouthDocs Film Exploring Mississippi State Flag Now Available to View Online The Southern Documentary Project has made available online their 2017 film Flag Flap Over Mississippi following screenings in Oxford, Jackson, and broadcast on Mississippi Public Broadcasting. Flag Flap, by filmmaker Rex Jones, includes interviews with Mississippians who discuss the state’s continued use of a flag which… Read More >

Call for Proposals for 2018 Southern Music Symposium

By on January 9th, 2018

SOUTHERN MUSIC SYMPOSIUM · FEBRUARY 26 CALL FOR PROPOSALS FOR UM STUDENTS We invite University of Mississippi students to submit papers or completed documentary work for public presentation and discussion at the February 26 Symposium.  Subjects can concern how southern music has shaped or related to place, race, gender, class, locality, environment, globalization, consumerism, and/or politics.… Read More >

Apply to our MFA Program in Documentary Expression

By on January 4th, 2018

Apply to Our MFA Program in Documentary Expression The Center invites applications to our Master of Fine Arts in Documentary Expression program, which began in the fall of 2017. The MFA is a two-year (30-hour) graduate program that combines coursework in Southern Studies and interdisciplinary fields with advanced training in photography, film, and audio production. Coursework… Read More >

Apply to our MA Program in Southern Studies

By on January 3rd, 2018

The Center welcomes applications to our Master’s degree program in Southern Studies, the first and only degree of its kind. The program offers an intense interdisciplinary curriculum touching on many facets of Southern life, history, and culture.

Could Donald Trump Learn from Southern History?

By on December 6th, 2017

We hear that Donald Trump is planning to visit the opening of the Museum of Mississippi History and the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum in Jackson this weekend. I share the frustrations of people who worry that his visit could be both a distraction from and an insult to the people whose stories the museums are telling. If he does in fact visit the museums, I hope he’s there to learn.

New MISSISSIPPI STORY: Race, Place, and the Blues in Clarksdale

By on November 27th, 2017

New on Mississippi Stories, a lecture by Assistant Professor of Sociology and Southern Studies Dr. Brian Foster: “‘That’s for the White Folks’: Race, Culture, and (Un)Making Place in the Rural South.” Dr. Foster presented the lecture, based on his ethnographic work in rural Mississippi, on October 25, 2017 as part of the Center’s Brown Bag Lecture Series.

New MISSISSIPPI STORY: Documenting Southern Foodways in Film

By on November 15th, 2017

New on Mississippi Stories, films created by Southern Studies graduate students Victoria De Leone and Rebecca Lauck Cleary as part of SST 598: Documenting Southern Foodways Class in spring 2017. Southern Foodways Alliance Pihakis Film Fellow Ava Lowrey taught the course.

Wilkerson Receives Award from the Southern Association of Women Historians

By on November 15th, 2017

Assistant Professor of History and Southern Studies Jessie Wilkerson received an award at the recent meeting of the Southern Association for Women Historians (SAWH). Organized in 1970, the organization meets annually and has over 700 members. The SAWH strives to stimulate interest in the study of Southern and women’s history as well to advance the status of women historians.

New MISSISSIPPI STORY: Documenting the South in Film

By on October 26th, 2017

We’ve just posted a new Mississippi Story, a collection of excerpts from Dr. Andy Harper’s Fall 2016 Documenting the South in Film course. The student films tell stories about education, violence, activism, art, race, sexuality, and music in contemporary Mississippi.

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