A conversation about the South and hip-hop music is set for Friday, Feb. 10 at 2 p.m. in Barnard Observatory’s Tupelo Room. The Center for the Study of Southern Culture hosts a conversation between Regina Bradley and Kiese Laymon, “When the South STILL Got Something to Say: A Conversation about Hip Hop in the South.” The event, which will be introduced by Brian Foster, is free and open to the public, with a reception afterward in the lobby.
Written by Edwin Smith, University Communications OXFORD, Miss. – A University of Mississippi anthropology and Southern Studies professor is among five people being honored this month by the Mississippi Humanities Council. Jodi Skipper will receive the Humanities Scholar Award on Feb. 10 during the council’s 2017 Public Humanities Awards program in Jackson. The agency recognizes …
Brian Foster, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Southern Studies, is teaching Honors Southern Studies 102 this semester. The interdisciplinary course is structured as an examination of southern protest culture, and organized like a mixtape. See excerpts from his syllabus below. This is part of an occasional series in which we share syllabi from Southern Studies courses.
The Center’s David Wharton has a new book out called The Power of Belief: Spiritual Landscapes from the Rural South, with an introduction by Charles Reagan Wilson.
Dr. Wharton will sign his book on Thursday, December 8 at 5pm at Off Square Books on the Oxford Courthouse Square.
This fall Kathryn McKee teaches the Southern Studies 598 Special Topics class. Women and the South, which meets Mondays at 1:00– 3:30 p.m., investigates the intersection of constructed ideas about place with constructed ideas about gender and race.
Brian Foster knows his way around the University of Mississippi. In fact, he won the Center’s Peter Aschoff Award for the best paper on Southern music in 2011 with his BA Honors thesis, “Crank Dat Soulja Boy: Understanding Black Male Hip-Hop Aspirations in Rural Mississippi.” This fall, the Center for the Study of Southern Culture and the Department of Sociology and Anthropology welcome him back as a new assistant professor of sociology and Southern Studies. Foster returns to the university from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he earned his MA and began his PhD work. Prior to entering UNC-Chapel Hill Foster earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Mississippi.
Faculty, staff, and a alumnus of the Center will participate in the [Re]Defining Liberal Arts Education in the 21st Century Conference on the Liberal Arts next week at Jackson State University. The Conference, to be held October 6 – 8, will include a keynote address by Dr. William D. Adams, Chair of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Brown Bag Lecture Series Analyzes Songs Sept. 28 The Brown Bag Lunch and Lecture Series continues Wednesday, Sept. 28 with three faculty members who offer 10-minute analyses of individual songs of their choice. The format is an experiment to see what scholars can accomplish in a short time. Presenters, who will announce their songs as …
Up today, an academic article by new Southern Studies faculty member Brian Foster. His article “Everybody Gotta Have a Dream”: Rap-centered Aspirations among Young Black Males Involved in Rap Music Production – A Qualitative Study” was published in 2014 in Issues in Race and Ethnicity: An Interdisciplinary Global Journal.
Jessica Wilkerson, assistant professor of history and Southern Studies, trades Oxford, Mississippi, for Cambridge, Massachusetts, during the 2016–17 academic year as part of the Visiting Scholars Program at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.