A (Race and) Mississippi Reading List

A (RACE AND) MISSISSIPPI READING LIST Curated by Dr. B. Brian Foster GULF COAST (COASTAL MISSISSIPPI, INCLUDING BILOXI AND HATTIESBURG) • Hattiesburg: An American City in Black and White by William Sturkey • Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward • Fiction: Sing, Unburied Sing by Jesmyn Ward • Fiction: Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward

This Moment in America: A Southern Studies Resource List

On Friday, June 5, the Center published a letter to former, current, and incoming students, in the aftermath of the recent injustices resulting in the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd. In the letter we asked our students to “think seriously about ways in which [they] might become agents of change, using

Oxford Conference for the Book Welcomes Authors for 26th Year

Readings, panel discussions and lectures are free and open to the public What do a championship poker player, the U.S.-Mexico border controversy and the Appalachian South have in common? They are all part of this year’s Oxford Conference for the Book, set for March 27-29 at the University of Mississippi. The 26th annual event is

Diverse Slate of Spring Brown Bag Lectures Begins Today

Weekly sessions starting today cover topics from state politics and civil rights struggles to gay truckers and jazz Written by Rebecca Lauck Cleary The Brown Bag Lunch and Lecture Series sponsored by the University of Mississippi’s Center for the Study of Southern Culture continues this spring with topics ranging from Brazilian dance to gay truck

Three Southern Studies Faculty Celebrate Book Publications

Off Square Books event set for Jan. 22 OXFORD, Miss. – Three faculty members at the University of Mississippi’s Center for the Study of Southern Culture are kicking off the spring semester with a celebration of their books’ publication. The event, set for 5 p.m. Jan. 22 at Off Square Books in Oxford, features Jessica

New STUDY THE SOUTH Article on Geography and Myth in Faulkner

The best-known setting for William Faulkner’s work is of course the fictional Yoknapatawpha County, set in the hills of North Mississippi, but Faulkner also spent time in the Mississippi Delta, both in person and on paper. In various ways, Delta natives and those with close ties to the alluvial region—such as Ben Wasson, William Alexander Percy, and Phil Stone—significantly affected Faulkner’s life and career. As a result, the Mississippi Delta’s impression on Faulkner influenced much of his fiction in the 1930s and ’40s. The Delta crops up in novels such as The Wild Palms, Go Down, Moses, and Absalom, Absalom! and in stories such as “The Bear,” “Red Leaves,” “A Justice,” and “A Courtship.” Unfurled, these novels and stories present a Faulknerian history of the Delta, and in “The Delta and Yoknapatawpha: The Layering of Geography and Myth in the Works of William Faulkner,” Phillip Gordon bridges the narrow divide between these two Mississippi regions that were so significant to the work of Mississippi’s most celebrated author.

Alum Odie Lindsey Tours Southeast with New Book

Odie Lindsey reads from his new book of short stories, We Come to Our Senses, this summer at bookstores across the South. Odie, an alum of the Southern Studies MA program, also worked as an editor of the Mississippi Encyclopedia.