We’ve just published a new MISSISSIPPI STORY on our documentary media website, mississippistories.org. In 2015, Southern Studies graduate student Mary Blessey taught a digital photography class to children ages 9-12 enrolled in the summer program at Tutwiler Community Education Center in Tutwiler, Mississippi.
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.
On Thursday, October 14 at 12:15pm in Barnard Observatory, SST alum and former SFA Oral Historian Amy C. Evans will discuss her work as a teaching artist with Literacy through Photography, a nonprofit that places artists in classrooms around the Houston Independent School District. Her work is currently on display in the Center’s Gammill Gallery, which is open to the public Monday – Friday, 9am to 5pm.
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.
The Mississippi Stories website, launched in July 2016, seeks to tell the complex story of Mississippi and Mississippians through multiple forms of documentary practice: film, photography, oral history, and sound. The website presents work by students, staff, faculty, and alumni of the University of Mississippi’s Center for the Study of Southern Culture, including Center institutes and partners Living Blues magazine, the Southern Documentary Project, and the Southern Foodways Alliance.
Here, second year graduate student Mary Blessey shares an audio project and original photographs from the 2015 3rd Eye Music Festival in Jackson, MS.
Aligning with the tradition of Southern Gothic, Jaime Johnson’s Untamed articulates humankind’s capacity to decay as a marker of our identity. Set in the swamps and woods of Mississippi and Louisiana, natural places where one encounters life and death, growth and decay, Untamed depicts the fictitious story of a feral woman and her companions.
Here, an end of the semester photo wrap-up with second year Southern Studies grad student Sophie Hay, who documents Center events and life as part of her assistantship. Follow the Center on Instagram for more photos by Sophie and others. Snapshots from the Semester Fall semester has been a busy one in Barnard Observatory; the …
These Southern Studies alums are all documentarians. Whether they are producing a podcast about a beloved home region, filming lectures on the history of fishing, making films for social change, or producing content for StoryCorps, they all help explore the varied nature of the South with their investigations.
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.