Written by Simone Delerme “When I want to feel better, I drive down Summer Avenue. There I can see the past, present and future diversity and humanity of Memphis.” 1 I discovered Summer Avenue—a commercial district in Memphis, Tennessee—while working on an oral history project in 2016. I was interviewing Latino restaurant owners, workers, and …
At today’s graduation lunch honoring graduating B.A. and M.A. Southern Studies students, we recognized the following students for outstanding papers and documentary projects:
Southern Studies MA Students to Present Projects on May 1 On Tuesday, May 1 at 7pm, the Center will host Documentary Thesis Presentations for Southern Studies M.A. students Rachel Childs, Rebecca Lauck Cleary, and Victoria De Leone. The event will be at the Burns-Belfry Museum and Multicultural Center, 710 Jackson Avenue East in Oxford.
Scholars researching the history of the South now have an opportunity for funded research in the collections of the Department of Archives and Special Collections at the J. D. Williams Library at the University of Mississippi. The Study the South research fellowship, sponsored by the Center for the Study of Southern Culture and the Department of Archives and Special Collections, will provide funding of $1,500 to one qualified scholar, who will also have access to a carrel in the library.
Dr. D’Andra Orey of Jackson State University gave a Brown Bag talk on Wednesday, April 12 as part of the Center’s Radical South Brown Bag Series, presented in partnership with the Sarah Isom Center for Women and Gender Studies. Documentarian Chris Colbeck interviewed him about his research, and you can watch the interview here.
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.
Symposium Speaker Karl Hagstrom Miller on Research Inspiration, Segregating Sound, and Multidisciplinarity Southern Studies graduate student Chris Colbeck interviewed Music of the South Symposium speaker Karl Hagstrom Miller on April 6, 2016. Chris, whose own thesis project is on music, interviewed Miller as part of a series of Southern Documentary Project interviews with Center speakers. …
Clothing and Fashion in Southern History February 22 – 23, 2016 The Center will host a symposium on Clothing and Fashion in Southern History on February 22 – 23. The symposium will convene scholars from the fields of history and cultural studies who will contribute essays to a forthcoming book on the subject. The scholars …
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.
While a Master of Arts degree can be the pinnacle of schoolwork for some students, others continue their foray through academia. Here are a few of the Southern Studies alums who, having decided to pursue a PhD in various fields, are working on or have nearly completed their dissertations. The MA program is known for producing graduates with diverse interests, and these topics reflect that diversity.