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.
Two Southern Studies assistant professors are getting to use their passports this summer as recipients of the Provost’s Faculty Development Award for Campus Internationalization. Catarina Passidomo heads to Peru May 31–June 10 for “Peruvian Food Systems: Balancing Growth and Preservation,” and Jodi Skipper goes to Senegal June 7–17 for “Islam, Politics, and Culture in Senegal and West Africa.”
The Center and our institute the Southern Documentary Project just began working with the Mississippi Department of Archives and History on a short film about the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which was signed 50 years ago on August 6, 1965.
We’ve just published a new essay on our journal Study the South. Karlos K. Hill’s essay, published May 11, explores the near lynching of Robert Johnson’s stepfather, Charles Dodds, the influence that event may have had on Johnson and his music, the horrors of spectacle lynching in the late 19th and early 20th century South, and grassroots responses to this violence.
Southern Studies 601 is a required course for all SST MA students, and most take it during their first semester. This fall, Dr. Katie McKee taught the course. In addition to reading a book a week (including Grace Hale’s Making Whiteness, Randall Kenan’s Let the Dead Bury Their Dead, Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!, and Zandria Robinson’s This …
This article, by Dr. Jodi Skipper, originally appeared in the Spring 2014 issue of the Southern Register. Check out our archive of past Registers for more. Interpreting the Enslaved: The Behind the Big House Program in Holly Springs, Mississippi For the past two years, Southern Studies students have helped to fill gaps in Mississippi interpretations …
All this week the Southern Foodways Alliance blog will present oral histories from a new project on Houston, Texas. Amy C. Evans, in her last marvelous act as SFA Senior Oral Historian, looked at how Asian restaurants were redefining Houston foodways. Check out the the project page. Like all SFA oral history projects, the interviews …
The Center’s journal Study the South, launched in July 2014, has just issued two new calls for papers, one exploring the life and work of writer Margaret Walker, and another blues in the American South. Each paper will coincide with a Center outreach event in the spring of 2015. Call for Papers: Margaret Walker See …
Archives and Special Collections at the University of Mississippi has many collections of interest to students of the South.