Looking ahead to the Future of the South

Movement and Migration SouthTalks begin Feb. 20 Although the year 2020 seems futuristic in and of itself, faculty at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture are looking beyond the present with a scholarly eye to the next 20 years and more. The Future of the South initiative focuses on the contemporary region and

A Bookseller Looks at Forty

Richard Howorth Shares Remembrances about the Early Days of Square Books and the Center for the Study of Southern Culture Four decades ago, in a senator’s office in Washington, DC, a future bookstore owner learned more than just strategy and skill in a friendly poker game. It was during this card game that Richard Howorth

Making a Space for Conversation

Graduate Profile:  Jennifer Gunter Directs Collaborative on Race and Reconciliation In the wake of the massacre at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015, the University of South Carolina developed a relationship with William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation founding director Susan Glisson and Winter Institute associate director Charles Tucker. They

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

Photographs of the Vernacular South on display now in Gammill Gallery

Don Norris has a fine eye for elegance, simplicity, light, and composition, and for the givenness of things as they are. This work invites meditation, contemplation, repose for the eye.   —John Wall, The Southern Photographer, Raleigh, North Carolina         The Gammill Gallery hosts works of photography from Don Norris, documentary photographer and emeritus

First Student Graduates with MFA in Documentary Expression

Support from fellow students and faculty proved invaluable for Susie Penman, the first graduate in the Master of Fine Arts in Documentary Expression program at the University of Mississippi. Penman, who also earned two other degrees from the university– a bachelor’s degree in journalism in 2007 and a master’s in Southern studies in 2012 –

Podcast showcases lives that encompass a spirit of daring

“All serious daring starts from within,” wrote Eudora Welty. Her quote serves as a springboard for a new podcast called The Daring, featuring the most exciting voices in arts, literature, business, and lifestyle, most of whom are Mississippians. Schuyler Dickson, a fiction writer and musician from Canton, earned his undergraduate degree in Southern Studies in

An Interview with John T Edge about The Potlikker Papers, Eating Democratically, and Foodways in Cultural Studies

My fellow Southern Studies MA alum John T and I over many years have talked about how food, shelter, and clothing hold the keys to learning about the lives of southern people, many of whom embody the collision of necessity and creativity that is at the root of cultural studies. In this interview about his new book, The Potlikker Papers: A Food History of the Modern South, we discuss the tension between the essential and the complex, something he brilliantly struggles with as a founder of the academic discipline of foodways, and something I’ve thought about in my own past work in the building arts and research on clothing and fashion in the South.

Watch SHAKE ‘EM ON DOWN on PBS

You can now watch the SouthDocs film Shake ‘Em on Down by Joe York and Scott Barretta online through the Reel South initiative. Reel South is the result of a partnership between UNC-TV and SCETV and the Southern Documentary Fund, and highlights the documentaries from around the region, making them available through public broadcasting stations.