Presented by Jennifer Conner, Brookshield Laurent, Anne Cafer, and Meagen Rosenthal

In this SouthTalk, University of Mississippi professors and co-directors of the UM Community First Research Center for Wellbeing and Creative Achievement, Anne Cafer and Meagen Rosenthal, moderate a Q&A Sept. 9 at noon with Jennifer Conner and Brookshield Laurent of the Delta Population Health Institute. Their discussion expands upon the work of the Delta Population Health Institute shared in the prerecorded talk.

During the prerecorded talk, Conner and Laurent present on how their training has taught them how to listen to the stories of our bodies, which inform their work in population health in the Delta. Conner and Laurent explore how the interconnectedness of place, time, and health are expressed in our bodies and can serve as the pathway for holistic healing for self and communities.

Jennifer Conner was instrumental in launching the Arkansas Coalition for Obesity Prevention and has achieved many policy, system, and environment changes along the southern US region to improve community resiliency. In 2019 Conner was named a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Culture of Health Leader finalist and led her hometown of Lake Village, Arkansas, in being named a RWJF Culture of Health Community Prize finalist.

Brookshield Laurent is the founding chairwoman for the department of Clinical Medicine at NYIT-COM at Arkansas State University and the founding executive director for the Delta Population Health Institute. Anne Cafer is an assistant professor of sociology, and her research focuses on improving community-level resilience by integrating food and healthcare systems for better. Meagen Rosenthal is an associate professor of pharmacy administration, and her research focuses on developing systems to integrate health research evidence into practice faster and more effectively.

SouthTalks is a series of events (including lectures, performances, film screenings, and panel discussions) that explores the interdisciplinary nature of Southern Studies. As a result of the current health crisis, all events will be virtual, free, and accessible on the Center’s YouTube channel. Visit the Center’s website for up-to-date information about all Center events. Registration will be required for all events.

“Why Dystopia Now? Exploring the Place, Value, and Necessity of Speculative and Dystopian Themes in Maurice Carlos Ruffin’s We Cast a Shadow”

Presented by Maurice Ruffin and Hilary Word

In this SouthTalk, Southern Studies MA graduate Hilary Word and 2020–21 University of Mississippi Grisham Writer in Residence, Maurice Carlos Ruffin, sit down to discuss Ruffin’s latest work, the dystopian-satire novel We Cast a Shadow. Word and Ruffin expand upon their prerecorded conversation on Ruffin’s book in this live Q&A. The prerecorded conversation is below.

Maurice Carlos Ruffin’s novel We Cast a Shadow was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and was longlisted for the PEN America Open Book Prize, the Center for Fiction Prize, and the Aspen Words Literary Prize. A New Orleans native, Ruffin is a professor of creative writing at Louisiana State University. His forthcoming book of short stories, The Ones Who Don’t Say They Love You, will be published in 2021.

Born in Atlanta, Georgia, but raised in both Georgia and Mississippi, Hilary Word now proudly claims Jackson, Mississippi, as her home. She completed her undergraduate education at Tougaloo College, where she obtained a BA in history in May 2017. She entered the Southern Studies MA program in the fall of 2018 and graduated in May 2020. Word’s thesis, “Post-Soul Speculation: An Exploration of Afro-Southern Speculative Fiction,” earned her the Sue Hart Prize for outstanding paper at the intersection of Southern Studies and gender studies.

SouthTalks is a series of events (including lectures, performances, film screenings, and panel discussions) that explores the interdisciplinary nature of Southern Studies. As a result of the current health crisis, all events will be virtual, free, and accessible on the Center’s YouTube channel. Visit the Center’s website for up-to-date information about all Center events. Registration will be required for all events.

LISTEN TO A SAMPLE FROM WE CAST A SHADOW

Carol Anderson is the Charles Howard Candler Professor and Chair of African American Studies at Emory University.

She is the author of Eyes Off the Prize: The United Nations and the African-American Struggle for Human Rights, 1944-1955, which was published by Cambridge University Press and awarded both the Gustavus Myers and Myrna Bernath Book Awards; as well as, Bourgeois Radicals: The NAACP and the Struggle for Colonial Liberation, 1941-1960, which was also published by Cambridge.

Her third book, White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of our Racial Divide, won the 2016 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism and is also a New York Times Bestseller and a New York Times Editor’s Pick, and listed on the Zora List of 100 Best Books by Black Woman Authors since 1850.

Her most recent book, One Person, No Vote:  How Voter Suppression is Destroying our Democracy, was Long-listed for the National Book Award in Non-Fiction and was a finalist for the PEN/Galbraith Book Award in Non-Fiction.

Her young adult adaptation of White Rage, We are Not Yet Equal was nominated for an NAACP Image Award.

In addition to numerous teaching awards, her research has garnered fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Ford Foundation, National Humanities Center, Harvard University’s Charles Warren Center, and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation.

She is a regular contributor to The Guardian and advisor for it yearlong series on voting rights.

Organized through the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, the African American Studies Program, Center for Civil War Research, and the Arch Dalrymple III Department of History, the Gilder-Jordan Speaker Series is made possible through the generosity of the Gilder Foundation, Inc. The series honors Richard Gilder of New York and his family, as well as Dan and Lou Jordan of Virginia.

As a result of the current health crisis, all events will be virtual, free, and accessible on the Center’s YouTube channel. Visit the Center’s website for up-to-date information about all Center events. Registration will be required for all events.

Journalist and educator W. Jelani Cobb writes about the enormous complexity of race in America. As recipient of the Sidney Hillman Prize for Opinion & Analysis Journalism for his New Yorker columns, Cobb was praised for combining “the strengths of an on-the-scene reporter, a public intellectual, a teacher, a vivid writer, a subtle moralist, and an accomplished professional historian”—qualities he brings to his gripping talks.

Jelani Cobb joined Columbia University’s Journalism School faculty in 2016. He has contributed to The New Yorker since 2012, and became a staff writer in 2015.  Before coming to Columbia, Cobb was an Associate Professor of History and Director of the Africana Studies Institute at the University of Connecticut where he specialized in post-Civil War African American history, 20th century American politics and the history of the Cold War. Dr. Cobb is also a recipient of fellowships from the Fulbright and Ford Foundations.

Dr. Cobb is the author of The Substance of Hope: Barack Obama and the Paradox of Progress as well as To the Break of Dawn: A Freestyle on the Hip Hop Aesthetic. His articles and essays have appeared in The Washington Post, The New Republic, Essence, Vibe, The Progressive, and TheRoot.com. His collection The Devil and Dave Chappelle and Other Essays was published in 2007, and he is the editor of The Essential Harold Cruse: A Reader, published in 2002.  Born and raised in Queens, New York. He is a graduate of Howard University and Rutgers University where he received his doctorate in American History.

This event is sponsored by the Center for the Study of Southern Culture as part of the Future of the South Initiative and the Voting and Community Activism events this fall. Other sponsors include the Division for Diversity and Community Engagement, the College of Liberal Arts, the Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College, the School of Law, the Arch Dalrymple III Department of History, the Department of English, the Sociology and Anthropology Department, Department of Political Science and the School of Journalism and New Media.

SouthTalks is a series of events (including lectures, performances, film screenings, and panel discussions) that explores the interdisciplinary nature of Southern Studies. As a result of the current health crisis, all events will be virtual, free, and accessible on the Center’s YouTube channel. Visit the Center’s website for up-to-date information about all Center events. Registration will be required for all events.