South Talks

“Art in Barnard” by Robin Whitfield

Robin Whitfield is a Mississippi artist dedicated to connecting with nature and helping others do the same. Her creative process begins with observing natural environments such as rivers, swamps, and forests. Her paintings are poetic explorations of visual and ecological relationships. Whitfield works on paper using traditional watercolors or foraged plant and mineral pigments. In this SouthTalk, Whitfield will discuss her art practice and the mission of her non-profit, Friends of Chakchiuma Swamp. Weather permitting, Whitfield invites all attendees to join a 30-minute workshop using wild pigments from 1 to 1:30 p.m., immediately following her talk.

Robin graduated from Delta State University in 1996 with a BFA in painting. She gives presentations, leads creative workshops, and exhibits her work at the intersection of art, ecology, and conservation. In 2018, she founded the non-profit Friends of Chakchiuma Swamp to manage and interpret the Lee Tartt Nature Preserve (LTNP) near her downtown studio. She serves as Executive Director and is currently studying Forest Technology at Holmes Community College, refining her skills in managing LTNP, a 300-acre bottomland forest. Whitfield lives and works from her studio, situated just off the square in downtown Grenada, Mississippi. For more information about Whitfield and her work, visit her website at www.robinwhitfield.com. 

SouthTalks is a series of events, including lectures, performances, film screenings and panel discussions, exploring the interdisciplinary nature of Southern Studies, sponsored by the Center for the Study of Southern Culture. All events are free and open to the public.

Film Screening of “Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power” + Q&A with Director in Meek Hall Auditorium

Sam Pollard, Spring 2025 Visiting Documentarian

The Center for the Study of Southern Culture and instructors affiliated with the MFA in Documentary Expression host a visiting documentarian once per semester. The invited documentarian spends two days on campus meeting with students one-on-one and participates in a public screening of their work followed by  Q&A. This series provides opportunities for students to enhance their professional development and allows the university and the larger LOU community to engage with renowned documentarians.

This spring, Sam Pollard is the Center’s Visiting Documentarian. Pollard is an accomplished feature film and television video editor and documentary producer/director. 2022 and 2023 were very productive years for Pollard. In December 2022, Peacock began streaming Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power, a film Pollard co-directed with Gandbhir, which tells the story of the courageous campaign of citizens and activists who faced violence and oppression in the struggle for the right to vote. Pollard also co-directed South to Black Power, inspired by New York Times columnist Charles Blow’s book, The Devil You Know: A Black Power Manifesto; it premiered on HBO in Fall 2023.

“Rootswell & SOIL: Reimagining Community through Food, Art, and Stories of the Mississippi Delta”

Tyler Yarbrough and Justin Hardiman

Rootswell is a growing movement in the Mississippi Delta, uniting farmers, chefs, corner stores, farmers’ markets, and creatives to transform the region’s food landscape. In this SouthTalk, we will hear from the organizers revitalizing a Clarksdale neighborhood through initiatives like a reimagined corner store, community murals, and programs that connect families to fresh produce. Experience SOIL, a photo exhibit by Justin Hardiman and produced by Sipptalk Media, which celebrates the lives of Black farmers and their significant role in the Delta’s agricultural heritage.

Tyler Yarbrough, a Delta native, returned home with a Public Policy Leadership degree from the University of Mississippi to focus on economic and community development. He has led advocacy campaigns at both the state and national levels and is currently improving community health through economic development as the director of Mississippi Delta programs at Partnership for a Healthier America.

Justin Hardiman, a self-taught photographer and visual artist from Jackson, Mississippi, blends minimalist and documentary styles inspired by his home state. His work highlights overlooked aspects of his community, showcasing Mississippi’s potential and celebrating the Black southern experience.

SouthTalks is a series of events, including lectures, performances, film screenings and panel discussions, exploring the interdisciplinary nature of Southern Studies, sponsored by the Center for the Study of Southern Culture. All events are free and open to the public.

“Making the Appalachian South in Black and White” by Matt O’Neal

What is “Appalachia”? Where is it? Who lives there? This talk will outline the creation of the Appalachian region in late-nineteenth century America and explain how it came prepackaged with assumptions about its racial and ethnic makeup. If we look beyond the myths surrounding its origins, we can see the mountain South not as a “strange land” inhabited by a “peculiar people,” but as a dynamic place deeply intertwined with modern American life. From the 1870s to the present, Black and white residents of the region have laid claim to an “Appalachian” identity, a process with implications that reach far beyond the borders of this oft-misunderstood corner of the South.

Matt O’Neal is assistant professor of history and Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi. He has published articles in the Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era and in the Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, and he has been featured in a documentary by the Black in Appalachia project. He is currently turning his dissertation into a book with the University of North Carolina Press.

SouthTalks is a series of events, including lectures, performances, film screenings and panel discussions, exploring the interdisciplinary nature of Southern Studies, sponsored by the Center for the Study of Southern Culture. All events are free and open to the public.

Gullah/Geechee Muslims: Identity, Memory and the Making of American History by Muhammad Fraser-Rahim

In this SouthTalk, Dr. Muhammad Fraser-Rahim will discuss his work associated with his book Gullah Geechee Muslims in America: Exploring Islamic Identity in the African Diaspora. Through meticulous research, interviews, and documentation the book presents a unique and significant contribution to religious studies, Africana studies, and anthropology by shedding light on a previously understudied aspect of the Gullah/Geechee community and culture. Previous studies of enslaved African Muslims have claimed that Islam, as a conscious practice, vanished by the eve of the Civil War. However, Muhammad Fraser-Rahim highlights the continuity of Islamic belief and practice in the South Carolina Lowcountry. For scholars who have spent decades researching the retention of African culture among the enslaved and their descendants, this book reveals certain challenges and poses new avenues of research.

Muhammad Fraser-Rahim is an associate professor at the Citadel, the military college of South Carolina. He is a scholar of Islamic, African, and Middle Eastern history, with additional specialization on Muslim communities in the West.

SouthTalks is a series of events, including lectures, performances, film screenings and panel discussions, exploring the interdisciplinary nature of Southern Studies, sponsored by the Center for the Study of Southern Culture. All events are free and open to the public.

Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts: Food, Place, and the Ancestors

Crystal Wilkinson

In this SouthTalk, Crystal Wilkinson will discuss the role food plays in her writing. Drawing from material from her memoir Praisesong for the Kitchen Ghosts, she explores how food functions as inspiration, as a tie to one’s past, and as an important marker of cultural identity.

Wilkinson is also the author of a collection of poems and three works of fiction. Her short stories, poems, and essays have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including The Atlantic, The Kenyon Review, STORY, Oxford American, and Southern Cultures. Kentucky’s Poet Laureate from 2021 to 2023, she currently teaches at the University of Kentucky, where she is Bush-Holbrook Professor in Creative Writing.

This talk is co-sponsored by the Southern Foodways Alliance.

SouthTalks is a series of events, including lectures, performances, film screenings and panel discussions, exploring the interdisciplinary nature of Southern Studies, sponsored by the Center for the Study of Southern Culture. All events are free and open to the public.

“‘Pigs in the Parlor’: The Legacy of Racial Zoning and Its Impact on Land Use Policies in the South” by Jade A. Craig

Racial zoning was the preferred method of establishing residential segregation in the South in the early twentieth century until the US Supreme Court formally struck it down in 1917. In this SouthTalk, Jade A. Craig argues that racial zoning should be understood not merely as a historical moment in land-use policy but as an enduring logic and metaphor. The logic of racial zoning exemplifies anti-Black land-use policies that confine African Americans to specific areas, perpetuating the degradation of these spaces. Craig’s talk will focus on the impact of zoning and discriminatory land-use policies within and around small, low-income, rural communities, specifically in the southeastern United States. It will also address the role of fair-housing laws in challenging these policies, including both its potential and its limitations.

Jade A. Craig is an assistant professor in the University of Mississippi School of Law. He teaches political and civil rights, constitutional law, real estate law, and fair housing law. In 2014, the Obama Administration appointed Craig as a special policy advisor to the assistant secretary in the Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity at the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

SouthTalks is a series of events, including lectures, performances, film screenings and panel discussions, exploring the interdisciplinary nature of Southern Studies, sponsored by the Center for the Study of Southern Culture. All events are free and open to the public.

“A Crowded Table” by Heidi Siegrist

Heidi Siegrist’s book, All Y’all: Queering Southernness in US Fiction, 1980–2020, explores the boundaries of negotiating place and sexuality by using the concept of “southernness,” a purposefully fluid idea of the South that extends beyond simple geography and eschews familiar ideas of the southern canon. In her SouthTalk, Siegrist will explore literature that imagines building queer southern community through food.

Heidi Siegrist is an editor and the director of the Sewanee Young Writers’ Conference at the University of the South.

This event is co-sponsored by the Sarah Isom Center for Women and Gender Studies and is part of Oxford Pride Week. For more information about Oxford Pride, go here.

SouthTalks is a series of events, including lectures, performances, film screenings and panel discussions, exploring the interdisciplinary nature of Southern Studies, sponsored by the Center for the Study of Southern Culture. All events are free and open to the public.