South Talks

“Truman Capote, Ellen DeGeneres, and Miley Cyrus: Southern Stars and the South’s Queer Myths” presented by Tison Pugh

How do queer southern celebrities adapt the myths of the South to burnish their star personas? This presentation examines three vastly different queer southern stars—Truman Capote, Ellen DeGeneres, and Miley Cyrus—to consider the ways in which the South’s mythologies influence their presentation of their selves, their star personas, and their sexualities. Capote embodied gothic southern decadence during an era of blanket homophobia, DeGeneres presented herself as an avatar of kindness until the façade crumbled, and Cyrus crossed red state/blue state borders first by enacting the tween fantasies of Hannah Montana and then by representing a new brand of out and proud pansexuality. For each of these celebrities, and for a range of other southern stars, queer or not, the South is inextricably linked to their stardom, and its myths both haunt and inspire their celebrity in myriad fascinating ways.

Tison Pugh, Pegasus Professor of English at the University of Central Florida, is the author or editor of over twenty volumes. His book The Queer Fantasies of the American Family Sitcom won the 2019 Popular Culture Association John Leo and Dana Heller Award for the Best Work in LGBTQ Studies. He is author of Truman Capote: A Literary Life at the Movies, Precious Perversions: Humor, Homosexuality, and the Southern Literary Canon, and Queer Chivalry: Medievalism and the Myth of White Masculinity in Southern Literature.

This event is in partnership with the Sarah Isom Center for Women and Gender Studies and the Center for Inclusion and Cross-Cultural Engagement.

“Civil War Memory and the History of Homosexuality” presented by Andrew Donnelly

Two developments took place at the end of the nineteenth century: one, a national shift of sympathies retrospectively toward the lost Confederate cause and, two, the emergence of homosexuality as an identity in medicine and the law. This talk brings these two seemingly disconnected phenomena together to narrate how the emergence of homosexuality operated alongside Lost Cause ideology to foster nostalgia for a pre-homosexual and pre–Civil War past.

Andrew Donnelly is a visiting assistant professor of English and Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi. His work on Civil War–era culture and the history of sexuality has been published in Civil War History, American Literature, Women’s Studies, and other venues. He also works with the Freedom Project Network in Mississippi and launched their Freedom Summer Collegiate program, which brings PhD students and university faculty members to teach summer courses at the Freedom Projects in Sunflower, Rosedale, and Meridian, Mississippi.

SouthTalks is a series of events (including lectures, performances, film screenings, and panel discussions) that explores the interdisciplinary nature of Southern Studies. This series is free and open to the public, and typically takes place in the Tupelo Room of Barnard Observatory unless otherwise noted.

Anne Moody is remembered by historians and fans of her memoir, “Coming of Age in Mississippi” only for her life before 1964, and not for the civil rights work she did later. This talk by Leigh Ann Wheeler will focus on Moody’s promotion of the German edition of her book in Europe between 1969 and 1974, showing how she called attention to American racism while resisting efforts to categorize her either as an advocate of nonviolence or a proponent of Black Power. As it examines these unknown years in Moody’s life, it also raises questions about which stories and whose stories survive and why.

Leigh Ann Wheeler is a Professor of History at Binghamton University, former co-editor of the Journal of Women’s History, and author of two books. She is currently writing Anne Moody’s biography, tentatively titled, “Telling Her Truth: The Many Lives of Elusive Civil Rights Icon Anne Moody.”

SouthTalks is a series of events (including lectures, performances, film screenings, and panel discussions) that explores the interdisciplinary nature of Southern Studies. This series is free and open to the public, and typically takes place in the Tupelo Room of Barnard Observatory unless otherwise noted.

“Race and the College Mobility Trap” presented by Ryan Parsons

Educators are used to telling students that education, and especially higher education, is a reliable pathway to social mobility. For many students, especially young people of color from disadvantaged communities, this pathway is marked by detours, potholes, and other obstacles to “conventional” success. In this talk, Parsons revisits the idea of “the mobility trap”— situations in which people must choose between mobility options that make sense locally and mobility options that make sense nationally—through interviews with a cohort of current Black college students from Sunflower County, Mississippi. These students are enrolled in a range of institutions from local community colleges to private HBCUs to flagship institutions like the University of Mississippi. How are they doing? What does success in college mean for their social networks at home? What do these successes (and challenges) mean for higher education?

Ryan Parsons is an assistant professor of sociology and Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi. In his research, Parsons explores how questions of space and race intersect to structure mobility opportunities, especially in rural and depopulated communities. His dissertation was a community study of Sunflower County in the Mississippi Delta, where he spent three years working with a cohort of young people who aspired to go to college. His teaching draws on these experiences as he helps students think critically about what it means to study a community, and in particular a community they have chosen to call home.

SouthTalks is a series of events (including lectures, performances, film screenings, and panel discussions) that explores the interdisciplinary nature of Southern Studies. This series is free and open to the public, and typically takes place in the Tupelo Room of Barnard Observatory unless otherwise noted.