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the newsletter of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture • Winter 2012 the university of mississippi The Music of the South Symposium to Celebrate 25 Years of Graduate Work

Just as the South has produced musicians, so has the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, and this spring both will be celebrated. The Music of the South Symposium, set for March 1–3, will focus on the 25th anniversary of the Center’s Master of Arts degree program and recognize the varied and rich tra- dition of music research explored by students in the program and the many people who have made, studied, written about, produced, and filmed music. “Our goal is to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the MA program and recognize the work of Southern Studies students and alumni in the field of music,” said Mark Camarigg,Living Blues publications manager. “In addition, this is a great op- portunity to showcase the Center’s curriculum and resources to prospective students. Media and Documentary Projects as- sists students with filmmaking, oral histories, and fieldwork. Additionally, students can work with our music publications, New Media” at 10:00 a.m., a discussion of blues films at 11:00 such as Living Blues, while researching and studying music cul- a.m., thoughts and reflections on the Center’s current and past tures of the South with Southern Studies faculty.” music publications at 1:00 p.m., a discussion of blues tourism at The interdisciplinary nature of the MA program makes it 2:00 p.m., a discussion of country music at 3:00 p.m., and a re- particularly suited to the study of music, music’s role in his- ception at 5:00 p.m. for Center students, faculty, alumni, and tory, and the culture of the region. While they are trained as friends, in conjunction with the Bill Steber photography ex- scholars, a number of graduates are also musicians with local, hibition, Stones in My Pathway: Photographs of Mississippi Blues regional, and even national recognition in different genres. Culture, at Barnard Observatory. The symposium kicks off Thursday, March 1, with a spe- Steber is a graduate of Middle Tennessee State University cial Thacker Mountain Radio show, which broadcasts live from with degrees in English and photography. As a staff photogra- the Oxford Square and will feature Southern Studies alumni. pher for the Tennessean newspaper in Nashville, he has won Music at various venues around town, including Proud Larry’s, more than 30 regional and national photojournalism awards. Two Stick, and Rooster’s Blues House, ends the evening. In 1997 Steber was awarded an Alicia Patterson Foundation On Friday, March 2, at 9:00 a.m., the conference starts with a grant to document blues culture in Mississippi. According to talk in the Blues Archive at the University of Mississippi’s J. D. Steber, the project combines portraits of blues musicians play- Williams Library on Living Blues magazine’s 40 years of publica- tion. Friday’s academic panels also include “Music, Radio, and continued on page 17 the D i r e c t o r ’ s C o l u m n

Published Quarterly by I have always liked Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, ever since I read The Center for the Study of Southern Culture shortened and heavily censored sections in junior high. As a fan of travel literature, The University of Mississippi I like it as the story of a band of strangers heading off to a pilgrimage site after an un- Telephone: 662-915-5993 planned meeting outside London. Second, it brings together the everyday and the Fax: 662-915-5814 E-mail: [email protected] grand and the back-and-forth between the two. As a religious historian, I like the www.olemiss.edu/depts/south way it dramatizes questions about defining what is sacred—who does the defining, www.facebook.com/SouthernStudies when, why, and what happens when some people see as sacred things others do not. Only some of the travelers seem serious about the possibility of penance, healing, IN THIS ISSUE and renewal promised at Canterbury, but it is important that they are all making a Winter 2012 pilgrimage. And I like the structure of The Canterbury Tales, in which each traveler 1 The Music of the South Symposium to Celebrate 25 Years of Graduate Work agrees to tell four stories, two on the way to Canterbury and two more on the way 2 Director’s Column home. In contemporary language, the book takes the form of a fictional version of 3 Blues and the Spirit III Symposium documentary studies, with truth emerging from multiple narratives. 3 Living Blues News This Southern Register announces a reunion event, March 1–3, for all alumni of 4 Brown Bag Lunch and Lecture Series 4 Lynn & Stewart Gammill Gallery Exhibition Southern Studies, whether the alumni, broadly defined, are past students, staff mem- Schedule bers, faculty members, Advisory Council members, or other friends. The event, part 5 Chisholm Foundation Provides $103,000 conference, part concert, part reunion, will consist of people in Southern Studies past to Support Center and Southern Foodways Alliance and present, making music, showing music films, discussing their scholarship and oth- 6 Center Fills New and Vacant Positions er writing and other work related to music. It may seem a bit grandiose to connect The 6 Mark Your Calendars! Canterbury Tales to such an event. It is not part of the mission of the Center for the 7 Eudora Welty Awards 7 James and Madeleine McMullan Gift Study of Southern Culture to offer healing and repentance (though heaven knows the Supports Oxford Conference for the Book University of Mississippi has for many people been a site of people seeking or at least 7 David Blight Presents Gilder-Jordan Lecture needing both). Renewal, however, may be closer to what this event can offer. It will 8 “A William Faulkner Remembrance” 9 Faulkner & Yoknapatawpha Conference: 50 offer a chance to renew old friendships and make new ones, and it is a way for many Years after Faulkner people to revisit whatever combinations of intellectual, ethical, aesthetic, political, 10 Center Partners with Gilder Lehrman Institute to Sponsor Summer Teaching and other issues brought them to Southern Studies in the first place. Institute Over the years, music has been one of the first topics of discussion among students, 11 Founder of Children’s Defense Fund to Give one of the topics that no one can claim to own or master and one that brings up Lecture 12 Hamer Institute to Honor Susan Glisson countless questions about definitions of tradition and authenticity, of race and eth- 12 Southern Studies on the Road nicity, of religion, gender, labor, globalization, technology, marketing, business, in- 13 Southern Studies Alumni News dividuality, and certainly more. Music is sound, it is skill, it is business, and it carries 14 The Mississippi Delta Literary Tour all sorts of cultural meanings. The conference will bring together alumni who spend 16 The 19th Oxford Conference for the Book 18 Jesus Is My Rock: Recent MA Graduate Tyler their lives making, studying, and documenting music with those who wrote their Keith Documents Mississippi Gospel Music theses on music topics and moved on, and the rest of us who read, talk, and listen. 18 Southern Studies Program Partners with the British Association for American Studies Renewal may mean getting excited again about the intellectual issues involved in 19 Manifold Greatness to Exhibit at the J. D. thinking about music, or it may come from thinking about how music and thinking Williams Library about music have changed over the last 25 years, or it may just come from listening 19 In Memorium 20 McCormick Book Inn, a Delta Literary to people, as in The Canterbury Tales, telling their stories. We hope everyone brings Landmark, Closes us two stories, and leaves with at least two more. 21 2011 SFA Annual Report It is important to note that while the conference and concert will feature people 24 Will Harris Inducted to the Fellowship of Farmers, Artisans, and Chefs with connections to the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, everyone is in- 25 Reading the South vited to the Music of the South event, and to the Marian Wright Edelman lecture, 29 MIAL’s Awards and Nominations and to the Oxford Conference for the Book. Please come. 30 New Courses in Southern Studies Offered This Past fall Late in the fall we learned of two new large gifts to the Center and its programs. 30 Contributors Friends of Ann Abadie and fans of the Oxford Conference for the Book began rais- 31 The 19th Mississippi Delta Tennessee ing funds for an endowment that would help support the OCB. With an initial gen- Williams Festival Goes International erous gift from Lynn Gammill in the summer and a major contribution from Jim and Register Staff Madeleine McMullan at the end of the year, along with gifts from about 50 other sup- porters, that endowment now has about $125,000. The endowment will be one of sev- Editor: James G. Thomas Jr. eral ways the Center will be able to sustain the Oxford Conference for the Book in fu- Graphic Designer: Susan Bauer Lee Mailing List Manager: Mary Hartwell Howorth ture years, and we certainly continue to encourage donations to that endowment fund. Lithographer: RR Donnelley Magazine Group The second major gift comes from the Chisholm Foundation, a Laurel, Mississippi, The University complies with all applicable laws regard- foundation that supports education, the arts, and other efforts. The $103,000 gift from ing affirmative action and equal opportunity in all its ac- tivities and programs and does not discriminate against the Chisholm Foundation will allow the Center to continue its postdoctoral teach- anyone protected by law because of age, color, disability, national origin, race, religion, sex, or status as a veteran or disabled veteran. continued on page 3 Page 2 Winter 2012 The Southern Register Blues and the Spirit Living Blues News In a way, the current III Symposium issue of Living Blues has Living Blues magazine partners once again with Dominican a hidden theme—art- University to present “Blues and the Spirit III,” a sympo- ists we are finally cov- sium on the enduring legacy of African American music. ering after many years The event will take place May 18–19, 2012, at Dominican of meaning to get to University, in River Forest, Illinois, in the near west sub- them. With only six is- urbs of Chicago. The 2012 symposium continues the dia- sues a year we can cov- logue initiated at the last symposium er only so many artists. in 2010, about racial appropriation and Sometimes it takes gender represen- years for everything to tations in the click and a story to fi- blues. Plenaries nally come together. and panels will This issue’s cover art- feature an eclec- ist, Keb Mo, for exam- tic group of ple, has been on our young schol- radar since the 1990s, ars, prominent but the story never happened. Finally this fall, after the re- musicologists, writers, musicians, and industry leaders, in- lease of his most recent record, The Reflection, we did the story. cluding Zandria Robinson, McMullan Assistant Professor After reading it, I think you’ll realize it was right timing. Keb of Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi. Mo was in a mood to do a little reflecting, and we were there Symposium participants will also be treated to two nights of to capture his diverse life story. first-class Chicago blues in well-known area clubs. Our theme continues with Clarksdale native Earnest The registration fee is $60 and includes all keynotes “Guitar” Roy. Roy was also on our radar in the 1990s after his and sessions on campus, two receptions, bus transportation work with Big Jack Johnson for Earwig and Lonnie Shields for costs, and cover charges for each evening’s live blues enter- Rooster Blues. But before the story came together, Roy head- tainment. Reasonably priced and no-frills on-campus lodg- ed off to Ohio and took up gospel. Here we are nearly 20 years ing options will be available. For more information, pro- later, and he’s back in the Deep South (Arkansas this time) gram schedule, and registration, please contact event coor- and back into the blues. Again, right timing. dinators by e-mail at [email protected] or by tele- But it’s California bluesman Ray Bailey who perhaps best phone at 708-524-6050. More information can be found on exemplifies this theme. Bailey won the Artist Deserving of the symposium’s website: www.dom.edu/blues. Wider Recognition award in the LB critics’ poll in 1993. Based on this accolade, we wanted to give Bailey “wider recogni- Mark Camarigg tion” with a feature story. But just as fast as he appeared on the scene he was gone. Personal problems pulled him out of music for nearly a decade and a half. But a few years ago Bailey ap- continued from 2 Director’s Column peared again, and writer Scott Bock caught up with him and got an interview. On the heels of Bailey’s first studio record in ing fellowship in Southern foodways into 2014. These gifts are 18 years, we are finally giving him the “wider recognition” he about teaching and outreach and building on existing strengths, deserves. Again, it feels like the right timing. and we will make good use of them. A big “thank you” to everyone who turned out at the ben- Another major announcement in this Register concerns the efit concerts or showed your support in some other way for LB new partnership with the Gilder Lehrman Institute, which for founder Jim O’Neal. A special thanks goes out to bluesmen years has been running successful summer teacher institutes to Kenny Neal (Kansas City and Chicago) and Memphis Gold improve the teaching of American history. This June, several (Washington, D.C.) for pulling the benefit concerts together. Center faculty and staff members will combine to teach a class Jim continues to take chemotherapy and is doing well. on the theme “Race and Ethnicity in the Modern South.” Congratulations to contributing writer and former edi- Teachers from across the country will gather for lectures, dis- tor Scott Barretta for winning the Blues Foundation’s 2012 cussions, films, and trips. This is an exciting partnership, and “Keeping the Blues Alive” award for journalism. we look forward to working with the Gilder Lehrman Institute Finally, I’d like to welcome Nashville photographer and to meeting the teachers. The metaphor of the pilgrim- Anthony Scarlati to the pages of LB. Scarlati is a top-notch age may or may not apply to those teachers, but we expect photographer who has worked with many of Nashville’s fin- them, like the Canterbury pilgrims, to share some stories and est, including Dolly Parton, Vince Gill, and Marty Stuart. His to leave with more stories to tell. photo of Keb Mo is on the cover of this issue.

Ted Ownby Brett J. Bonner

The Southern Register Winter 2012 Page 3 Center for the Study of Southern Culture

January The University of Mississippi 25 “A Screening of Leaves of Greens: A Collard Opera” Written by Price Walden Brown Bag Lunch and Lecture Series Performed by the University of Mississippi Opera Theater Spring Semester 2012 Directed by Amanda Johnston The Brown Bag Luncheon Series takes place each Wednesday Costumed by Alabama Chanin at noon in the Barnard Observatory Lecture Hall during the regular academic year. February 1 “Nomad’s Land: Honing in on 29 “Music of the South: A April American Hypermobility” Homecoming Celebration of the 4 “Why I Do the Things I Do: Cynthia Joyce, Assistant Professor 25th Anniversary of the Southern One Southerner’s Return to a of New Media at the Meek Studies Master of Arts” Louisiana Home” School of Journalism Southern Studies Master of Arts Jodi Skipper, Assistant Professor Alumni of Sociology and Anthropology 8 “Images of a White Beast and a

Black Lady: Rape Rhetoric in March 11 “Outback Elvis: Antipodean 1930’s New Orleans” 7 “Selma to Montgomery: The Interpretations of a Southern Michele Coffey, Visiting Assistant Long March to Freedom” Music Icon” Professor of History and Southern Barbara H. Combs, Assistant Gretchen Wood, Southern Studies Professor of Sociology and Studies Graduate Student Southern Studies 15 “Perspectives on the Mississippi 18 “A Human Environment: Space Delta” 21 “Branding the South: Paula and Place in North Mississippi” Josh Davis, Delta Health Alliance Deen, Colonel Sanders, and Documentary Fieldwork Students Amy C. Evans, Oral Historian, Cracker Barrel as Regional on the Gammill Gallery Southern Foodways Alliance Ambassadors” Exhibition John J. Green, Director, Center Kirsten Schofield, Southern for Population Studies Studies Graduate Student 25 “‘Nothing Less Than an Activist’: Zandria Robinson, Assistant Susie Penman, Southern Studies Marge Baroni, Catholicism, and Professor of Sociology, McMullan Graduate Student the Natchez, Mississippi, Civil Assistant Professor of Southern Rights Movement” Studies 28 “Welcome to Monkey Town: Eva Walton, Southern Studies Dayton, Tennessee, and the Graduate Student 22 “Only Nixon Could Go to China: Legacy of the Scopes Trial” L. Q. C. Lamar and the Politics of Kari Edwards, Southern Studies Reconciliation” Graduate Student Brian Wilson, Southern Studies Graduate Student

January 16–March 26, 2012 Stones in My Pathway: Photographs of Mississippi Blues Culture Bill Steber March 30–June 15, 2012 Exhibition Schedule Making Space, Living in Place: Physical, Cultural, and Social Landscapes of the The Gammill Gallery, located in Barnard Observatory, is Mid-South open Monday through Friday, 8:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m., except for Southern Studies Graduate Student University holidays. Telephone: 662-915-5993. Exhibition

Page 4 Winter 2012 The Southern Register Chisholm Foundation Provides $103,000 to Support Center and Southern Foodways Alliance Jimmy Thomas The Chisholm Foundation of Laurel, Mississippi, is contributing $103,000 to support the academic study of food- ways through the Center for the Study of Southern Culture and the Southern Foodways Alliance (SFA). University officials describe the support as an im- portant step toward establishing an en- dowed professorship in the emerging cultural studies field of foodways, a dis- cipline in which the SFA is recognized nationally. The Chisholm Foundation resources will support a postdoctoral fellow, with the recipient teaching foodways classes in the Southern Studies curriculum and foodways-focused courses in other disci- plines. For example, the inaugural hold- er of the fellowship, Assistant Professor Angela Jill Cooley, is teaching an un- dergraduate history class this spring us- ing foodways to understand home-based Jill Cooley teaching HIST 399: “Food, Race, and The Help in Southern History” race relations. The course “Food, Race, and The Help in Southern History” will contextualize Katherine Stockett’s novel also will be encouraged to transform his identity for scholars of cultural life. In The Help. or her doctoral dissertation into a book, the past generation, growing attention “The Chisholm Foundation grant expanding scholarly literature explor- to the body, the senses, health, and gen- will play a pivotal role in the creation ing foodways. der has combined with scholarship on of curriculum examining the role of “Of late, more and more students globalization, ethnicity, and identity to food as both a cultural artifact and have arrived at the Center with an in- elevate the place of foodways studies in form of expression,” said Center direc- terest in foodways,” said John T. Edge, the humanities, Ownby said. tor Ted Ownby. “This support will allow director of the SFA, which is supported Individuals and organizations interested the Center to extend foodways classes by more than 1,000 academics, chefs, in providing private gifts to a permanent introduced this academic year for two artisans, farmers, and others. “This gift endowment for the faculty position in more years, during which time we will from the Chisholm Foundation ensures foodways studies may contact College pursue funding for a permanent endow- that we will be able to serve their class- of Liberal Arts Development Director ment supporting the position. Through room needs and, in turn, inspire a new Nikki Neely at [email protected] or this grant, the Chisholm Foundation generation of scholars.” 1-800-340-9542. is helping both the Center’s academic Ownby said the Chisholm programming and also the work of the Foundation support reflects positively Southern Foodways Alliance,” Ownby on SFA’s momentum. “Receiving this continued. “We appreciate the confi- gift is an indication of the success our The Chisholm Foundation is a char- dence the Chisholm Foundation ex- Southern Foodways Alliance has had itable organization founded in 1960 presses in our work by providing these over the past decade in establishing by Alexander F. Chisholm, a business- financial resources.” the University of Mississippi as the best man, philanthropist,5 and churchman of The SFA funded the fellowship for place to study humanities issues related Laurel. The foundation’s mission focus- the 2011–12 academic year, and the to food. Through its offerings, the SFA es on nurturing and supporting mean- Chisholm Foundation gift assures the has encouraged a wealth of new think- ingful endeavors in education, the arts, continuation through 2014. During the ing about the meanings of food in rela- and religion. Since the 1974 death of fall semester, Cooley taught a course tion to cultural life,” he said. Alexander F. Chisholm, three genera- on Southern foodways for graduate stu- The study of foodways has become a tions of his family have carried out his dents, with the response exceeding class central approach to understanding is- mission and continue to provide grants capacity. Each holder of the fellowship sues of race, class, gender, economy, and to worthy organizations.

The Southern Register Winter 2012 Page 5 Center Fills New and Mark Your Vacant Positions Calendars!

In the past few months, Mary Hartwell Howorth February 19–20, 2012 the Center has added Stir the Pot, at Poole’s Diner two new employees and Featuring Joseph Lenn of a third has a newly re- Blackberry Farm defined position. Also, a Raleigh, North Carolina new staff member at the February 21, 2012 University of Mississippi Marion Wright Edelman Lecture Foundation will be February 29, 2012 working closely with Potlikker Charleston the Center. LaTonya Charleston, South Carolina Pittman began work- ing as senior secretary March 1–3, 2012 in August. A native of Music of the South Symposium Charleston, Mississippi, (l to r): Becca Walton, Jimmy Thomas, and LaTonya Pittman March 8–10, 2012 Pittman completed her Porter L. Fortune Jr. History management informa- Symposium tion systems (MIS) degree at the University of Mississippi in 2011. With extensive March 18–21, 2012 work experience at the Law School and considerable technical skills, she went to Mississippi Delta Literary Tour work immediately on jobs relating to registration and assessment. Becca Walton and Jimmy Thomas are the Center’s new associate directors. March 22–24, 2012 Thomas, a Southern Studies MA alumnus, has worked for eight years as the Center’s Oxford Conference for the Book publications editor, primarily as managing editor of The New Encyclopedia of Southern April 15–16, 2012 Culture. As that project moves toward its 24-volume conclusion, Thomas has tak- Stir the Pot, Nashville en on the new position of associate director, publications, and is responsible for Hosted by Tandy Wilson and completing the New Encyclopedia and Mississippi Encyclopedia, editing the Southern Tyler Brown and featuring Register, and coordinating numerous other publication projects. Walton, also with a Ashley Christensen, Nashville, Southern Studies MA degree, worked at several nonprofit institutions, most recent- Tennessee ly the American College of the Building Arts in Charleston, South Carolina. As associate director, projects, she will be responsible for, among other things, confer- May 20–21, 2012 ences and other outreach, some public relations, and social media. One can see evi- Stir the Pot, at Poole’s Diner dence of her work on the Center’s out- Featuring Steven Satterfield of reach through Facebook, Tumblr, and Miller Union, Twitter. Walton, Thomas, and Pittman Raleigh, North Carolina are working together to improve the June 8–10, 2012 Center’s web presence. Big Apple BBQ Block Party Finally, the Center welcomes Nikki New York, New York Neely to the University of Mississippi June 17–23, 2012 Foundation. As a University of Gilder Lehrman Summer Seminar Mississippi alumna with degrees in fine “Race and Ethnicity in the Modern arts and journalism, Neely has been South” working at Emory University and before that at the Thelonious Monk Institute. June 21–23, 2012 She will take on some of the fundrais- SFA Field Trip: “A Romp through ing responsibilities of Michael Upton, Eastern North Carolina” who has moved to another position Greenville, North Carolina at the Foundation after four excellent July 7–11, 2012 years working with the Center and its Faulkner & Yoknapatawpha projects. (To contact Nikki, e-mail her Conference at [email protected] or call her at “Fifty Years after Faulkner” Nikki Neely 662-915-6678.)

Page 6 Winter 2012 The Southern Register Eudora Welty James and Madeleine McMullan Awards Gift Supports Oxford Do you have a son who just may be Conference for the Book the next Richard Wright? A daughter who can channel her inner O’Connor A generous new gift from James and Madeleine McMullan will help secure the with a flick of a pen? If so, encourage future of the Oxford Conference of the Book. The McMullans, who have been these young people to enter stories and good friends of the Center since the 1990s, made a donation of $100,000 to the poems for consideration in the Center new endowment that honors the work of newly retired Associate Director Ann for the Study of Southern Culture’s an- Abadie by supporting the Book Conference. Beginning in 2013, the endowment nual Eudora Welty Awards. Schools will be one of several ways the Center funds the conference. According to Center may submit one entry per category. director Ted Ownby, “It’s hard to say thank you enough to the McMullans for

Kay Bell what they have done for the Center, its teaching, and its programs. This gift, along with the gifts of lots of other friends, will make it easier to plan future conferences and, even more importantly, will help guarantee the continued success of the Oxford Conference for the Book.” The Center’s advisory committee began the new endowment in the summer of 2011, and about 50 friends have contributed. Contributions to the endowment, known officially as the OCB Endowment, or the Ann Abadie Endowment No. 05149, are very welcome, and Center faculty and staff will make special efforts to discuss the endowment at the OCB in March. Anyone interested in contributing can contact Becca Walton ([email protected]) at the Center or Nikki Neely (662-915-5944) at the University of Mississippi Foundation.

David Blight Presents Students must be Mississippi resi- dents. The competition is open to Gilder-Jordan Lecture 9th through 12th graders, and writing UM Brand Photography should be submitted through students’ On November 16, Bancroft Prize winner David Blight high schools. Short stories should not David Blight gave the Gilder-Jordan Lecture exceed 3,000 words, and poetry should in Southern History to a standing-room- not exceed 100 lines. Winners and only crowd gathered in Nutt Auditorium. nominating schools will be notified The audience was made up of undergraduate in May. The first-place prize is $500, and graduate students, faculty members of and the second-place prize is $250, the College of Liberal Arts, and a number of plus recognition at the opening of Oxonians. Blight presented a lecture on the the 2012 Faulkner & Yoknapatawpha resonance of the Civil War in the civil rights Conference on the University campus era, examining the lives and work of Robert in July. Deadline for entries is April Penn Warren and James Baldwin. Blight 15, 2012. University of Mississippi made a compelling case that the memory of English professors will judge the entries. the Civil War was and remains an important Applications and submission require- factor in the formation of national identity. ments will be sent to all Mississippi In attendance were Richard Gilder, Lois public and private high schools, but if Chiles, and their friends Dan and Lou you know a Mississippi student current- Jordan. The lecture series is made possible ly enrolled in high school outside the through support from the Gilder Foundation state or who is home-schooled, please and honors Mr. Gilder’s family and his e-mail [email protected] or call friends the Jordans. Chancellor Dan Jones provided an introduction for the lecture. 662-915-5993 for a copy. To see a list Earlier in the day, John Neff, director of the Center for Civil War Research, in- of past winners or to download a PDF of terviewed Blight on Civil War memory scholarship. Center institute Media and the application, visit www.olemiss.edu/ Documentary Projects filmed the interview and the evening’s lecture, and both are depts/south/EudoraWeltyAwards.html. on the Center’s Tumblr site, www.southernstudiesatuofm.tumblr.com.

The Southern Register Winter 2012 Page 7 “A William Faulkner Remembrance” July 6, 2012 Miriam Berkley Friday, July 6, 2012, will mark the 50th Alexander Griswold Cummins Professor anniversary of the death of William of English at Swarthmore College, is the Faulkner, perhaps the most distin- author of Faulkner’s “Subject”: A Cosmos guished figure in the rich cultural heri- No One Owns, “What Else But Love”: The tage of the Lafayette-Oxford-University Ordeal of Race in Faulkner and Morrison, (LOU) community. To commemorate Unknowing: The Work of Modernist this milestone, promote reading and lit- Fiction, and the 2010 biographical study eracy in the community, and celebrate Becoming Faulkner: The Art and Life of the role of the arts in our collective life, William Faulkner, winner of the 2011 C. “A William Faulkner Remembrance” Hugh Holman award from the Society will bring together the LOU communi- for the Study of Southern Literature (and ty and interested visitors to our area to reviewed in these pages in the Summer remember and honor Faulkner’s legacy, 2011 issue). Following Weinstein’s ad- a half century after his passing. Thanks dress, keynote writer Randall Kenan will to the assistance and generous sponsor- comment on Faulkner’s legacy from the ship of the University of Mississippi de- literary artist’s point of view. Kenan, asso- Randall Kenan partment of English, the Center for the ciate professor of English at the University Study of Southern Culture, the Center for Writing and Rhetoric, the Mississippi Humanities Council, the Lafayette- Oxford Foundation for Tomorrow, the Oxford Convention and Visitors Bureau, Vintage Books, the First National Bank of Oxford, the Lyric Theater, and the City of Oxford, all remembrance events will be free and open to the general public. The day’s itinerary will link the sites of town, county, and campus, along with other significant spaces from Faulkner’s personal history. The program of events will get under way with a marathon reading of Faulkner’s final novel,The Reivers, on the grounds of Faulkner’s home, Rowan Oak. Like the marathon readings of Absalom, Absalom! in 1997 Philip Weinstein (for the 100th anniversary celebration of Faulkner’s birth) and Go Down, Moses in 2005 (for the Mississippi Reads initia- of North Carolina and a former John and the 1969 film adaptation ofThe Reivers tive), the reading will draw on volunteer Renée Grisham Writer in Residence at (directed by Mark Rydell and starring participants who will each read a short the University of Mississippi, is the au- Steve McQueen, Sharon Farrell, Rupert section of the novel aloud. Beginning thor of a novel, A Visitation of Spirits, a Crosse, and Will Geer) at the Lyric on at 6:30 a.m., it will unfold over several short story collection, Let the Dead Bury the Oxford Square. The Lyric, of course, hours. Refreshments will be served on Their Dead, a biography of James Baldwin has its own special place in Faulkner his- the grounds of Rowan Oak, and tents for young readers, and two works of cre- tory, as the venue for the local premiere and fans will be set up to help keep ev- ative nonfiction,Walking on Water: of Today We Live (the first film to be eryone comfortable in the July heat. Black American Lives at the Turn of the adapted from a Faulkner work) in 1933 Following the marathon reading, we Twenty-First Century and The Fire This and the international premier of Intruder will adjourn to the second-floor courtroom Time. In his fiction Kenan has creat- in the Dust in 1949. of the Lafayette County Courthouse, ed a rural North Carolina communi- In all of these ways the organizers and a building immortalized in Faulkner’s ty he calls Tims Creek, a domain that sponsors seek to create an event that will fiction, for a pair of keynote address- bears suggestive affinities with Faulkner’s bring together Faulkner lovers, readers es at 4:15 p.m. Faulkner scholar Philip Yoknapatawpha County. young and old, families, educators and Weinstein will address the significance of Remembrancers will reconvene at the writer’s life and career. Weinstein, the 8:00 p.m. for a “late show” screening of continued on page 10 Page 8 Winter 2012 The Southern Register Faulkner & Yoknapatawpha Conference 50 Years after Faulkner, July 7–11, 2012 The 39th annual Faulkner & Faulkner on the Fringe open mike Yoknapatawpha Conference will night, the conference book exhibi- be devoted to reconsiderations of tion, and several social events for Faulkner’s literary and cultural leg- conference registrants, including a acies and reflections on his extraor- buffet supper, a cocktail party, and a dinarily diverse and prolific career, picnic on the grounds of Rowan Oak, on the occasion of the 50th anni- to broaden and deepen the dialogue versary of his death in the summer around the conference theme. of 1962. How can we memorialize The 2012 conference poster offers Faulkner without succumbing to further reinforcement of that theme. the temptation to monumentalize One of a series of photographs shot him? How do we weigh the mer- by Martin Dain in the spring of 1962 its of the Lion in the Garden with- and collected in Faulkner’s World: out simply “lionizing” him? A sub- The Photographs of Martin J. Dain stantially enlarged lineup of invit- (University Press of Mississippi, ed speakers, including over a dozen 1997), the image, in Dain’s words, appearing at the conference for the reveals Faulkner’s intense “desire for first time, will explore these ques- privacy, because he’s always look- tions in a series of keynote lectures ing down and away” from the cam- and panel discussions over the four era—nowhere more so than in this main conference days of July 8–11. picture, where he turns his back en- Keynote speakers for this year’s tirely on the photographer. Yet his conference include Matthew Martin J. Dain Collection/Southern Media Archive/Special Collections/University of Mississippi Libraries gesture, along with Dain’s place- Guterl (Indiana University), John Faulkner” will commence on Saturday, ment of the image only three pages from Howard (King’s College, London), July 7, with a day of optional guided the end of Faulkner’s World, where it fac- Ramón Saldívar (Stanford University), tours of “Faulkner Country” in Oxford, es a photo of two workmen preparing and Hortense Spillers (Vanderbilt northeast Mississippi, the Delta, and Faulkner’s gravesite at St. Peter’s cem- University). Panels organized spe- Memphis. The Saturday tour day is etery in Oxford, also carries valedictory cifically for the conference include intended to serve as a bridge between overtones that seem especially poignant “Reappraising The Reivers at 50,” “Cold the “William Faulkner Remembrance” in light of this year’s anniversary con- War Faulkner,” “Faulkner and the Civil scheduled for Friday, July 6 (see the ference. Reluctant as ever to rest on his Rights Movement,” “‘Other’ Faulkners,” event announcement on p. 8) and the laurels or deliver the expected authori- “Faulkner and the Literary Canon,” and formal opening and welcoming ceremo- al pose, Dain’s Faulkner turns instead to “Late Faulkner / Faulkner’s Afterlives.” nies for the conference on Sunday, July stride into an uncertain future shrouded Other panels will bring together speak- 8. The remembrance program is free in darkness, preceding the viewer into ers selected in February through the and open to the general public; confer- that shadowy realm but also awaiting us conference call for papers. In addition, ence registrants who plan their Oxford there—as if in anticipation of just the a writer’s panel will gather William Gay itinerary to include the remembrance sort of reckoning that we now pursue, a (author of numerous works of fiction in- will be welcome. half century later. cluding Twilight, honored by Stephen Another featured event at this This valedictory accent also pres- King as the “top book” of 2007), Chris year’s conference is a reception at the ents an occasion to honor the lives and Offutt (novelist, short story writer, mem- University Museum on Sunday, July 8, at mourn the loss of two extraordinary oirist, screenwriter, and assistant profes- which Brooklyn, New York, artist John friends of Faulkner & Yoknapatawpha. sor of English and Screenwriting at the Turner Shorb will speak about his fea- For 2012 marks not only our 50th year University of Mississippi), and Olivia tured exhibition, Absalom, Absalom! On “after” Faulkner but also our first, pain- Milch (currently adapting Faulkner’s his website (www.johnshorb.com), Shorb ful year after Dean Faulkner Wells and Light in August as a miniseries for HBO), describes his installation as a “develop- Betty Harrington, who left us in the to discuss Faulkner’s narrative art from a ing series” of mixed-media images incor- span of a few short months last sum- craft perspective. Tom Franklin (author porating painting, photography, and print mer and fall. In their advocacy for the of the award-winning Crooked Letter, to “explore ideas of memory and loss in conference and their active contribu- Crooked Letter) will serve as moderator the American South,” with Faulkner’s tions to it over many decades, Dean for this special session. 1936 novel as a central focus and catalyst. and Betty helped shape the confer- In something of a departure from The Shorb exhibition will join sessions previous conferences, “50 Years after on teaching and collecting Faulkner, the continued on page 10 The Southern Register Winter 2012 Page 9 continued from 8 Faulkner Remembrance Center Partners with Gilder students, and other citizens from the town, county, university, state, and beyond to recognize and celebrate Lehrman Institute to Sponsor Faulkner’s extraordinary life and work, his ties to the LOU community, and his Summer Teaching Institute formative contributions to the cultural The deadline is February 15 for teachers interested in a new summer institute life of the area. Though the remembrance in which the Center will partner with the Gilder Lehrman Institute for a course is a separately conceived, organized, and entitled “Race and Ethnicity in the Modern South.” Interested teachers can funded event from this year’s Faulkner & apply for the program at the Gilder Lehrman website, www.gilderlehrman Yoknapatawpha Conference (July 7–11), .org/education/seminar_overview.php. The course will be held June 17–23 in which will also feature 50th-anniverary Barnard Observatory on the University of Mississippi campus. reflections and observances, the two For years the Gilder Lehrman Institute in New York has been working to programs have been scheduled back to improve the teaching of American history by collecting historical documents back in anticipation that each event and making them available for study, by hosting various academic events, and will help create interest in the other, by organizing summer teacher institutes. Often led by a single scholar, in 2012 to the benefit of both programs and the those institutes will teach topics such as “9/11 in American Memory,” “The Era local community. As such, registrants for of George Washington,” “Lincoln and Emancipation,” and “Native American Faulkner & Yoknapatawpha are invited History.” Participants discuss common readings, do research, take tours, watch to come to Oxford a day early and join and discuss films, and analyze how to incorporate course material into their own in the remembrance festivities on July 6. classrooms. To inquire about or volunteer for the “Race and Ethnicity in the Modern South” institute will put together the ef- marathon reading, send an e-mail mes- forts of six faculty and staff members. After Ted Ownby introduces the seminar sage to [email protected]. Volunteers with discussion of some of the main issues in the modern South, Charles Reagan should provide their names and contact Wilson will lead discussions of Southern religious life and how it has changed information and may, if they wish, indi- (and not changed) in the past generation. Southern Foodways Alliance oral cate a specific time window or part of the historian Amy Evans Streeter will discuss oral history approaches to foodways day (early morning, mid-morning, mid- scholarship and changes in Southern foodways, and then will lead a food tour day, afternoon) during which they are of parts of the Mississippi Delta. Barbara Harris Combs will teach about how to available to read. The schedule of read- approach documents like the MDC’s “State of the South, 2011” report and the ers will be finalized later in the spring. Brookings Institute’s “State of Metropolitan America.” David Wharton will fol- Inquiries concerning other remembrance low with a unit called “Shared World, Separate Worlds: Racial Interactions in the events should be directed to Jay Watson, Contemporary South,” complete with a film and a tour, and Jodi Skipper will con- organizer, at [email protected]. clude the seminar with a discussion of “Tourism and the Politics of Inclusion in the Modern South” and a trip through tourism sites in north Mississippi. Teachers Jay Watson will report to each other about ways to apply material from the institute in their courses. continued from 9 Faulkner Conference Center faculty came to know the staff of the Gilder Lehrman Institute in the summer of 2011, when they came to Oxford to run a “Faulkner and Southern ence into the happy marriage of speak- History” seminar led by the University of South Carolina historian Don Doyle. ing and hearing about Faulkner that it Also, former University of Mississippi Chancellor Robert Khayat, during dis- remains today: a model of scholarly in- cussions that led to the origin of the Gilder-Jordan Speaker Series in Southern quiry, public discussion, and continuing Cultural History, suggested to Gilder Lehrman executive director Lesley Hermann education. Here in Oxford, and in the that the university would be an excellent site for an ongoing summer teacher in- larger community that gathers around stitute. Hermann visited Barnard Observatory in the summer and discussed a sem- Faulkner’s work, they remain much be- inar that would use various faculty members, teaching individually and together, loved and greatly missed. to address a common theme. Discount rates for the conference are Center director Ted Ownby referred to the institute as “the start of a partner- available for groups of five or more stu- ship with all kinds of potential for the future.” He continued, saying, “Faculty dents. Inexpensive dormitory housing have taught summer programs for teachers before, but using the examples and is available for all registrants. Contact structure and recruiting potential provided by the Gilder Lerhman Institute will Robert Fox at [email protected] for de- allow us to do some exciting things. We’re hoping that future summer institutes tails. There are also a limited number of can address different topics, with different combinations of faculty members, in- waivers of registration for graduate stu- cluding those from other departments, and we look forward to seeing how this dents. Contact Jay Watson at jwatson@ team-teaching approach, which we use all the time in our classes, will work in olemiss.edu for details. a summer institute. We’re hoping teachers from all over the country join us.”

Jay Watson

Page 10 Winter 2012 The Southern Register Founder of Children’s Defense Fund to Give Lecture

Marian Wright Edelman, a national- “Given that the focus of the Sarah ly known advocate for disadvantaged Isom Center for Women and Gender’s children and the founder and presi- Studies celebration of Women’s History dent of the Children’s Defense Fund Month 2012 is on issues of race, gen- (CDF), lectures on February 21 at the der, and rights, it is a privilege for us to University of Mississippi’s Ford Center have the opportunity to hear from one for Performing Arts at 7:00 p.m. The of the women who has led the struggle event is free and open to the public to secure rights for the most vulnera- and is sponsored by the Center for the ble members of our society,” said Susan Study of Southern Culture’s Future of Grayzel, interim director of the Isom the South Symposium, the Sarah Isom Center. Center for Women and Gender Studies Edelman is the author of numerous as part of Women’s History Month, books discussing issues of childhood, ed- Black History Month, and the Opening ucation, and justice. In recent years she the Closed Society Initiative. has turned toward memoir, writing vol- Under Edelman’s leadership, the umes such as The Measure of Our Success: CDF has become the nation’s strongest A Letter to My Children and Yours and voice for children and families. The Lanterns: A Memoir of Mentors. Marian Wright Edelman Children’s Defense Fund’s Leave No She has received over 100 honorary Child Behind mission is to ensure ev- degrees and many awards, including the ery child a healthy, fair, safe, and mor- people from the Mississippi Delta to Albert Schweitzer Humanitarian Prize, al start in life and successful passage to make new demands on the govern- the Heinz Award, and a MacArthur adulthood with the help of caring fami- ment. The following year, she moved Foundation Prize Fellowship. In 2000 lies and communities. to Washington, D.C., as counsel for the she received the Presidential Medal Edelman, a graduate of Spelman Poor People’s Campaign, working with of Freedom, the nation’s highest civil- College in Atlanta and Yale Law Martin Luther King Jr. on that proj- ian award, and the Robert F. Kennedy School, began her career in the mid- ect until his death. She founded the Lifetime Achievement Award for her 1960s when, as the first black wom- Washington Research Project, a public writings. She is a board member of the an admitted to the Mississippi Bar interest law firm and the parent body Robin Hood Foundation, the Center Association, she directed the NAACP of the Children’s Defense Fund. For for Budget and Policy Priorities, and the Legal Defense and Educational Fund of- two years she served as the director of Association to Benefit Children, and is fice in Jackson, Mississippi. the Center for Law and Education at a member of the Selection Committee “As a part of the 50th anniversary of Harvard University and in l973 began of the Profiles in Courage Award of the integration of our university, which is a CDF. John F. Kennedy Library, the Council year-long celebration, I would encour- As the entry on Edelman in on Foreign Relations, the American age everyone to attend Marion Wright the Gender volume of The New Philosophical Society, the American Edelman’s talk,” said Chuck Ross, di- Encyclopedia of Southern Culture states, Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the rector of African American studies “In Mississippi, during the height of the Institute of Medicine of the National and associate professor of history. “We civil rights movement, she organized Academy of Sciences. are very fortunate to have this author Head Start programs throughout the She is married to Peter Edelman, a and lifelong advocate for disadvan- state for the Child Development Group professor at Georgetown Law School. taged children and civil rights on our of Mississippi and developed a keen They have three sons, Joshua, Jonah, campus.” awareness of the effect of poverty and and Ezra; two granddaughters, Ellika In 1967 Edelman was one of the hunger on the lives of young children. and Zoe; and two grandsons, Elijah and main forces behind the Poor People’s Her advocacy drew national attention Levi. Campaign, working with Robert to children suffering from hunger and Kennedy to encourage impoverished malnutrition in America.” Rebecca Lauck Cleary

The Southern Register Winter 2012 Page 11 Hamer Institute to Honor Susan Glisson For her work as executive director at Clinton’s One American: An Initiative the William Winter Institute for Racial on Race, Glisson continues to lead com- Reconciliation, our colleague Susan munity projects, specializing in the his- Glisson (MA 1994) has been honored tory of race, religion, and the black as a Fannie Lou Hamer Humanitarian struggle for freedom. Glisson wrote Award recipient. The Fannie Lou Hamer her Southern Studies MA thesis on Institute on Citizenship and Democracy the works of Clarence Jordan, and her at Jackson State University will present PhD dissertation at William and Mary the awards to Glisson, along with Flonzie on the organizing strategies of activ- Susan Glisson Brown-Wright, Hickman Johnson, and ists Lucy Mason and Ella Baker. John John Garner, at a luncheon April 20. Garner of Jackson, a civil rights veter- After coordinating the only Deep an and retired physics professor, helped Tougaloo College. His commitment to South public forum from President to establish the physics department at providing an opportunity for African American students to train in the sci- ences speaks to a long history of activ- ism for children and students. Senior Southern Studies on the Road Pastor of Farish Street Baptist Church, In the past few months, Southern State University to discuss the eco- Reverend Dr. Hickman Johnson, will Studies faculty have spent plenty of nomic history of the Mississippi Delta also be honored during this celebra- time on the road in different direc- with new Teach for America in- tion. As an advocate for community tions, for different purposes. structors, and later traveled to sever- activism and leadership, he has served In July 2011 Charles Reagan Wilson al British universities to explore pos- the historic Farish Street Church and gave a talk entitled “Mississippi Rebels: sible exchanges. In October, sever- the state of Mississippi for more than Elvis Presley, Fannie Lou Hamer, and al Southern Studies faculty members, 40 years. The Hamer Institute is rec- the South’s Culture of Religious Music” including David Wharton, Barbara ognizing Mrs. Flonzie Brown-Wright, at the St. George Tucker Society Combs, and Michele Coffey, made author and civil rights trailblazer from meeting in Augusta, Georgia, and he presentations at the Popular Culture Canton, Mississippi. Elected as the first took part in sessions at the American in the South/American Culture African American female to public of- Studies Association and Southern Association in the South Conference fice in Mississippi since Reconstruction, Historical Association meetings in in New Orleans. Wharton participat- Brown used her position of election the fall. In March, Zandria Robinson ed in a panel on documentary photog- commissioner to correct many vot- will be heading to the 2012 meeting of raphy in the South, Coffey gave a pa- ing-rights injustices that the state of the Association of Black Sociologists, per on gender and race in 1930s New Mississippi was still fighting to resolve. where she serves as secretary. In 2011, Orleans, and Combs gave a paper in The 2012 Fannie Lou Hamer Katie McKee gave a paper, “Traveling the form of a question, “What Makes Humanitarian Awards Luncheon will be in Woolson’s Southern Sketches: The a Southern Neighborhood?” Wharton held Friday, April 20, 2012. The honor- Mutability of Race, Region, and the will have an exhibition of his photo- ees will receive the Fannie Lou Hamer National Whole,” at the Constance graphic work later in 2012 at Missouri Humanitarian Award in an 11:30 a.m. Fenimore Woolson Society Meeting State University. ceremony to be held in Ballroom A of in New Hampshire and took part in a At the American Anthropological the New Student Union on the campus discussion of university approaches to Association convention in Montreal, of Jackson State University. the topic of the Global South at the Jodi Skipper gave a talk, “Things Stay Collectively and individually, Glisson, Southern Historical Convention in the Same: Reflections on Researching Brown-Wright, Johnson, and Garner Baltimore in October. and Teaching the African Diaspora in have helped to change the course of hu- Ted Ownby started the 2011 sum- the U.S. South.” Adam Gussow has a man history and have been instrumental mer with a trip to Knoxville, where he new CD, Southbound, and has been trav- in modeling a civil society. To reserve a served as a judge in the International eling to research his new book project seat at the awards luncheon, please con- Biscuit Festival, then visited Delta on the devil myth in the blues. tact the Hamer Institute at 601-979- 1562 or 601-979-1563.

Page 12 Winter 2012 The Southern Register Southern Studies Alumni News

Southern Studies alumni continue to win impressive awards and to take on new jobs and challenges. Rob Hawkins (MA 2005) won the 2011 Ralph Gabriel Prize given by the American Studies Association for the best new disserta- tion in American Studies. Hawkins, a St. Louis University PhD, now teaches at Bradley University. Current gradu- ate student Kari Edwards won the award for delivering the best paper at the Popular Culture in the South/American Culture Association in the South con- ference in New Orleans in September win awards that Artadia: The Fund for 2011. Her paper was entitled “Better Art and Dialogue made to support the Dead Than Red: The Popular Image work of artists in the Atlanta area. Our of Communist Subversives during the Media and Documentary Projects col- McCarthy Era.” The Wall Street Journal league Joe York (MA 2007) won the named The Chitlin’ Circuit and the Road Audience Award at the Chicago Food to Rock ’n’ Roll by Preston Lauterbach Film Festival for his filmButtermilk: (MA 2003) as one of the top 10 non- Marshall-Linnemeier (MA 2005) was It Can Help. And musician Caroline fiction books of the year. Visual artist, named the Judith Alexander Artadia Herring (MA 1998) won the 2012 storyteller, and documentarian Lynn Awardee and was one of seven artists to Coleen Salley Storytelling Award at the Fay B. Kaigler Children’s Book Festival at the University of Southern Mississippi Joe York and Kathryn for her CD The Little House Songs. McGaw celebrate tying Numerous students have new jobs. the knot on New Year’s Mary Amelia Taylor (MA 2011) works Eve, 2011. in communications at her alma mater, Judson College, and Meghan Leonard Stauts (MA 2011) is Internet editor at the Marrieta Daily Journal. Duvall Osteen (MA 2011) works in publish- ing for the Trident Media Group in New York. Schuyler Dickson (BA 2009) has completed an MFA in Creative Writing at Northwestern University, Cale Nicholson (MA 2009) is teaching in an Arkansas program that incorporates gar- dening into school curricula, and Sally Graham (MA 1993) has a role in a Little Rock performance of The Laramie Project. The most recent Southern Studies grad- uate, Nell Linton Knox (MA 2012) is teaching an introduction to Southern Studies class through the enrichment program at Millsaps College. Bruce Newman We would love to keep in closer touch with our friends. Two easy ways include: 1. Facebook users, please “Like” the Center for the 2. Send us your e-mail address. We plan to use e-mail to Study of Southern Culture. Being a Facebook Friend reach out more often, sharing news and events information. of the Center brings you news large and small, Please send your e-mail address to [email protected]. announcements, job ads, and occasional gossip.

The Southern Register Winter 2012 Page 13 The Mississippi Delta Literary Tour Set for March 18–21, 2012

The Mississippi Delta Literary Tour, set writer’s artistic life.” (The book was re- lunch in the legendary Club Ebony, for March 18–21, 2012, will once again cently praised by novelist Ann Patchett which is owned by B.B. King and is traverse the Delta countryside, explor- on The Martha Stewart Show. See page hailed as “one of the South’s most im- ing the region’s rich literary, culinary, and 26 for a review of the book.) Clay and portant African American nightclubs.” musical heritage. The tour will be based his wife, Maude Schuyler Clay, whose Following lunch we will take an archi- at the Alluvian Hotel in downtown own photography has garnered rave re- tectural tour of downtown Greenwood, Greenwood and will explore the towns views, will talk about photographing led by noted architectural histori- of Clarksdale, Greenville, Indianola, and the Mississippi Delta. That evening we an and author Mary Carol Miller. For Cleveland, making stops along the way in will enjoy dinner at the Delta Bistro, her book Lost Mansions of Mississippi, Money, Tutwiler, and Winterville. prepared by Taylor Ricketts, a rising star Miller won the Nonfiction Book of the On Sunday afternoon, March 18, in the Southern culinary world. Year award from the Mississippi Library the group will gather at Turnrow Book On Monday, March 19, the group Association in 1997. We will then con- Company for a lecture by Eudora Welty will visit the B.B. King Museum and vene in Turnrow Book Company to biographer Suzanne Marrs on Welty’s Interpretive Center in Indianola, consider themes in Kathryn Stockett’s novel Delta Wedding and the author’s “whose exhibits and educational pro- best-selling novel The Help within a connections to the Mississippi Delta. grams serve to build bridges between Mississippi Delta context. Joining in Joining us also will be Langdon Clay, the community and the world while the discussion will be literary schol- photographer for the recently published preserving the rich cultural and musical ar Marion Barnwell, University of One Writer’s Garden, a stunning book heritage of the Mississippi Delta.” Jim Mississippi journalism professor Deidra that documents the restored garden of Abbott, former editor of the Indianola Jackson, and Mary Carol Miller, whose the Eudora Welty House in Jackson and Enterprise-Tocsin, will be our docent mother privately documented the pe- “the garden’s important place in the as we tour the museum. We will have riod of massive resistance in the Delta.

THE MISSISSIPPI DELTA LITERARY TOUR, MARCH 18–21, 2012 THE OXFORD CONFERENCE FOR THE BOOK, MARCH 22–24, 2012 The Delta Tour is $600 per person for all program activities, daily meals, and local transportation. The fee does not include lodging. The Conference for the Book is open to the public, although special events require admission fees or registration.

PLEASE MAIL REGISTRATION FORMS TO THIS ADDRESS: CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF SOUTHERN CULTURE THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSISSIPPI • P.O. BOX 1848 • UNIVERSITY, MS 38677-1848 OR FAX TO 662-915-5814 NAME ______ADDRESS ______CITY ______STATE ______ZIP ______HOME TELEPHONE ______CELL ______E-MAIL ______

Mississippi Delta Literary Tour Special OCB Events I would like to reserve ___ spot(s) for: I would like to reserve a spot for: ___ 3/18–21 ($600 each) ___ 3/22 UM Library Lunch (free) ___ 3/22 Cocktail Reception ($50) ___ 3/23 Oxford Library Lunch (free) ___ 3/24 Breakfast (free) ___ 3/24 Lunch ($10)

I am making a payment of $______. ___Check, made payable to THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSISSIPPI, is enclosed. ___Charge to ___Visa ___MasterCard Expiration Date ______Account Number ______Signature ______Date ______

Payments are refundable if written request for cancellation is postmarked no later than March 5. No refunds will be made after March 5, 2012.

Page 14 Winter 2012 The Southern Register After the discussion we’ll take a driving tour of Greenwood and Carrollton, highlighting locations used in the film ver- University Press of MississiPPi sion of The Help. We’ll conclude the day at the antebel- lum Cotesworth House in Carrollton with a talk by Marion My Friend Tom Barnwell on local author Elizabeth Spencer. Dinner in the The Poet-Playwright house will follow. Tennessee Williams On Tuesday, March 20, en route to Clarksdale, we’ll visit By William Jay Smith legendary bluesman Robert Johnson’s gravesite, pause before Foreword by Suzanne Marrs the remains of the store in Money where Emmett Till alleg- A comrade and confidant reveals the early years of the young play- edly made his tragic whistle, and visit with local quilters and wright’s life gospel singers at the Tutwiler Community Education Center. $28 hardback Clarksdale sites will include the Cutrer Mansion and St. George’s Episcopal Church, where Tennessee Williams schol- ars Jack Barbera and Colby Kullman will speak on the town’s in- The House at the fluence on Tennessee Williams’s work and on the playwright’s End of the Road Delta plays. Following a catered lunch in St. George’s parish The Story of Three Generations hall, Mississippi actors Johnny McPhail and Alice Walker will of an Interracial Family perform scenes from Tennessee Williams’s Mississippi plays on in the American South the front porch of local resident Panny Mayfield. We’ll then By W. Ralph Eubanks travel to Cleveland where novelist and Delta State University A story of one family’s English professor Dorothy Shawhan will guide a tour of folk love and courage in the artist Carolyn Norris’s art shop. Shawhan recently published Jim Crow–era Deep South the book Spirit of the Delta: The Art of Carolyn Norris with $25 paperback University Press of Mississippi. We’ll end the day with din- ner at the famous Giardina’s Restaurant, now in the beautiful This Light of Ours Activist Photographers of the Alluvian Hotel but founded in Greenwood in 1936. Civil Rights Movement On Wednesday, March 21, we will venture to Winterville Edited by Leslie G. Kelen Mounds, outside of Greenville, to explore “the site of a pre- Essays by Julian Bond, Clayborne historic ceremonial center built by a Native American civili- Carson, and Matt Herron zation that thrived from about A.D. 1000 to 1450.” Site ar- Text by Charles E. Cobb, Jr. cheologists and historians will be on hand to explain the sig- An astonishing visual record nificance of this historic site. In Greenville we’ll tour the city taken by photographers directly with historian Princella Nowell and ponder the importance of engaged in the struggle independent bookstores—past and present—in the Delta with $45 hardback; $45 Ebook Mississippi writers Curtis Wilkie and Julia Reed, both of whom New Delta Rising once made Greenville their home. Noted literary historian Photography by Kenneth Holditch will deliver a lecture on Greenville memoir- Magdalena Solé ist and poet William Alexander Percy. We’ll end the day with Introduction by Rick Bragg a visit by a local artist and reception at Gallery Point Leflore in Text by Barry H. Smith Greenwood, followed by dinner at one of Mississippi’s most re- and Tom Lassiter nowned restaurants, Lusco’s. A compelling look at the The Delta tour is $600 per person for all program activi- people and places of today’s Mississippi Delta ties, 11 meals, and local transportation. The fee does not in- $38 hardback; $38 Ebook clude lodging. Remember to sign up early. A limited number of places are available, and they are going fast. The Florida Group accommodations are offered at the Alluvian Hotel, Folklife Reader in downtown Greenwood. Rooms at the Alluvian require a Edited by Tina Bucuvalas separate registration. Standard rooms are priced at a discount- An overview of the traditional, ed rate of $170 and include a full Southern breakfast. Call changing folklife from a vibrant 866-600-5201 and ask for the Literary Tour rate. Also call southern state the hotel to inquire about rates for luxury rooms and suites. $65 printed casebinding; Rooms can be reserved at the Greenwood Best Western, 662- $25 paperback; $25 Ebook 455-5777, or the Hampton Inn, 662-455-7985. To register for the tour, please return the registration form by March 14. For more details, please call tour organizer Jimmy at 662-915-3374, or e-mail him at [email protected]. www.upress.state.ms.us 800-737-7788 Jimmy Thomas

Southern RegisterWinter2012.indd 1 1/13/12 3:58 PM The Southern Register Winter 2012 Page 15 The 19th Oxford Conference for the Book, March 22–24, 2012

The 2012 Oxford Conference for the ture for young people. All Oxford-area Book will be the 19th annual event to fifth- and ninth-grade students (nearly celebrate books, reading, and writing 1,000 readers) receive their own copies while also examining the practical con- of books by the visitors and go to the cerns on which the literary arts and the conference to hear the authors speak humanities depend, including literacy, about writing and reading. Elise Broach freedom of expression, and the state of will discuss her book Masterpiece with publishing. fifth graders, and James Dashner will The Center has introduced a new speak to ninth graders about The Maze blog for the conference, which can be Runner. found at www.conferenceforthebook At noon on Friday participants can .tumblr.com. As the conference ap- attend “Poetry Craft Talk and Lunch proaches, the blog will be the central with Nicole Cooley” at the Lafayette place to learn about the schedule, au- County and Oxford Public Library. thors, and special events planned for Other Friday activities include a pan- March. A registration form for the con- el moderated by W. Ralph Eubanks en- ference can be found on this blog and titled “Geography in Fiction: Real and on page 14. Imagined” with writers Steve Yarbrough The Conference for the Book, set for and Frederick Reuss, as well as a panel March 22–24, 2012, will open with a Radio show will feature author and mu- on writing biographies, moderated by lunch and lecture on the history of the sician Bobby Keys along with Charlie Curtis Wilkie and including Howell book in the United States by scholar Winton. A cocktail reception will fol- Raines, John Aloysius Farrell, and Jon David D. Hall. That afternoon Beth low at the Barksdale-Isom Place. Meacham. At 6:00 p.m. on Friday eve- Ann Fennelly will host a celebration of Each year two Friday morning ses- ning, Square Books will host a recep- National Poetry Month, joined by po- sions are devoted to educational pro- tion and book signing. ets Nicole Cooley and Brad Richard. gramming and the celebration of litera- Saturday panels include commen- Immediately following will be a Writers tary on the future of reading and litera- Conversation between author Richard cy with Elaine H. Scott and Claiborne Ford and current John and Renée Barksdale, followed by a panel on “The Grisham Writer in Residence Josh Urge toward Memoir,” which will be Weil. A panel moderated by Charles moderated by Bill Dunlap and in- Reagan Wilson entitled “Writing Black clude Winston Groom, Howell Raines, Freedom Movements” will include Julia Reed, and Norma Watkins. After Randal Jelks and Allen Tullos. That a special lunch, John T. Edge of the evening a special Thacker Mountain Southern Foodways Alliance will lead a

For more information concerning the conference, contact: For tourist information, contact: For information about books and authors, Center for the Oxford Convention contact: Study of Southern Culture and Visitors Bureau Square Books P.O. Box 1848 102 Ed Perry Boulevard 160 Courthouse Square University, MS 38677-1848 Oxford, MS 38655 Oxford, MS 38655 telephone 662-915-5993 telephone 800-758-9177 telephone 800-468-4001 fax 662-915-5814 662-232-2367 • fax 662-232-8680 662-236-2262 • fax 662-234-9630 e-mail [email protected] www.oxfordcvb.com www.squarebooks.com/ conferenceforthebook.tumblr.com

Page 16 Winter 2012 The Southern Register talk about food writing featuring Brett Anderson of the New continued from 1 Music of the South Symposium Orleans Times-Picayune, Kim Severson of the New York Times, and Randy Fertel, whose new book, The Gorilla Man and the ing at home and in clubs with images that describe what re- Empress of Steak, has garnered much attention. mains of the rural African American culture that gave rise to The conference will come to a close with an afternoon the blues. Examples include juke joints, cotton farming, sa- panel on the future of publishing with Square Books owner cred music, rural church services, river baptisms, folk religion Richard Howorth and Barbara Epler and Declan Spring of and superstition, life in Parchman penitentiary, hill country New Directions Publications, followed by a reading moder- African fife-and-drum music, and diverse regional blues styles. ated by Tom Franklin and including writer Michael Downs. Music at Barnard Observatory by Center students and The University of Mississippi and Square Books sponsor the alumni and a showing of the filmEssence of Irwin, by conference in association with the Junior Auxiliary of Oxford, Southern Studies master’s graduate Darren McDaniel, follow Lafayette County and Oxford Public Library, Lafayette County that evening. The evening concludes again with music on the Literacy Council, LOFT: Lafayette/Oxford Foundation for Square at different venues. Tomorrow, Mississippi Hills Heritage Area Alliance, and Saturday’s panels include “Teaching with Music” at 9:00 Southern Literary Trail. The 2012 conference is partially fund- a.m., “Scholars Talking about Music” at 10:00 a.m., “Music, ed by the University of Mississippi, a contribution from the Religion, and Creativity” at 11:00 a.m., a Thacker Mountain R&B Feder Foundation for the Beaux Arts, and grants from Radio panel with a showing of Thacker Mountain Radio: A the National Endowment for the Arts, the Mississippi Arts Documentary by Southern Studies master’s graduates Mary Commission, the Mississippi Humanities Council, the Oxford Warner and Joe York at 1:00 p.m., tackling “Why Elvis Tourism Council, and the Yoknapatawpha Arts Council. Matters” at 2:30 p.m., a talk about musicians studying music The conference will include two special interactive sessions at 3:30 p.m., and a film showing at 4:15 p.m. on bookmaking: Saturday’s big event is a 25th-anniversary concert at the Lyric on the Oxford Square. The event will be emceed by “The Folding and Stitching of Tradition: Lessons on Making Tyler Keith, a 2011 Southern Studies master’s graduate. Basic Books by Hand” Musicians will include the Tim Lee 3, Jimmy Phillips and the Katherine Rhodes Fields Ruminators, Caroline Herring, Adam Gussow, Tommy Bryan Ledford, the Archibalds, Maybelle’s Lovers, Jay Lang and Art professor Katherine Fields will present a lecture/demon- the Devil’s Due, Los Buddies, Jake Fussell, and Double Date. stration of single-sheet folded books and a simple single-pam- “With the breadth of panels, films, and lectures, we will cover phlet stitch book and have the participants actually create most southern music genres. The Southern Studies MA pro- blank books with covers she and her MFA and BFA students gram has attracted a number of talented musicians throughout will print as a memento of the conference. This free interac- the years, and they will be showcased with our concert at the tive activity will take place in Meek Hall, Room 124, at 10:00 Lyric,” said Camarigg. a.m. on Friday, March 23. The session is limited to 20 persons. Ted Ownby, director of the Center, noted that the Blues Contact Becca Walton at [email protected] or 662-915- Symposium, Living Blues, Highway 61 Radio, the Music of the 3376 to reserve a spot. South Symposium, a partnership with the Library of Congress to document musical traditions, the University of Mississippi’s “Puzzled by Picture Books” International Conference on Elvis Presley, and the role of Sarah Frances Hardy Southern Studies in Thacker Mountain Radio are prime exam- ples of work done by or around the Center. “Studying music Author Sarah Frances Hardy will present a talk/demonstra- and making music have been crucial to the Center’s histo- tion on the process of creating picture books, focusing on writ- ry,” Ownby said. “This event should be both fun and smart, ing techniques, thumbnails, a book dummy, and publication and we hope everyone involved or interested in the Center advice. She will use her own picture book, Puzzled by Pink, as will come, whether they make music, write about it, listen well as her own story of her journey to publication to illustrate to it, or just want to see their friends.” Ownby emphasized the entire process. This free workshop will be offered at the that all events are open to the public, and that all, except the Lafayette County and Oxford Public Library at 10:00 a.m. on Saturday night concert at the Lyric, will be free. Thursday, March 22. If you are a Southern Studies alum, friend, or would like to participate in either the academic or musical sections of Becca Walton the symposium, contact Mark Camarigg at mark@livingblues .com. For a complete schedule of events, visit www.olemiss .edu/depts/south/MusicoftheSouth.html.

Rebecca Lauck Cleary

The Southern Register Winter 2012 Page 17 Jesus Is My Rock: Recent MA Graduate Tyler Keith Documents Mississippi Gospel Music Last summer, Southern Studies Ray Dixon. The two soloists were graduate Tyler Keith (MA 2011) Alison Thompson and William took part in the oral history field Sanders, whose rendition of “Walk school that is regularly sponsored around Heaven” had everyone by the Smithsonian Institute on standing and cheering. the University campus. His assign- The concert was held in the ment was to interview local musi- Tallahatchie-Oxford Missionary cians in the Oxford-Lafayette area, Baptist Association (TOMB) including some members of gospel building on Hwy. 334 on Sunday, quartets. This experience spurred July 24. A packed house rocked his interest in gospel quartet music back and forth to the sounds, and the numerous groups that call Tyler Keith filming church fans waving, while four north Mississippi home. The long at the TOMB cameras rolled and a profession- history of gospel music in Oxford building in Oxford al sound engineer captured the Bingo Gunter includes quartets, a style that be- event. Although thunder and came very popular during the 1950s and music while the older members contin- lightning raged outside, the performers’ 1960s. Begun around the turn of the last ue to keep the sound firmly pure. joyous raised voices drowned out the century, the genre has evolved and the Since graduating from the master’s storm. Rounding out the performance term quartet no longer signifies the num- program last May, Tyler Keith has been was Bennie Ray Dixon’s interpretation ber of musicians but the style of music working on creating a film and CD cel- of “Jesus Is My Rock,” a perfect capstone being performed. This style focuses on ebrating these performers. After propos- to the evening. At the end of the song, vocalists, usually four or more, backed by ing his project he received assistance everyone in the building was standing, a full band—guitar, bass, drums, and of- from Media and Documentary Projects, many were shouting, and there is little tentimes keyboards. which has loaned him equipment and doubt that all were moved. During the 1950s and 1960s, sever- given advice. Since June he has been Keith is currently working to turn the al groups formed around the Lafayette busy filming interviews with the various footage captured that day, as well as the County area. Many of the groups are groups and produced a live concert fea- interviews that he has logged, into a still going strong today. Most of them turing eight of them, as well as two so- full-length film, as well as an accompa- have evolved and now include mem- loists. These groups include Faith, the nying CD, both called Jesus Is My Rock. bers ranging in age from 18 to 80, en- Christian Crusaders, the Harmonious He hopes to showcase the feature at film compassing several generations. The Harmoneers, the Jones Sisters, the Love festivals as well as on public television. younger members bring a new life to the Sisters, the Soul Consolators, and Bennie Bingo Gunter Southern Studies Program Partners with the British Association for American Studies One new student from a British uni- her undergraduate research project con- According to Center director Ted versity will be joining the Southern cerns William Faulkner and the con- Ownby, “There is a great deal of in- Studies MA program, possibly every cept of empathy. terest and extraordinarily good schol- year, thanks to a new fellowship funded The program started through dis- arship about southern topics at British by the British Association for American cussions within the BAAS and then universities. A lot of British students Studies (BAAS). In this program, the among Ted Ownby, Martin Halliwell, in American Studies programs come BAAS solicits applications from un- an American Studies scholar at the to U.S. universities for a semester or dergraduates interested in the program, University of Leicester, and Tim Angle, a year. We want to encourage more and a committee of faculty representing assistant provost in the University of of them to come to Southern Studies several universities selects the top can- Mississippi’s Office of Outreach. At whether as undergraduates or, through didate. The first student nominated for Angle’s suggestion, Ownby went to this program, as MA students.” the program is Jodie Free, who is set to Leicester and several other British uni- The British Association of American graduate this spring from the University versities in the summer of 2011 to dis- Studies funds graduate assistantships at of East Anglia. Free studied for a year at cuss new possibilities for exchanges two other universities, the University of the University of North Carolina, and and other cooperation. Wyoming and the University of Virginia.

Page 18 Winter 2012 The Southern Register Manifold Greatness to Exhibit at the J. D. Williams Library Manifold Greatness: The Creation and Folger Shakespeare Library cation benefited from the support of Afterlife of the King James Bible, a trav- the Center for the Study of Southern eling exhibition opening at the J. D. Culture, the Department of Philosophy Williams Library on May 29, 2012, tells and Religion, and the Department of the story of the origins, creation, and History. The library is sponsoring free impact of one of the most influential programs and other events for the pub- books in history. It will be on display at lic in connection with the exhibition. the library until June 29, 2012. With these programs and addition- The year 2011 marked the 400th al materials from the Department of anniversary of the first printing of the Archives and Special Collections, the King James Bible in 1611. Translated library hopes to highlight the influence over several years by six committees of the King James Bible on Southern of England’s top scholars, the King history and culture. James Bible became the most influen- The Folger Shakespeare Library in tial English translation of the Bible and Washington, D.C., and the American one of the most widely read books in Library Association Public Programs the world. Even many of those whose Office organized the traveling exhibition. lives have been affected by the King Manifold Greatness is based on an exhi- James Bible may not realize that, less bition of the same name developed by than a century before it was produced, the Folger Shakespeare Library and the the very idea of the Bible translated in Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, English was considered dangerous and Title page from the 1611 King James Bible with assistance from the Harry Ransom even criminal. Center of the University of Texas. The The exhibition not only highlights traveling exhibition was made possi- the dramatic tale behind the making The J. D. Williams Library was ble by a major grant from the National of this great book, but also includes its one of only 40 libraries in the United Endowment for the Humanities. influence on English and American lit- States selected to host this travel- erature, and its multifaceted impact on ing exhibition. The successful appli- Christina Torbert culture and society to the present day. The chronological narrative focuses on the human side of this major cultural landmark and explores the book’s so- cial, cultural, literary, and religious in- fluence over four centuries. Many authors have demonstrat- In Memoriam ed the influence of the language and style of the King James Bible on their Franke Keating work, among them John Milton, William Blake, Walt Whitman, Emily Photographer, author, longtime Friend of the Center

Dickinson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1916–2011 Daniel Sherman Nathaniel Hawthorne, Allen Ginsberg, and Marilynne Robinson. In the 20th Greenville, century many poets and novelists—such Mississippi as John Steinbeck in the The Grapes of Wrath, William Faulkner in Absalom, Absalom!, and Toni Morrison in The Song of Solomon—allude to the Bible in ways that enrich their narratives. “We are delighted to have been select- ed as a site for this exhibition,” said Julia Rholes, Dean of Libraries. “The capti- (l to r): Bern Keating, Franke Keating, and Susan vating history and influence of the King McClamroch at Barnard Observatory in 2000. James Bible will interest many viewers.”

The Southern Register Winter 2012 Page 19 McCormick Book Inn, a Delta Literary Landmark, Closes

A version of the following article, the second in the Southern Bill Johnson/ Delta Democrat Times Register’s series on independent bookstores in the South, was writ- ten by journalist Katie Nichols for the November 11, 2011, issue of the Delta Democrat Times in Greenville, Mississippi, and ap- pears with the DDT’s permission.

A neighborhood gathering place, the only spot in Greenville to get a Sunday New York Times, a stop for visiting writers and tourists, and a Greenville Main Street landmark since 1965 shut its doors for the last time in November 2011. Hugh and Mary Dayle McCormick owned and operated McCormick Book Inn, the oldest independent bookstore in the state. “We decided to retire,” said Hugh McCormick III. McCormick Book Inn, 2011 Julia Reed, a native Greenvillian, a contributing editor at Newsweek, and the author of the essay collection Queen of the Turtle Derby and the memoir The House on First Street: itor had any additional questions, the McCormicks were My New Orleans Story, said she credits the McCormicks for there to answer. “The McCormicks were the keepers of the providing her with part of the reason she became a writer. literary lore in Greenville,” said Wesley Smith, Washington “Someone once gave me the advice that to be a journalist, the County Convention & Visitors Bureau executive direc- only thing you needed to do was read,” she said. “McCormick tor. “We have so many visitors in Greenville that stopped at Book Inn was where I really began reading the greats. I re- McCormick Book Inn to talk about the history and the writ- member Mrs. McCormick pressing books into my hands. She ers of Greenville. Mary Dayle and Hugh, they knew every- always knew what books to select for me.” thing about Greenville. We will miss the store and I know our Reed, who now lives in New Orleans, celebrated a spe- visitors will too.” cial milestone at McCormick Book Inn. When her first book The community bookstore, which promoted the literature came out, she said she kicked off her book signing tour at and history of the Delta, was operated by three generations of McCormick Book Inn. “I wouldn’t have started the book sign- McCormicks. “My father (Hugh McCormick II) was retiring ing anywhere else but Greenville and at McCormick Book from being a lumberman and my sister (Mary) had finished her Inn,” she said. degree in New York and was coming home so they decided to McCormick Book Inn also housed a small museum. Pictures start up the McCormick Book Inn,” Hugh McCormick said in of famous area writers and information on Greenville events an earlier interview. “My sister loved books and even worked like the 1927 Flood lined the walls and back room. If a vis- for the Delta Democrat Times when Hodding Carter was there for about a year. It was her idea to start the bookstore. So my father was the bookkeeper, my sister was the manager, and my mother (Mrs. Mack) was the conversationalist.” When McCormick Book Inn began, the idea was to pro- mote the Delta and Mississippi’s writers. The bookstore stayed focused on that, and it is evident by the wall of books labeled “Mississippiana.” “It was always important to us to promote the Greenville writers,” McCormick said. “I think it is be- coming more important because some are being forgotten. It is very discouraging. Their work has value and gives an under- standing to the area.” Hugh, a native of Greenville, returned home permanently in 1967 and began working full time for the book inn after he received his master’s degree and taught for several years. In a 2007 interview, he said, “I would like to think there would have been a void were we not here. We have a heritage in the community of the arts. We didn’t start out like that, but (l-r) Lewis Nordan, Mary Dayle McCormick, and Cynthia I hope that we have contributed to the arts and literature.” Shearer at the Book Inn during the 2006 Mississippi Delta Literary Tour

Page 20 Winter 2012 The Southern Register 2011 SFA ANNUAL REPORT In 2011 the SFA explored the mon area for collaboration. Now we do, Cultivated South. By way of our fall thanks to a Howorth Architects–de- Southern Foodways Symposium, sum- signed renovation of the central tower mer Field Trip, and various Potlikker at Barnard. It’s a bold octagonal space, Film Festivals, we investigated the cul- with Amy Evans Streeter photographs ture of agriculture against a backdrop of on the wall, a clutch of mod Herman the farm ideal. Miller desks at the center, and a bright SFA collected oral histories from orange couch at the prow. Come see us. market veterans in North Carolina and Mississippi. We made films about, MEMBER SERVICES among other heroes, a family of peanut the Fellowship of Southern Farmers, farmers in Georgia and a peach farmer Artisans, and Chefs. Member Directory Online in South Carolina. Phil Blank, a North Carolina artist, Our spiral-bound membership directory We also staged a lecture series, hired musician, and librarian, won the John is fatter than ever this year. Over 1,100 a foodways teaching fellow, renovated Egerton Prize, which recognizes art- people support the SFA. Soon we’ll re- our offices, debuted a free iPhone app, ists, writers, scholars, and others whose tire the printed membership directo- and lots more. Highlights of the year work, in the American South, addresses ry. To get ready for a digital transition, follow. issues of race, class, gender, and social Mary Beth Lasseter developed an easy- Without your financial, intellectu- and environmental justice through the to-use online directory. al, and emotional support of our mis- lens of food. sion to document, study, and celebrate Hardy Farms, a Georgia concern, Gravy Expansion the diverse food cultures of the chang- specializing in green peanuts, won Gravy, edited by Sara Camp Arnold, ing American South, we couldn’t have the Ruth Fertel Keeper of the Flame and underwritten by Mountain Valley done diddly. Award. Each fall, the SFA, with sup- Spring Water, grows better with each Thanks, from your SFA staff and fac- port from the Fertel Foundation, hon- issue. Recent highlights include an ar- ulty, Julie Pickett, Melissa Hall, Amy ors an unsung hero or heroine, a food- ticle by Frances Lam on T-Coon’s plate Evans Streeter, Joe York, Jill Cooley, ways tradition bearer of note. lunch house in Lafayette, Louisiana. We Mary Beth Lasseter, and John T. Edge. Dori Sanders, a South Carolina also developed new distribution points, peach farmer and novelist, won the including Bottega in Birmingham, BIG PICTURE Craig Claiborne Lifetime Achievement Empire State South in Atlanta, and Award. The award goes to an individ- Cochon in New Orleans. Billy Reid, Vision of Greatness ual whom all thinking eaters should the clothing company, now includes In January, Southern Foodways Alliance know, the sort of person who has made Gravy with all mail order purchases. staff, along with board representa- an indelible mark upon our cuisine and tives, consulted with Ari Weinzweing our culture, the sort of person who has iPhone App of Zingerman’s and drafted a vision for set regional standards and catalyzed na- It went live in October: SFA Stories, our the SFA in 10 years. Please take a gan- tional dialogues. free iPhone app, developed by member der online at southernfoodways.org. We Susan Spicer, a New Orleans chef Jim Titley of Dallas, offers more than want your buy-in to our future. and restaurateur, was inducted into 500 oral histories, condensed for easy the Fellowship of Southern Farmers, reading, mapped for easy navigation, Values Artisans, and Chefs. The Fellowship, accessible anywhere, anytime, so long Working with Ari, we also honed a ros- which gathers every year at Blackberry as you have an Apple slab in hand. ter of SFA values. Here’s a representa- Farm, fosters camaraderie and mentor- tive excerpt: “We celebrate the South, ship, honoring the bounty of the South Getting Social but we do so thoughtfully and often- and the hands that grow, nurture, and We’re burning up the various social me- times critically. The South has a com- interpret its harvest. dia platforms—Twitter, Flickr, Tumblr, plicated and peculiar history. We ac- Facebook, and Blogger—to bring you the knowledge that. And we leverage that Renovated Office Space freshest news from the world of foodways. past for our future.” Since its inception, the SFA has worked At least five times each week SFA posts out of Barnard Observatory, head- new content to our blog. The most pop- AWARDS quarters of the Center for the Study ular facet is the “Southern Six Pack,” a of Southern Culture. But our offices news roundup compiled by Melissa Hall, The SFA distributed three awards this have been scattered about the building. and “Thirsty Thursday,” a look at the liq- year and added one new Fellow to And we’ve never had access to a com- uid South, compiled by Julie Pickett.

The Southern Register Winter 2012 Page 21

BOARD OF the two companies below. If you know Greenshoots Program DIRECTORS of a progressive corporate or nonprof- This summer, the SFA announced it entity that would like to invest hard Greenshoots, a program designed to One board member concluded her ser- dollars in SFA efforts, please contact promote the work of emerging farmers, vice to the SFA: SFA director John T. Edge. artisans, and other producers of great Southern goods. Each year, we’ll select Angie Mosier Royal Cup Coffee two or three worthy products, which Photographer, recipe developer, bak- Birmingham, Alabama, has been home we’ll purchase at wholesale prices, and er, writer, and founder of Placemat to this coffee importer, roaster, and dis- serve at SFA events. In the process Productions, Angie Mosier, an Atlanta tributor since 1869. For the last two we’ll help spread their stories. In 2011 native and resident, served two terms years, they’ve caffeinated the masses at we began serving Cathead Vodka and on the SFA board. She also served as the symposium. Now, Royal Cup has Bang Bang Candy Company syrups. our board president. At more than one become a corporate donor. SFA event during her tenure she sang PRESS karaoke versions of “Jolene.” Taqueria del Sol Mike Klank and Eddie Hernandez, the Aided by our colleagues at Becca PR, Meanwhile, we welcomed two new Memphis-Monterrey partners behind in New York City, SFA was in the news members: this growing Atlanta operation, have every week of the year. A very small served the SFA now for five years. They sampling includes: Jay Oglesby have cooked at two symposia and host- A 15-year banking industry veter- ed a Field Trip dinner. This year, they Sam Sifton of the New York Times tout- an, who manages a half-billion dol- became a corporate donor. ed Gravy. Epicurious, Serious Eats, and lar loan portfolio for Wells Fargo, the a slew of other websites waxed poetic second largest financial services com- Order of the Okra about The Southern Foodways Alliance pany in the United States, Jay lives in At our April meeting, the SFA board Community Cookbook. Garden & Gun Homewood, Alabama. came up with a great idea: Tap the pas- highlighted Joe York in a three-page sion of 50 SFA members. Set them up spread, calling him the “Ken Burns of Harry Root on credit card and bank draft plans of Southern food.” Cofounder and principal of Grassroots $1,000 per year for 10 years. Use those Wine, Harry lives in Charleston, South dollars to leverage the promise of the Food Republic lifted up the “Big Carolina. Grassroots represents place- organization. It’s working. Twenty- Weekend” of the Southern Foodways driven winegrowers from every major eight SFA members began payment Symposium. And Leaves of Green, our wine region on the planet. plans in the last quarter of 2011. And collard opera, composed by University we’re just getting started. of Mississippi student Price Walden, FINANCES was celebrated in Huffington Post. Our Not all companies and organizations oral histories and food trails got their The most significant new revenue can afford to be SFA donors. So here’s due in National Geographic Traveler, Bon sources for the SFA in 2011 came from what we’ve done: Appetit, and Saveur.

Southern Foodways Alliance

name

company

address

city state zip

telephone fax

e-mail MEMBERSHIP � $50 student � $75 individual � $100 family Please make checks payable to the Southern Foodways Alliance � $200 nonprofit institution � $500 corporation and mail them to the Center for the Study of Southern Culture University, MS 38677.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION, VISIT US AT OUR WEB SITE: www.southernfoodways.org or call Julie Pickett at 662.915.5993 or via e-mail at [email protected]

Page 22 Winter 2012 The Southern Register In magazine and newspaper photo spreads, shop. Eight students from Georgia, of Wilma’s Garden, who’s been a ven- and on television shows too, dozens of Texas, North Carolina, Mississippi, and dor since 1978 at this North Carolina farmers, artisans, and chefs smiled wide Louisiana spent one week in Oxford on institution. for the camera while wearing T-shirts and the University of Mississippi campus caps designed by Billy Reid. to learn SFA-devised fieldwork meth- •Downtown Greenwood Farmers ods and practices. To seed the develop- Market ACADEMIC ment of foodways scholarship among Eight interviews document a young farm- minority students, we selected stu- ers’ market in Greenwood, Mississippi. Foodways Fellow dents to bring, gratis, to the workshop. We collected stories from people like With money raised at the annual Taste Those scholarships were made possible Hallie Streater, who farms part of her fam- of the South event at Blackberry Farm, through a donation from chef Edward ily’s 400 acres in Black Hawk, Mississippi. the SFA hired Jill Cooley as a one-year Lee of Louisville. We were inspired by Leann Hines, a for- postdoctoral fellow to teach foodways mer nurse who became paralyzed in 2007 classes at the University of Mississippi. Boudin Exhibition and now operates a successful pastured During the fall semester, Cooley, who This year, we produced our first trav- poultry business on land that her grand- earned her doctorate in history at the eling exhibition: Boudin. The exhibi- father once planted in cotton. University of Alabama, taught a course tion premiered at the Acadian Cultural on Southern foodways for graduate stu- Center in Eunice, Louisiana, during our Oral History Internships dents, advised SFA staff and Center summer Field Trip and has traveled to The SFA awarded two in-house in- students, and worked to transform her three other locations. We would love to ternships this year. Claire Ackerman, dissertation on modern Southern food- send Boudin your way in 2012. Contact a graduate student in public history at ways into a book. us for details. Middle Tennessee State University, and Nell Knox, a graduate student in Chisholm Foundation Grant New Oral History Projects Southern Studies at the University of In November, the Chisholm Foundation We added more than 50 new oral his- Mississippi, worked directly with Amy of Laurel, Mississippi, committed tory interviews to our archive this year. Evans Streeter to learn about our oral $103,000 to support the academ- Some highlights: history initiative and conduct their ic study of foodways at the University own interviews. of Mississippi. While the SFA fund- •Plate Lunch Houses of Acadiana ed the postdoctoral fellowship for the We collected five oral history inter- Film 2011–12 academic year, the Chisholm views documenting the plate lunch tra- Foundation gift assures the continuation dition in south-central Louisiana. We As Joe York wrapped up filming on his of the fellowship through 2014. visited with people like Brenda Placide hour-long film homage to Southern of Brenda’s Place in New Iberia, where foodways, he released a run of nine Viking Range Lecture locals know to go for smothered okra short documentaries. You read that In September, James McWilliams de- and cabbage, and Dot Vidrine of Ruby’s right. Nine new short films in one short livered the SFA’s fourth Viking Range Café in Eunice, where her family’s year. He also racked up awards at fes- Lecture at the University of Mississippi. Cajun heritage infuses everything that tivals across the nation, including the An associate professor of history at comes out of the kitchen. Crossroads Film Festival and Chicago Texas State University and a recent fel- Food Film Festival. low in the Agrarian Studies Program at •New Orleans Sno-Balls Yale University, McWilliams is the au- From the production of block ice to Eggers thor of three books, most recently Just the development of syrup flavors, we They live hard lives. They deal in black Food: How Locavores Are Endangering the documented the Crescent City’s sno- gold. A documentary about men who Future of Food and How We Can Truly ball culture. Our seven interviews in- work the Mississippi River, pulling pad- Eat Responsibly. The challenge of that clude stories from places like the iconic dlefish from the depths and harvesting book, which compels an honest look at Hansen’s Sno-Bliz, a stand sustained by eggs from their bellies. the reality of local food systems, was the three generations, and Southern Snow subject of his standing-room-only talk. Manufacturing, where Bubby Wendling Cured sells every product a vendor might need, Allan Benton of Benton’s Smoky DOCUMENTARY including more than 170 flavor extracts. Mountain Country Hams in Madisonville, Tennessee, works porcine INITIATIVES •Carrboro Farmers Market magic with salt, smoke, and time. Our largest oral history project in five Oral History years, the Carrboro Farmers Market Dori project consists of 20 interviews. We Peach farmer and writer Dori Sanders Oral History Workshop spoke with the market’s founding mem- of Filbert, South Carolina, won the In May, Amy Evans Streeter convened bers, dedicated customers, and long- SFA’s 2011 Craig Claiborne Lifetime SFA’s first annual oral history work- time vendors, including Wilma Hanton Achievement Award.

The Southern Register Winter 2012 Page 23 Hot Wet Goobers Deadliest Throw EVENTS A short film about boiled peanuts, hon- A pretty darn funny look at the 26th oring Hardy Farms of Hawkinsville, Annual Interstate Mullet Toss, staged on We hosted Potlikker Film Festivals Georgia, winner of the 2011 Ruth the border of Florida and Alabama, and in Charleston and Greenville, South Fertel Keeper of the Flame Award. billed as the world’s largest beach party. Carolina. In June we rambled Cajun Country, Louisiana, during our annual To Live and Die in Avoyelles Parish Goat Field Trip. And in October, we hosted A celebration of the Louisiana co- A short film about ictorV “Goat” our annual symposium. chon de lait tradition in which pigs are Lafayette, who has picked oysters on In addition to our own events, we cooked very near, but not directly over, Bowens Island, South Carolina, for have learned to play well with oth- raging hardwood fires. over 50 years. ers. SFA was a part of Blackberry Farm’s Taste of the South, the Big Apple BBQ Gus Bowen’s Island Block Party, Music to Your Mouth at A short profile in memory of Constantine Bowens Island Restaurant has been a Palmetto Bluff, Zingerman’s Camp “Gus” Koutroulakis of Pete’s Famous Charleston-area landmark for over 60 Bacon, and a dozen other celebra- Hot Dogs in Birmingham, Alabama. years. Meet Robert Barber, the propri- tions. Our films were screened and won Gus passed away on April 5, 2011, at the etor, and learn the backstory of this awards everywhere from New York to age of 81. family-owned Lowcountry treasure. Chicago to California. What’s in store for 2012? Check out Giving Thanks in Awendaw Bertha’s the events calendar at www.southern- Every year on the day before Fried pork chops, barbecued pigs feet, foodways.org. Thanksgiving, members of the okra soup, and red rice define the menu Colleton-Green family of Awendaw, at Bertha’s, a family-run Gullah stan- South Carolina, hit the woods to hunt dard bearer in North Charleston, South squirrels for their annual feast. Carolina. Will Harris Inducted to the Fellowship of Farmers, Artisans, and Chefs Photo courtesy of Angie Mosier At the 2011 Taste of the South week- and Blackberry Farm. It fosters cama- end, hosted by Blackberry Farm, Will raderie and mentorship, honoring the Harris was celebrated as the newest bounty of the South and the hands inductee to the Fellowship of Farmers, that grow, nurture, and interpret its Artisans, and Chefs. harvest. Will Harris is a fourth-generation The Fellowship’s vision is to pro- cattleman who tends the same land vide a forum for farmers, chefs, and that his great-grandfather settled in artisans to break bread and share 1866. Born and raised at White Oak knowledge while reinforcing the sus- Pastures, Will left home to attend taining bridge between field and ta- the University of Georgia’s School of ble. Membership to the Fellowship Agriculture for training in the indus- is determined by a consensus of cur- trial farming methods that had taken rent Fellows and a representative of hold after World War II. Will gradu- the Southern Foodways Alliance. ated in 1976 and returned to Bluffton The Fellowship seeks to induct those where he embraced sustainable meth- Will Harris who set national standards in their re- ods and practices and rose to be a spective fields by growing, nurturing, leader in the grass-fed livestock move- or interpreting the South’s bounty. ments. Will lives in his family home They should exhibit a hands-on and on the property with his wife, Yvonne. coffee at sunrise and a “750ml glass of thoughtful approach to their craft. He is the proud father of three daugh- wine” at sunset. The Southern Foodways Alliance ters, Jessi, Jenni, and Jodi. His favor- The Fellowship of Southern welcomes Will Harris, of White Oak ite place in the world to be is out in Farmers, Artisans, and Chefs is an Pastures, as the newest member at the pastures, where he likes to have a big honorary group, supported by the SFA Fellowship’s table.

Page 24 Winter 2012 The Southern Register Reading the South

Composing Selves: Southern world poised between Victorian-era Women and Autobiography. domesticity and the next century’s By Peggy Whitman Prenshaw. promise of self-definition. Despite her suggestion that “the Baton Rouge: LSU Press, most salient feature of southern wom- 2011. 331 pages. $45.00 cloth, en’s autobiography is its indirection,” $15.95 paper. Prenshaw tracks several conclusions over a number of texts. She uses her The greatest accomplishment in focus on white women, for instance, Peggy Prenshaw’s Composing Selves as a way to showcase their exposure comes not in her treatment of indi- of “the lies and limits of idealized vidual writers—although each is well womanhood,” recognizing the pow- executed—but in her assessment of er of Lost Cause ideology even in the what these works collectively re- 20th century as it provides the back- veal about the power of autobiogra- drop for Elizabeth Spencer’s alien- phy. Maintaining that it is “the genre ation from home and family when her most at war with itself,” Prenshaw ex- writer’s life ends her silence on the is- plores the form’s multiple contradic- sues of race relations, forming the tions: the vexed relationship between core of her controversial 1956 novel memory and verifiable “truth,” the The Voice at the Back Door. In pursu- impossibility of the mature storyteller Finally Old Enough to Tell in 1998. ing her stated goal—“to understand ever really recapturing the more na- Along the way, many familiar names their strategies . . . their motives for ïve perspective of youth, and the in- and texts appear—Lillian Smith’s composing a self in writing . . . and sistence of narrative on lending shape Killers of the Dream (1949), for exam- their tactics, the devices and rhetor- and continuity to events experienced ple, and Eudora Welty’s One Writer’s ical moves they employ in articulat- disparately. Prenshaw’s project relies Beginnings (1984)—but lesser-known ing a self”—Prenshaw encounters a on a wealth of interdisciplinary criti- authors and titles show up as well, recurrent figure, the “relational self,” cism that has for some decades now among them Anne Walter Fearn’s one that is always already embedded built a storehouse of academic study My Days of Strength (1939) about within a complex network of people centered on autobiographical expres- her years as a doctor in China and and places occupying their own im- sion. Her primary contribution, then, Bernice Kelly Harris’s Southern Savory portance within the autobiograph- is not in uncovering new features of (1964) about the fulfillment of her ical narrative. On a positive note, the genre, but in examining the inter- writing life, juxtaposed to her un- this emphasis on relationality leads section of the form with a particular happy marriage. Although Prenshaw to the recognition that even one’s group of people, writing out of a par- limits her study to book-length works own life story is a collaborative ven- ticular place and a particular histori- intentionally conceived for publica- ture, not a tale of solitary self-forma- cal moment. tion, she otherwise broadly defines tion. But the deemphasized self also The result is a study that reads in her foundational term and so in- stems from internalized lessons about detail more than 20 autobiographies cludes, for instance, Agnes Grinstead traits antithetical to Southern lady- originating in a geographic “South,” Anderson’s Approaching the Magic hood training: “undisguised ambition authored primarily by white women Hour (1989), ostensibly focused on and self-regard.” Substituted for these born between the end of the Civil the life of her erratic but brilliant art- “twin evils” is an awareness of oth- War and the 1930s. The publication ist husband Walter Anderson, but ers’ needs as paramount to one’s own dates themselves literally span the just as revelatory, Prenshaw shows us, and an emphasis on “charm . . . sub- 20th century, beginning with Belle of Agnes’s own life. Composing Selves tlety . . . and a display of deference.” Kearney’s A Slaveholder’s Daughter posits no formulaic pattern tied to re- Particularly for the public figures in in 1900 and concluding with Ellen gion or gender, but instead situates Prenshaw’s study, womanhood is per- Douglas’s Truth: Four Stories I Am the autobiographical self in a liminal formative, a conventional tool for se-

Book Reviews and Notes by Faculty, Staff, Students, and Friends of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture

The Southern Register Winter 2012 Page 25 Reading the South continued

curing unconventional results. Most cused on “Narratives of a Writing of the writers featured in Composing Life,” treating the autobiographies Selves focus more on understanding of Ellen Glasgow, Marjorie Kinnan how the relational self came to be Rawlings, Zora Neale Hurston, and who she is as an adult than on ex- Bernice Kelly Harris, before mov- ploring broadly conceived, represen- ing to “Modes of Autobiographical tative “Southernness.” Two elements Narrative.” Here Prenshaw positions of region do, however, figure promi- the autobiographies of Eudora Welty, nently and consistently into each Elizabeth Spencer, and Ellen Douglas of the narratives Prenshaw discuss- as representative of three distinct au- es: heightened expectations for la- tobiographical forms: “directed nar- dyhood that are alternately alienat- rative” (One Writer’s Beginnings) in ing and empowering, and a persistent which the author concentrates on a consciousness that the definitions of particular part of her development, in blackness and whiteness matter al- this case childhood; “lifetime memoir” One Writer’s Garden: ways in everyday interaction. Thus a in which the writer accounts for the Eudora Welty’s Home Place. number of women in her study subtly whole of her experience (Landscapes acknowledge that between the situ- of the Heart); and “performed text” in By Susan Haltom and Jane ations of African Americans in the which the autobiographer foregrounds Roy Brown. Photographs by South and white women there are the contradictory nature of her enter- Langdon Clay. largely undetected parallels. prise (Truth). After Kearney’s bifurcated account Her concluding chapters are Jackson: University Press of of herself as both a lady and a social Prenshaw’s strongest because the Mississippi, 2011. 272 pages. reformer, Prenshaw groups texts, not texts themselves most clearly dem- $35.00 cloth. chronologically, but thematically. In onstrate her thesis, that in autobiog- “A Distanced Southern Girlhood,” raphy “truths of the self (or of others) Charged with the impossible task of she writes about Helen Keller and are elusive, often inchoate, inevita- classifying One Writer’s Garden for Anne Walter Fearn, both of whom bly relational and disbursed among the nation’s libraries, catalogers at spent most of their adult lives outside the self’s connections with its sur- the Library of Congress assigned the of the South, yet whose connection round.” Ellen Douglas’s Truth is in its prefix “SB” for horticulture, or gar- to region Prenshaw provocatively ex- self-awareness a particularly appro- den management. Ridgeland’s Susan plores. In “Wifehood Narratives,” she priate ending point for Prenshaw’s Haltom, who masterminded the gar- treats the work of Mary Hamilton and study. Douglas’s authorial persona den’s decade-long renovation, and Agnes Grinstead Anderson, authors forthrightly addresses her audience, Jane Roy Brown, a landscape historian of accounts deemphasizing the self in acknowledging the fictive aspect of and travel writer from Massachusetts, favor of husband and family. Prenshaw autobiography that readers are wont would not object. In their preface, the then moves on to “Belles, Wives, to deny in favor of believing that authors make a modest proposal: “We and Public Lives,” a two-part chap- writers can locate some incontrovert- hope that this book inspires readers ter focused on narratives by women ible truth in the stories of their own to explore what their gardens mean who balanced their understandings lives. Yet as Prenshaw’s study makes to them and how they serve as touch- of conventional gender roles with clear, “artifice is necessary to tell the stones that awaken a connection to lives lived in the public eye, among truth,” and reliability is no more the the larger natural world.” Langdon them civil rights activist Virginia province of autobiography than it is Clay’s cover portrait of pink camellias Foster Durr and congresswoman of fiction. What does emerge as cer- blooming in sunlight could certainly Lindy Claiborne Boggs. “Testimonial tain is that the process of organizing motivate anyone who owns a trowel. Narratives of Racial Consciousness” and narrating her own story has “an But the book’s appeal is much broader. groups Katharine DuPre Lumpkin empowering and transformational ef- From the peony red cloth binding and and Lillian Smith as voices of con- fect” on a writer, one that provides the leaf green endpapers through the demnation intent on exposing the in- another revolution in the develop- scores of photos by Clay (and many sidious impact of racism on their own ment of the self. by Haltom), this volume is irresistible lives and those of others in their rela- to any lover of beauty. Peach blos- tional web, ultimately casting a shad- Kathryn McKee soms from seed catalogs, a 1930s glass ow over the entire South. The book’s slide of the Weltys’ Silver Moon rose, three final chapters form a unit fo- Eudora Welty’s hand-drawn floral val-

Page 26 Winter 2012 The Southern Register Reading the South continued

entines, and other colorful graph- death from leukemia in 1931, “her of “the right light” in his work. “He ics enhance the photographers’ mul- garden filled all her daylight hours” for also strives to show the garden struc- tihued vistas of irises, roses, daylilies, Chestina, whose “never-ending work” ture as a compositional element; vary crepe myrtles, and additional species became her “solace,” according to framing, distances, and angles; and that now thrive again in three “out- Eudora. Haltom and Brown’s source shift focus, scale, and distance to cre- door rooms” behind the Tudor house is an unpublished manuscript page ate drama and tension where it does at 1119 Pinehurst Street in Jackson. from the Mississippi Department of not naturally exist.” Each of the four One Writer’s Garden presents a Archives and History’s Eudora Welty sections ends with a fireworks burst of lovely little plot of native soil— Collection. The authors frequently four or five pages of Clay’s spectacu- and much more. If University Press acknowledge the insights of Welty bi- lar color shots. Not surprisingly, “Part of Mississippi had printed these il- ographer Suzanne Marrs, who points IV—Winter, Postwar and Beyond” is lustrations in black and white in- to the “oblique” connections between the shortest division of the book. stead of chrysanthemum pink, daf- Chestina and the grieving widow Surprisingly, however, One Writer’s fodil yellow, and cornflower blue, Mrs. Larkin in Welty’s story “Curtain Garden concludes not with the death the volume would still be a stunning of Green,” as well as the parallel be- of the garden after so many Welty fam- contribution to Welty studies and tween Jamey—the Larkins’ gar- ily deaths (including Eudora Welty’s Mississippi history. In fact, the photo den helper—and the young African own in 2001)—but with an amazing on the back cover (like several vin- American, nicknamed “J. W.,” who rebirth that was planted in Haltom’s tage pictures throughout) is in black did much of the heavy labor in the first conversation with the writer in and white; yet, it is as eye-catching Welty garden. Nevertheless, the au- 1994, when Welty confessed: “I can- as the flowers that won ribbons for thors of One Writer’s Garden accom- not bear to look out the window and Welty’s mother, Chestina Andrews plished plenty of their own spadework see what has become of my mother’s Welty, at the Mississippi State Fair. in the extensive Welty archives. The garden.” The view from the window The picture, probably from the fruitfulness of their research is evident is much brighter these days, even in 1940s, is of Eudora Welty, reclining from the start. “Part I—Spring, 1920s” winter. When Haltom, Brown, and in a lawn chair but busy with a hose describes the hopeful beginnings of Clay visited Oxford’s Square Books whose tall fountain of spray she di- the Welty garden in the contexts of on October 7, 2011, they announced rects with both hands. Intent on the Progressive Era optimism and civ- that the Weltys’ Night-Blooming large flowerbed at her right hand, she ic improvement. Photos reproduced Cereus had bloomed the previous turns away from the camera; both from the Welty Collection include an night. In 1934 Eudora Welty and the gardener and her garden are illu- Easter 1925 picture of the three smil- her Jackson friends humorously cel- minated by the strong light of sum- ing Welty children in their yard and a ebrated this rare horticultural dra- mer. The scene looks idyllic, a re- striking view of “Eudora, age sixteen ma by calling themselves the Night- spite from writing and worries about or seventeen, atop the new Lamar Blooming Cereus Club. In a similar her two brothers and her close friend Life building,” where her father was spirit, Haltom and her fellow Cereus John Robinson—at war overseas; but company president. Footnotes refer to Weeders now meet weekly to tend Haltom and Brown cite many letters such archival treasures as Chestina’s the Welty garden. “When we are in and journal entries to show just how “Scribble-in-Book” (her garden jour- need of a road trip,” says Haltom, “we fully invested Welty was in the hard nal) and a scrapbook kept by a child- become the Cereus Readers, delving work of horticulture. hood friend of Eudora. into one of her books and visiting Both Chestina and Eudora were Structuring One Writer’s Garden its setting.” Serious weeders and se- “sophisticated gardeners,” not week- on the four-part seasonal cycle was rious readers can take equal pleasure end hobbyists. Founding president of a brilliant decision; pairing seasons in One Writer’s Garden; the very in- the Belhaven Garden Club, Chestina with decades allowed the authors to dex reads like a poem, with its col- designed the Welty garden and kept develop a chronology of growth and umns of camellias, roses, and Welty a garden journal for years; Eudora be- decline, and Langdon Clay faith- works. I will shelve my copy next to came her crucial collaborator. Even fully records the visual beauties of her memoir, One Writer’s Beginnings. before their Pinehurst house was com- each season from many perspectives. With their collaborative tour de pleted, Chestina and Christian Welty Internationally known for both art force, Haltom, Brown, and Clay pro- held a high school graduation party for and commercial photography, the vide an indispensable chapter in the Eudora under the trees in the summer Sumner resident climbed a high lad- life of an author whose characters of 1925. A Jackson newspaper report- der for an aerial view of the garden plant trumpet vines and silver bells. ed that “a massive punch bowl rested rooms with restored trellises. Haltom in a bed of flowers.” After Christian’s and Brown mention the importance Joan Wylie Hall

The Southern Register Winter 2012 Page 27 Reading the South continued

Dreaming of Dixie: How The distribution of Southern trav- the South Was Created in el narratives, Joel Chandler Harris’s American Popular Culture. Uncle Remus (1881), and the best-sell- ing novel Gone with the Wind (1936) By Karen L. Cox. by Northern publishing houses piqued Chapel Hill: University of the curiosity of non-Southerners and North Carolina Press, 2011. encouraged tourists to venture south 224 pages. $34.95 cloth. “in search of the nation’s historical and pastoral landscape.” Southern entre- In Dreaming of Dixie, Karen L. Cox preneurs became ever more cognizant examines how popular culture in- of the economic opportunities this rep- dustries based outside of the South resented and began developing a tour- produced and distributed music, ad- ist industry based on what they per- vertisements, radio shows, films, ceived non-Southerners would expect best-selling books, and travel bro- to see and experience in “the Dixie chures that used an unchanging pas- of their dreams.” Improvements to toral image of the Old South and the region’s roads in the 1920s, along stock Southern characters to shape with promotional materials that prom- American perceptions of the region ised visitors modern accommodations from the late 19th century to the images represented and the mass-pro- in distinctively picturesque settings, end of World War II. This simplis- duced goods that promised to bring a served to boost the local economies of tic iconography became a popular measure of that time’s comfort to the a number of Southern cities and states. and profitable cultural commodity modern consumer. This image of the South as a pre- that allowed the nation’s consumers Radio’s “Golden Age” featured dra- industrial haven, as well as the char- to escape their modern-day concerns matizations of these stereotypes. In acterization of blacks as the region’s and dream of Dixie, a place and time popular comedies like Amos ’n’ Andy inferior residents, was not without its “where life was simple and the ‘race blackface performers portrayed African critics. Throughout her monograph, question’ was not a question at all.” Americans as naive figures struggling to Cox notes the reluctant participa- Cox, an associate professor of history adjust to life in Northern cities, while tion of African Americans in the at the University of North Carolina at programs like National Barn Dance production of some of these racist Charlotte, begins by noting that many depicted rural white Southerners as portrayals, as well as their increasing- of the popular songs about the South primitive and ignorant “hillbillies” ly scathing critique of the race rela- were written and performed by peo- who were woefully out of place in the tions between elite whites and servile ple who had never traveled to the re- “moonlight and magnolias” setting of blacks depicted as ideal in songs, ad- gion. Lyricists based in New York City shows like Maxwell House Show Boat. vertisements, radio, films, and books. used plantation settings, blackface dia- These performances offered comedic It would take the introduction of a lect, and stereotypical Old South char- relief and escape to listeners facing new medium of popular culture— acters to evoke an idyllic preindustrial the upheavals of the Great Depression television—and news coverage of South and portray Southern blacks as while reinforcing their racist percep- the civil rights movement to reveal exotic and primitive entertainers who tions about Southerners. Hollywood’s the tensions lying underneath these longed to return to the region of their motion-picture industry made use of images of the South and begin to enslavement. These depictions ap- these images to entice Americans to change the ways in which Americans pealed to white urban audiences who movie theaters. More significantly, perceived Dixie. were troubled by the rapid industri- films set in the antebellum South— Cox’s engaging and wonderfully il- alization and racial diversification of which ranged from D. W. Griffith’s si- lustrated book serves as a much-need- their surroundings. Northern advertis- lent filmThe Birth of a Nation (1915) to ed challenge to historians to pursue ing agencies employed these same set- the epic Gone with the Wind (1939)— further interdisciplinary study of the tings and characters to sell products popularized a Lost Cause interpreta- American South in popular culture to the nation’s growing middle class. tion of the American Civil War that and would also be of interest to schol- Advertisements featuring southern complemented attempts by Northern ars interested in consumerism, tour- belles and characters like Aunt Jemima and Southern whites to engage in rec- ism, and the intersections between re- sought to create a nostalgic and prof- onciliation while ignoring the racial gionalism and national identity. itable connection between the simpler inequities that the nation had yet to preindustrial American past that these address. Xaris A. Martínez

Page 28 Winter 2012 The Southern Register MIAL’s Awards and Nominations The Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters (MIAL) held its these nominees: Price Walden, Samuel Jones, Charles annual winter meeting at the Mississippi Museum of Art in Ingram, Andrew Owen, Shandy Phillips, James Sclater, and Jackson, Mississippi, on January 17, 2012, to determine its Albert C. Oppenheimer. In the contemporary music category, nominees for the awards to be presented at the gala awards Kate Campbell, Kristian Dambrino, Caroline Herring, Molly banquet to be held June 9, 2012, at the Museum of Art. Thomas, and Tricia Walker have been nominated. Awards will be presented for works first shown, published, or Duncan Baird, Rod Moorhead, Brandon Moon, William M. performed in 2011 in the categories of fiction; nonfiction; po- Smith, Carolyn Norris, and Ke Francis are the nominees in etry; visual arts; photography; and music composition, both the visual arts category. Nominated for photography are Suzi classical and contemporary. Artists must have significant Altman, Langdon Clay, Joe Mac Hudspeth Jr., Betty Press, ties to the state of Mississippi and must have been nominat- Steven White, Melody Golding, and Donald Bradburn. ed by an MIAL member. Judges in each category are chosen Winners in each category will receive a cash prize and a from outside the state. The master of ceremonies for the 2012 Mississippi-crafted gift. Past winners include Richard Ford, awards gala is former Lifetime Achievement Award winner Natasha Trethewey, Walker Percy, Barry Hannah, and William Ferris. Gwendolyn Magee. Fiction nominees this year are Carolyn Haines, Michael David Beckley of Holly Springs serves as president of the Kordos, Michael F. Smith, and Jesmyn Ward. Nominated Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters. Jan Taylor of Jackson for the MIAL nonfiction award are Norma Watkins, Paul D. is treasurer, and Margaret Anne Robbins of Pontotoc is Ruffin, Jeff Giambione, Teresa Nicholas, Susan Haltom and secretary. Jane Roy Brown, Peggy Prenshaw, Stephen A. King, and Anyone may join MIAL and thus be able to nominate in Araminta Stone Johnston. The poetry nominees are Noel Polk, each of the award categories. For more information about Swep Lovitt, Richard Boada, T. R. Hummer, and Robert West. membership or about attending the awards gala, visit the web- The music composition for classical music category has site at www.ms-arts-letters.org.

The Southern Quarterly A Journal of the Arts in the South SQo

Published by The universiTy of souThern MississiPPi since 1962, The SouThern QuarTerly is a scholarly journal devoTed To The inTerdisciPlinary sTudy of souThern arTs and culTure, including liTeraTure, hisTory, anThroPology, and The TradiTional arTs. Jimmy Thomas

The Center is pleased to welcome intern Talley Diggs, a freshman visiting from Bennington College in Bennington, Vermont. During the months of January and February Talley To Subscribe : Individuals $25 / year • Institutions $35 / year is assisting Jimmy Thomas and Becca Walton on a number Visit our website at www.usm.edu/soq.

of projects, including The New Encyclopedia of Southern Contact • The Editor, SoQ • 118 College Drive #5078 • Hattiesburg, MS 39406-0001 Culture and the 2012 Oxford Conference for the Book. AA/EOE/ADAI

The Southern Register Winter 2012 Page 29 New Courses in Southern Studies Offered This Fall Contributors is the editor for Living Blues magazine. The interdisciplinary spirit is alive and well at Barnard Brett Bonner Observatory in the form of fresh course offerings from new fields. Mark Camarigg is the former assistant editor and cur- Jodi Skipper, a University of Texas–trained anthropolo- rent publications manager for Living Blues magazine. gist, joined Southern Studies and offered her expertise on Rebecca Lauck Cleary is a communications spe- Southern heritage and tourism. She taught a graduate semi- cialist in the Office of Media and Public Relations at nar entitled “Southern Heritage Tourism” this fall. “I wanted the University of Mississippi. She received a BA in to examine the development and endurance of a tourism in- Journalism from the University in 1997. dustry in the U.S. South from and through diverse theoreti- John T. Edge is director of the Southern Foodways cal perspectives and approaches. It is my hope that this course Alliance. He writes a monthly column, “United Tastes,” served as an introduction to many of the issues faced by tour- for the New York Times, is a contributing editor at Garden ism professionals—on a daily basis and as a basic framework & Gun, is a longtime columnist for the Oxford American. for those graduate students who plan to pursue careers in his- Bingo Gunter is a recent MA graduate from the toric preservation and tourism management.” Southern Studies program. She lives and works in Reading selections for the course included Authentic New Oxford, Mississippi. Orleans: Tourism, Culture, and Race in the Big Easy; The Joan Wylie Hall teaches in the English Department New History in an Old Museum: Creating a Part at Colonial at the University of Mississippi. She is the author of Williamsburg; and excerpts from Confederates in the Attic: Shirley Jackson: A Study of the Short Fiction and articles Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War. The books helped to on Tennessee Williams, William Faulkner, Grace King, highlight a broad range of heritage tourism. Frances Newman, and other authors. Southern Studies also welcomed Jill Cooley, a PhD in history Colby H. Kullman is professor of English at the from the University of Alabama and foodways scholar. Cooley University of Mississippi. Among his publications are is the first-ever Southern Foodways Alliance postdoctoral Theatre Companies of the World and articles on Tennessee teaching fellow, and the Center was excited to offer her course, Williams and other modern dramatists. “Southern Foodways,” to its students. She hoped to introduce Xaris A. Martínez is a Southern Studies alumna (MA her students to the “diverse literature of Southern foodways” 2011) and a first-year doctoral student in history at the and to help them “explore how food practices are constructions University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. of our culture and history.” The course was full of students from Kathryn McKee is McMullan Associate Professor of several disciplines, and everyone took different things from it, Southern Studies and associate professor of English at which was Cooley’s ultimate goal. The students’ PowerPoint the University of Mississippi. She recently coedited presentations and final essays can be found on the Southern American Cinema and the Southern Imaginary. Foodways Alliance website, www.southernfoodways.org. Katie Nichols is a journalist for the Greenville, Mississippi, Delta Democrat Times. Kirsten Schofield Ted Ownby, director of the Center, holds a joint ap- pointment in Southern Studies and history. The 2012 Porter Fortune Kristen Schofield is a second-year Southern Studies graduate student. Jr. History Symposium Jimmy Thomas is the Center’s associate director, publi- cations. He is managing editor of The New Encyclopedia The 2012 Porter Fortune Jr. History Symposium at the of Southern Culture and editor of the Southern Register. University of Mississippi, sponsored by the Department of Christina Torbert is head of serials and bibliographer History, explores the intersection of scientific ideas about race for the philosophy and religion department for the J. D. and gender with medical practice and experimentation from Williams Library at the University of Mississippi. the 18th to the 20th century. This year’s theme is “Science, Becca Walton is the Center’s associate director, proj- Medicine, and the Making of Race.” As racialized science ects, and joined the Center staff in September. She was developing, nonwhite bodies were often favorite subjects holds an undergraduate degree from the University of of medical research. The three-day conference will be held Virginia and received an MA in Southern Studies from March 8–10, 2012, on the University of Mississippi campus. the University of Mississippi in 2008. The keynote speaker for the event will be Londa Schiebinger, Jay Watson is a professor of English at the University the John L. Hinds Professor of History of Science at Stanford of Mississippi. His publications include Forensic University. Schiebinger is the author of Nature’s Body: Gender Fictions: The Lawyer Figure in Faulkner and Faulkner and in the Making of Modern Science, Plants and Empire: Colonial Whiteness (forthcoming). He is the current president of Bioprospecting in the Atlantic World, as well as numerous other the William Faulkner Society. works on race, gender, and science.

Page 30 Winter 2012 The Southern Register The 19th Mississippi Delta Tennessee Williams Festival Goes International

Canada’s Shaw Festival director Eda Courtesy Colby Kullman merits can be found in the exception- Holmes brought a taste of her 2011 al performances by the A-list leads. Toronto production of Cat on a Hot Shot in Technicolor with big stars play- Tin Roof to Clarksdale by talking about ing the major roles, the film was creat- her experiences directing the play ed to appeal to a wider audience as op- and bringing Canadian actress Severn posed to other Tennessee Williams film Thompson to play “Maggie the Cat.” adaptations. Dorothy Shawhan turned Earlier in the year, Holmes had toured to popular culture in her analysis of the New Orleans and Columbus, Oxford, play by bringing together Elvis Presley, and Clarksdale in her desire to cap- Tom Williams as a child in 1923 in a ture the Southern Delta atmosphere of multiple-point-of-view historical nov- Williams’s classic play. Her direction of el, and Bill Spencer’s “Click.” Thompson as Maggie moved the con- Always a highlight of the Williams ference audience with its emotion- Festival, the porch plays on Saturday al power and authenticity. Supported afternoon featured Johnny McPhail as by Jared Davis (as Brick) and Jeff the salesman in The Last of My Solid Glickman (as a narrator who creative- Gold Watches, Clarksdale High School ly used his guitar and voice to connect students in monologues from Williams’s one scene to the next), this Maggie is Sherrye Williams performing the role of plays (directed by Wanda Lee), Sherrye not to be forgotten. Amanda from The Glass Menagerie. Williams as Amanda Wingfield from Jeremy Lawrence wrote the script for The Glass Menagerie, and Alice Walker and performed in his tour de force mono- as Blanche du Bois and Jared Davis logue Tom and Rose. With his history of as Stanley Kowalski from A Streetcar this brother and sister who remained this play, exemplified best by two of his Named Desire. close their entire lives, Lawrence docu- most memorable characters, Maggie Perhaps the most significant fea- ments the bond between them that was “the Cat” Pollitt and Big Daddy Pollitt. ture of the annual Williams Festival caring, loving, and life-giving, while at (2) Sex is the vital force at the heart of is that it devotes Saturday morn- the same time filled with personal pain the plot and involves characters’ con- ing to high school students from all and torment as both dealt with the flicts—both hetero- and homosexual over the state to compete by perform- specters of a dysfunctional family and elements, the latter of which was quite ing in monologues and scenes from mental illness. risqué for 1955 audiences. (3) As might Williams’s plays. The event is conclud- In “Games People Play: Croquet, be expected of the great playwright at ed with a “Stella!” screaming contest. Football, and Mendacity in Cat on a Hot his poetic best, the language of this play This year’s winners are Monologue: Zell Tin Roof,” Williams scholar Kenneth is extraordinary. This includes the cen- Pettis, Lafayette High School (Oxford); Holditch delivered the program’s key- tral and recurring metaphor/symbol of Scene: Hernando High School; Judges’ note address. Addressing such is- Maggie the Cat, the near-frolic in using Award: Travis Sinquefield, Hernando sues as Williams as the “Poet of the the word “mendacity,” any number of High School; “Stella!” Male: Connor Disenfranchised,” the parable of the way- great lines delivered by the characters, McGinty, Northwest Rankin High ward son, Brick’s “charm of the defeat- and the level of frankness (also avant- School (Brandon); and “Stella!” ed,” Maggie’s being caught between “the garde for the mid-1950s). Female: Vivian Gamble, Coahoma mind’s despair and the heart’s hope,” and Ann Fisher-Wirth discussed forms County High School (Clarksdale). the bedroom as “a temple where the or- of female self-preservation in Cat and Thanks to Williams Festival found- acle speaks the truth,” Holditch skillful- the self-abnegation that both Maggie er Panny Mayfield, this annual Delta ly related the struggles of the characters and Big Mama exhibit in loving men event is now in its 19th year. In 2011, to the games people play, including cro- who do not love them back—precisely, Tennessee Williams’s 100th Birthday quet, football, and mendacity. perhaps, because they do not love them Year, a time of many celebrations in his In a panel directed by Colby Kullman, back. Then she discussed Brick and the honor, concluded, most appropriately, this year’s scholars commented on vari- inscrutability that is at the heart of his with a barbecue at Morgan Freeman ous features of Williams’s Cat on a Hot character. Coop Cooper maintained and Bill Luckett’s restaurant, Ground Tin Roof. Ralph Voss’s principal points that while the film adaptation ofCat Zero. Happy Birthday, Mr. Williams! about Cat included: (1) Williams was is not the pinnacle of groundbreaking at the height of his creative powers in cinematic technique and style, its best Colby H. Kullman

The Southern Register Winter 2012 Page 31

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