FALL 2020 DIRECTOR’S COLUMN

A year ago, when I wrote my first column as director, A particular word of gratitude I would have been puzzled by the picture on the cover of goes to Southern Studies faculty this Southern Register, wondering why the Lyric Theatre, an and students. The academic entertainment venue in downtown Oxford, was expressing program is the heart of the such interest in personal hygiene. I might have thought Center, and, without excep- Covid-19 a formula from high school chemistry that I tion, faculty members have spent the better parts of their missed, PPE a government agency to view skeptically, summers teaching themselves how to conduct classes this “pandemic” a word from a history book describing the fall under coronavirus guidelines. This adaptation has devastating flu outbreak when my grandmother was born. required learning new technologies, going to workshops, This time a year ago, I had never heard the name George and rethinking the delivery of curriculum top to bottom. Floyd. None of us could have anticipated the difference Students, understandably thrown off course in March, twelve months can make. Intellectually we know that indi- finished their degrees anyway. Combining those who vidual lives can change in an instant; we now know how defended theses in spring and summer, we had eleven (11!) rapidly the patterns of our collective existence can also graduates this year, six MA students and five MFA students. shift in ways that we never expected. This success rate came from student resilience and dedica- People often say to me these days, “I don’t envy you.” I tion, but also from faculty commitment to student success, know what they mean to communicate (it is not comfort), evident nowhere more clearly than in outgoing graduate but my usually unspoken reply is this: everyone should director, Jessie Wilkerson. Jessie has accepted an endowed be so lucky in this time of crisis as I am. The coronavirus chair position at West Virginia University, but she left us outbreak has washed over the working life of every single with more clearly articulated expectations for what it means person at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, and to be a Southern Studies graduate student. every one of them has stood their ground. No in-person This restless summer has brought to the nation, and to gatherings? No problem. Afton still assembled a star- Mississippi, other challenges around questions of racial studded set of fall SouthTalks, to be delivered remotely, equality. Our state made the overdue decision to change around the fall programming theme of Voting Rights and our flag. In the heat of the pandemic and in the quiet of a Community Activism. Jimmy has continued publishing weekday morning, the Confederate soldier statue on the entries in the Mississippi Encyclopedia and essays in Study UM Circle made an appropriate move across campus to a the South, and you’re reading the Southern Register, aren’t Civil War cemetery. Two days later, the painted portrait of you? Every day I’m in touch with multiple people working Frederick Barnard fell off the wall of Barnard Observatory’s from their kitchens and Zooming from their living rooms foyer. Barnard, the university’s third chancellor, was an about the business of the Center: Bert about the finances, erudite scholar, a well-respected professor, and enough of Margaret about the building, Rebecca about the website, a progressive to lock horns with the rest of the administra- Melanie about Living Blues, Andy about SouthDocs, the tion on a variety of issues; he oversaw the construction whole staff about the Southern Foodways Alliance, Darren of Barnard Observatory, completed in 1859, and under- about our incoming freshmen majors, Catarina about our stood it as his legacy to the campus. Still, after his large new and returning graduate students. If I had to set sail as and imposing portrait returns from being repaired, we are director and run into a global pandemic just a few miles not going to reinstall him as our primary greeter. (He’ll be offshore, these are the people I want in my boat. around the corner.) We are going to fill the space instead with evidence of the South’s vibrant present life and of TE SOUTHERN REGISTER the ways we at the Center nurture the intellectual inquiry A Publication of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture • The University of Mississippi Barnard also valued. It was his idea to come down, but framing the future is our responsibility. Our plan for the NESLETTER ULISED UARTERL PublishedOXFORD by, MISSISSIPPI, U.S.A INTER 20 The Center for the Study of Southern Culture foyer is to seek for it artwork directly linked to the contem- The University of Mississippi porary experiences of Black southerners, none of whom Telephone: 662-915-5993 • Fax: 662-915-5814 could have attended the University of Mississippi when E-mail: [email protected] • southernstudies.olemiss.edu Barnard was the chancellor, even if their ancestors literally Fall 2020 built the observatory, but all of whom play vital roles in the On the cover: The Lyric Theatre, Oxford, Mississippi. Southern Studies we practice here. Photo by Shea Stewart. What will have happened a year from now? I won’t try REGISTER STAFF to say. But I know the people I do not envy: soothsayers and fortune tellers. Here, we’ll take it one day at a time. Editor: James G. Thomas, Jr. Editorial assistant: Margaret Gaffney Graphic Designer: Susan Bauer Lee Katie McKee

Page 2 Fall 2020 The Southern Register Living Blues News We continue our celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of 27TH ANNUAL LIVING BLUES AWARDS WINNERS INSIDE! Living Blues in this issue with a deep dive into the heart of the blues—the Mississippi Delta. While the “birth- place of the blues” may be a complicated locale to pin ® © down, there is no question where the child grew up. The

Mississippi Delta covers a mere seven thousand square Issue #268 Vol. 51, #4 miles. A swath of immensely rich, fertile land that is roughly two hundred miles long by eighty-seven miles wide at its widest, this relatively small expanse of land has produced more blues musicians than any other place BLUES on the planet. But after more than one hundred years of bringing forth some of the greatest musical talents ever IN THE heard, what does the blues in the Delta look like today? What we found is an amazingly rich and diverse pool of MISSISSIPPI talent that still lives and thrives in the Mississippi Delta. We also found a crucial support system that celebrates the music and the artists who create it. For more than DELTA two decades, the state of Mississippi has invested in the rich cultural heritage of the blues, and this support has allowed young musicians to see blues music as a viable career path. So, come on down and visit us and see for yourself what the blues in Mississippi looks like today. It takes a staggering amount of work and support to create a special issue like this. I want to first say thank $6.95 US $6.95 CAN you to Craig Ray, director of Visit Mississippi, for his www.livingblues.com support. Thanks to writers Scott Barretta and Jim O’Neal Your Guide to Today’s for their deep dive into the Delta blues scene of today and yesterday. The stunning photography in this issue is Delta Blues Scene once again from Bill Steber, who spent three weeks baking in the Mississippi summer sun to safely shoot photos recently. Southern soul artists Chris Ivy and his family outdoors during the Covid-19 have been sick, and Nathaniel Kimble spent two pandemic. Thanks also to my weeks in the hospital and still requires oxygen. associate editor Robin Dietrick Please turn to page 150 for the results of the and, of course, to art director 2020 Living Blues Awards. This year we had a Susan Lee who makes all of this record number of votes. Thanks to everyone who look so wonderful. Last, but not took the time to cast theirs. This year’s big winner least, I want to send out a special is cover artist Christone “Kingfish” Ingram. At just thanks to Wesley Smith, director twenty-one years old, Kingfish took the awards for of the Greenville-Washington Blues Artist of the Year (Male) and Best Blues Album County Convention and Visitors of 2019 (New Release) in the readers’ poll and Album of Bureau, who was the driving force behind the Year and Best Debut in the critics’ poll for his album the idea for this issue and who worked until the bitter end Kingfish on Alligator Records. On the opposite end of to make sure it was a success. the age spectrum, congratulations to ninety-one-year- And don’t forget, all of this work was done over the old Jimmy Johnson for winning the Most Outstanding last two months as Covid-19 raced across the state of Musician (Guitar) category in the critics’ poll. What an Mississippi. Masks, social distancing, no crowds, and amazing musical genre where two artists seventy years shooting all photos outdoors were just a few of the added apart in age can share the spotlight at the top. struggles we had to deal with. In fact, two of the artists featured here have come down with the coronavirus Brett J. Bonner

The Southern Register Fall 2020 Page 3 Fall 2020 SouthTalks is a series of events (including lectures, performances, film screenings, and panel discussions) that explores the interdisciplinary nature of Southern Studies. This series is free and open to the public, and typically takes place in the Tupelo Room of Barnard Observatory. However, as a result of the current health crisis, all events will be virtual and accessible on the Center’s YouTube channel. Visit the Center’s website for up-to-date- information about all Center events. Registration will be required for all events. If you have any questions, please contact Afton This semester, a few of our events fall under one or Thomas at [email protected]. more of these three categories: Programming denoted with have a prerecorded video that Voting Rights and Community Activism speaks complements the live Q&A that will take place at the dates directly to the flashpoints of 2020 and central questions specified below. around the responsibilities of citizens. Access to the ballot box has long been a contentious issue, particu- the interconnectedness of place, time, and health are larly in Mississippi. Through this SouthTalks series, we expressed in our bodies and can serve as the pathway for engage with that history and consider what it means to holistic healing for self and communities. claim a role in shaping the state. Jennifer Conner was instrumental in launching the The Future of the South Initiative focuses on the Arkansas Coalition for Obesity Prevention and has contemporary region and shapes conversations about achieved many policy, system, and environment changes how it will evolve, using innovative approaches to along the southern US region to improve commu- studying the South within the context of the nation, nity resiliency. Brookshield Laurent is the founding hemisphere, and the globe. Topics with this designation chairwoman for the department of Clinical Medicine play a role in our classrooms, in the scholarship of faculty at NYIT-COM at Arkansas State University and the members, and in our community engagement work. founding executive director for the Delta Population The Movement and Migration Series lectures in Health Institute. Anne Cafer is an assistant professor the spring of 2020 featured programming around the of sociology, and Meagen Rosenthal is a UM associate theme “Movement and Migration in, to, and through professor of pharmacy administration. the US South” as a way of thinking about urgent issues connected to borders and belonging. We decided to continue the conversation of migration with two addi- SEPTEMBER 16 tional talks this fall. Wednesday, noon • Virtual Event

“Why Dystopia Now? Exploring the Place, SEPTEMBER 9 Value, and Necessity of Speculative and Wednesday, noon • Virtual Event Dystopian Themes in Maurice Carlos Ruffin’s We Cast a Shadow” “Our Body Tells a Story: A Pathway to Maurice Ruffin and Hilary Word Resilience and Wholeness” In this SouthTalk, Southern Studies MA graduate Hilary Jennifer Conner, Brookshield Laurent, Anne Cafer, Word and 2020–21 University of Mississippi Grisham and Meagen Rosenthal Writer in Residence, Maurice Carlos Ruffin, sit down to In this SouthTalk, University of Mississippi professors discuss Ruffin’s latest work, the dystopian-satire novel and co-directors of the UM Community First Research We Cast a Shadow. Word and Ruffin expand upon their Center for Wellbeing and Creative Achievement, Anne prerecorded conversation on Ruffin’s book in this live Cafer and Meagen Rosenthal, moderate a Q&A with Q&A. The prerecorded conversa- Jennifer Conner and Brookshield Laurent of the Delta tion will be available on the Center’s Population Health Institute. Their discussion, shared as a website in September. prerecorded talk made available in early September on Maurice Carlos Ruffin’s novel the Center website, expands upon the work of the Delta We Cast a Shadow was a finalist for Population Health Institute. the PEN/Faulkner Award and was During the prerecorded talk, Conner and Laurent longlisted for the PEN America Open present on how their training has taught them to listen Book Prize, the Center for Fiction to the stories of our bodies, which inform their work Prize, and the Aspen Words Literary Maurice Carlos in population health in the Delta. They explore how Prize. A New Orleans native, Ruffin is Ruffin

Page 4 Fall 2020 The Southern Register a professor of creative writing at Louisiana State University. University, where she holds the Stuart and Joyce His forthcoming book of short stories, The Ones Who Don’t Robbins Chair, a position she began in fall of 2020 after Say They Love You, will be published in 2021. spending six years at the University of Mississippi. She is Born in Atlanta, Georgia, the author of To Live Here, You Have to Fight: How Women but raised in both Georgia and Hilary Word Led Appalachian Movements for Social Justice. Mississippi, Hilary Word now proudly claims Jackson, Mississippi, as her home. She completed her SEPTEMBER 30 undergraduate education at Tougaloo Wednesday, noon • Virtual Event College, where she obtained a BA in history in May 2017. She entered Movement and Migration Series Lecture the Southern Studies MA program “From Latino Orlando to International in the fall of 2018 and graduated Memphis: Migration and Transformation in the in May 2020. Word’s thesis, “Post- US South” Soul Speculation: An Exploration of Afro-Southern Speculative Fiction,” earned her the Sue Hart Prize for Simone Delerme and Annemarie Anderson an outstanding paper at the intersection of Southern Studies and gender studies. In this live Q&A, Annemarie Anderson and Simone Delerme discuss Delerme’s recently published book, Latino Orlando: Suburban Transformation and Racial SEPTEMBER 23 Conflict, and her current work in Memphis. A live Q&A Wednesday, noon • Virtual Event with viewers follows the conversation. In her prerecorded SouthTalk, Simone Delerme Movement and Migration Series Lecture discusses the findings from her new book, which documents the ways that southern places are being “The Lebanese in Mississippi: An Oral History” transformed by an influx of Latino migrants. She will James G. Thomas, Jr. and Jessica Wilkerson be drawing comparisons to her current research in Memphis, which examines how newcomers challenge James G. Thomas, Jr.’s recent work “The Lebanese the South’s historic Black-white racial binary and are in Mississippi: An Oral History” documents and incorporated into the social, political, and economic life interprets the lives of first- and subsequent-generation of communities that were nontraditional destinations of Lebanese Mississippians whose families immigrated to migration. Delerme’s prerecorded talk will be available the state looking for a better life. It is an oral record on the Center’s website after September 15. of their forbears’ experiences of settling in a foreign Simone Delerme joined the University of Mississippi’s land where they knew few people, did not speak the Department of Sociology and Anthropology and the language, and had to create their own occupations. Center for the Study of Southern Ultimately, however, it is the collective story of Culture in the fall of 2013. She maintaining an ethnic identity MORALES ANDREA specializes in migration to the US while assimilating into a new South, with interests in race rela- culture. In this live Q&A, Thomas tions, integration and incorpora- and Wilkerson discuss the origins tion, community development, and and findings of Thomas’s study. The social class inequalities. project can be found online at Annemarie Anderson is the oral www.thelebaneseinmississippi.com. historian for the Southern Foodways Originally from the Mississippi Alliance. She conducts oral Simone Delerme Delta, James G. Thomas, Jr. is the James G. history work associate director Thomas, Jr. throughout the South and is a for publica- current student in the Southern tions at the Center for the Study of Studies MFA in Documentary Southern Culture. He holds a BA in Expression program. English and philosophy, an MA in Southern Studies, and an MFA in documentary expression, each from the University of Mississippi. Annemarie Jessica Wilkerson is associate Anderson Jessica Wilkerson professor of history at West Virginia eE The Southern Register Fall 2020 Page 5 OCTOBER 14 and the civil rights movement, the rise of religious Wednesday, 6:00 p.m. • Virtual Event nationalism, and the making of modern conservatism. Voting Rights and Community Activism He is the author of several books, including Fault Lines: series lecture A History of the United States since 1974, with Julian Zelizer.

“Voter Suppression and US Elections” Roundtable Discussion OCTOBER 19 Jim Downs, Carol Anderson, and Kevin M. Kruse Monday, 5:00 p.m. • Virtual Event In this election year, the Center for the Study of Southern Voting Rights and Community Activism Culture has partnered with the University of Georgia series lecture Press to host a roundtable discussion with coeditor of the “The Half-Life of Freedom, Race, UGA Press History in the Headlines series, Jim Downs. and Justice in America Today” Downs is also editor of the recently published Voter Suppression in US Elections. Carol Anderson and Kevin M. Jelani Cobb Kruse join Downs in this conversation. Historians have long been engaged in telling the Journalist, educator, and diversity story of the struggle for the vote. In the wake of recent speaker Jelani Cobb writes about contested elections, the suppression of the vote has the enormous complexity of race in returned to the headlines, as awareness of the deep America. As recipient of the Sidney Jelani Cobb structural barriers to the ballot, particularly for poor, Hillman Prize for Opinion and Black, and Latino voters, has called attention to the Analysis Journalism for his New Yorker columns, Cobb historical roots of issues related to voting access. At an was praised for combining “the strengths of an on-the- annual conference of the Organization of American scene reporter, a public intellectual, a teacher, a vivid Historians, Carol Anderson, Kevin M. Kruse, Heather writer, a subtle moralist, and an accomplished profes- Cox Richardson, and Heather Anne sional historian”—qualities he brings to his gripping talks. Thompson had a conversation In this event, Cobb will deliver the talk, “The Half-Life of with Stacey Abrams about the long Freedom, Race, and Justice in America Today.” history of voter suppression.Voter Jelani Cobb joined Columbia University’s Journalism Suppression in US Elections is a tran- School faculty in 2016. He has contributed to the New script of that extraordinary conver- Yorker since 2012 and became a staff writer in 2015. sation, edited by Jim Downs. Prior to joining the faculty at Columbia University, Jim Downs is the Gilder Lehrman Cobb was an associate professor of history and director NEH Professor of History and of the Africana Studies Institute at the University of Civil War Studies at Gettysburg Jim Downs Connecticut where he specialized in post–Civil War College. He is the author or editor African American history, twentieth-century American of six other books, including Sick politics, and the history of the Cold War. Carol Anderson from Freedom: African American Illness and Suffering during the Civil War and Reconstruction. OCTOBER 29 Carol Anderson is the Charles Thursday, 3:00 p.m. • Virtual Event Howard Candler Professor and Chair of African American Studies at “Whose Blues? Black Bluesism, Blues Emory University. She is the author Universalism, and the Postmodern Paradoxes of of the recent One Person, No Vote: America’s Global Music” How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Adam Gussow, Ken “Sugar Brown” Kawashima, Our Democracy. Kevin M. Kruse and Brian Foster She is a regular contributor to the Guardian and advisor for its year- In this live Q&A, Adam Gussow and Ken “Sugar long series on voting rights. Brown” Kawashima, a Korean-Japanese American Kevin M. Kruse studies the polit- bluesman highlighted in Gussow’s book Whose Blues? ical, social, and urban/suburban Facing Up to Race and the Future of the Music, will be joined history of twentieth-century by Brian Foster, assistant professor of sociology and America. Focused on conflicts over Southern Studies, for a conversation on Gussow’s book. race, rights, and religion, he has A pre-recorded talk between Gussow, Kawashima, particular interests in segregation and Foster will be available on the Center website by

Page 6 Fall 2020 The Southern Register mid-October, and Foster will begin the live Q&A with how Mississippi’s landscape has influenced the work prepared questions, then open it up to viewers. of its writers. Together they discuss how photographers Gussow’s book challenges us to think freshly about present the realities of the landscape and how writers the blues in a postmodern moment, more than a century overlay their impressions over those realities. removed from the music’s rural southern origins. If On November 11, both Eubanks and Wharton will “blues is Black music,” as some contemporary claimants engage with viewers and answer questions sparked by insist, what should we make of the International Blues their recorded talk, which will be made available on the Challenge held annually in Memphis, with its all-comers Center’s website on November 2. mix of nationalities and ethnicities? If there’s “no Black, David Wharton has an MFA no white, just the blues,” as another familiar meme would in photography and a PhD in have us believe, why do some Black American studies, both from the blues people hear that proclamation University of Texas at Austin. He is not as a call to transracial fellow- the author of three books of photo- ship, but as an aggressive attempt graphs, with a fourth due to be at cultural appropriation and the published in 2021. He has taught erasure of traumatic racial histories at the University of Mississippi’s sounded by the music? David Wharton Center for the Study of Southern JAMES G. THOMAS, JR. Adam Gussow is a professor of Culture since 1999. English and Southern Studies at the W. Ralph Eubanks is the author Adam Gussow University of of Ever Is a Long Time: A Journey into Mississippi. Mississippi’s Dark Past and The House Ken Kawashima is a professor of at the End of the Road: The Story of modern Japanese history and Marxist Three Generations of an Interracial theory in the Department of East Family in the American South. A 2007 Asian Studies at the University of Guggenheim Fellow, he is currently Toronto. He is also a blues musi- a visiting professor of English and cian, singer, and composer known as Southern Studies at the University Sugar Brown. of Mississippi. Ralph Eubanks Brian Foster Ken Kawashima Brian Foster is an assistant professor of sociology and Southern NOVEMBER 12 Studies at the University of Thursday, 5:00 p.m. • Virtual Event Mississippi. His first book,I Don’t Like the Blues: Race, Place, and the Visiting Documentarians Series Backbeat of Black Life, which focuses Always in Season on race and community life in Jacqueline Olive the Mississippi Delta, will be out December 2020. Jacqueline Olive is an independent filmmaker and immersive media producer with fifteen years of experi- NOVEMBER 11 ence in journalism and film.Always in Wednesday, noon • Virtual Event Season, her debut feature documen- tary, explores the lingering impact of “Looking at Southern Landscapes: Inspiration, more than a century of lynching and Jacqueline Olive Influence, and Impact” connects this form of racial terrorism with racial violence today. The film follows Claudia Lacy W. Ralph Eubanks and David Wharton as she moves from paralyzing grief to leading the fight During this prerecorded talk, David Wharton and for justice for her son, Lennon Lacy, who was found W. Ralph Eubanks discuss their experiences with hanging from a swing set in rural North Carolina in 2014. the southern landscape, Wharton as a photographer As the film unfolds, Lennon’s case—and the suspicions and Eubanks as a writer and student of southern surrounding it—intersect with stories of other communities literature. Wharton discusses his book Scenes from committed to breaking the silence of their own recent histo- Southern Roadsides, which contains 133 black-and- ries and leading the way to justice. Olive will discuss the white photographs made in rural areas throughout film, its themes and representation in the industry as well as the American South. Eubanks talks about his forth- take questions from viewers. This virtual event is cospon- coming book, A Place Like Mississippi, which examines sored by the Oxford Film Festival.

The Southern Register Fall 2020 Page 7 FEATURED LECTURES Journalist Jelani Cobb to Speak as Part of the Center’s Future of the South Initiative

Journalist, educator, Carol Anderson and diversity speaker Jelani Cobb writes about the enormous Carol Anderson complexity of race in America. As recip- to Present ient of the Sidney Hillman Prize for Gilder-Jordan Opinion and Analysis Lecture Journalism for his New Yorker columns, Carol Anderson, the Cobb was praised Charles Howard for combining “the Jelani Cobb Candler Professor strengths of an and Chair of African on-the-scene reporter, a public intellectual, a teacher, a vivid writer, a subtle American Studies at moralist, and an accomplished professional historian”—qualities he brings to Emory University, his gripping talks. In this event, Cobb will deliver the talk, “The Half-Life of will deliver the Freedom, Race and Justice in America Today.” 2020 Gilder-Jordan At the 2015 Hillman Prize ceremony, presenter and journalist Hendrik Lecture. She is the Hertzberg described the work of Jelani Cobb as combining the “rigor and author of Eyes off depth of a professional historian with the alertness of a reporter, the liberal the Prize: The United Nations and the passion of an engaged public intellectual and the literary flair of a fine writer.” African American Struggle for Human So it is with Cobb’s riveting, auspicious keynotes: up-to-the-moment medi- Rights, 1944–1955, Bourgeois Radicals: tations and breakdowns of the complex dynamics of race and racism in The NAACP and the Struggle for Colonial America. Whether speaking on Black Lives Matter and activism, the battle Liberation, 1941–1960, and White zones of Ferguson or Baltimore, the legacy of a Black presidency, or the impli- Rage: The Unspoken Truth of our Racial cations of the Trump era—or, more generally, on the history of civil rights, Divide. Her most recent book, One violence, and inequality in employment, housing, or incarceration in the US— Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Cobb speaks with the surety and passion of America’s best journalists. Is Destroying Our Democracy, will be the Jelani Cobb joined Columbia University’s Journalism School faculty in subject of her lecture. 2016. He has contributed to the New Yorker since 2012 and became a staff In addition to numerous teaching writer in 2015. Prior to joining the faculty at Columbia University, Cobb awards, Anderson’s research has was an associate professor of history and director of the Africana Studies garnered fellowships from the Institute at the University of Connecticut where he specialized in post–Civil American Council of Learned War African American history, twentieth-century American politics, and Societies, the Ford Foundation, the history of the Cold War. Cobb is also a recipient of fellowships from the National Humanities Center, Harvard Fulbright and Ford Foundations. University’s Charles Warren Center, Cobb is the author of The Substance of Hope: Barack Obama and the Paradox of and the John Simon Guggenheim Progress and To the Break of Dawn: A Freestyle on the Hip Hop Aesthetic. His articles Foundation. She is a regular contrib- and essays have appeared in the Washington Post, the New Republic, Essence, Vibe, utor to the Guardian and advisor for the Progressive, and The Root. His collection The Devil and Dave Chappelle: And its yearlong series on voting rights. Other Essays was published in 2007. This event is part of the Center’s Future Anderson was a member of the of the South Initiative and cosponsored by the UM Departments of English, US State Department’s Historical History, Sociology and Anthropology, and Political Science; the UM School of Advisory Committee. She earned Journalism; the Division for Diversity and Community Engagement; and the her PhD in history from The Ohio Sherman L. Muths Jr. Lecture Series in Law Endowment. State University.

Page 8 Fall 2020 The Southern Register The Center Welcomes the First-Year Southern Studies MA and MFA Students Each year the Center welcomes Southern Studies graduate student, the in a photo of their choice and a short incoming graduate students to Center hosts lunch and the customary bio as a way to introduce themselves Barnard during an orientation session group photo is made. to our readers. We look forward to in the week before the beginning This year, however, the orientation getting to know them in person very of classes. It’s a thrilling time for session was held via Zoom, and that soon, and we welcome this year’s students, faulty, and staff as we each group photo would have more closely first-year MA and MFA students look around the room in anticipa- resembled an episode of Hollywood to Barnard Observatory and to the tion of the next two years. Following Squares than the usual portrait on the University of Mississippi campus. friendly introductions and info front steps of Barnard Observatory. Some we are even welcoming back to sessions about what to expect as a Instead, incoming students have sent begin the MFA program.

Incoming MA Students

Mikayla Michelle Adams

College, and her MA in sociology they see higher education. Calisch’s from the University of Mississippi. A research centers around documenting 2017 Voices of Our Nation Fellow, her ways that communities organize, writing has been published or is forth- survive, and take care of each other in coming in Raising Mothers, Black Stew, pursuit of collective liberation. Born and raised in Memphis, Linden Avenue Literary Journal, and Tennessee, Mikayla Michelle Adams elsewhere. As a first-year Southern Bethany Fitts earned her BA from the University of Studies MA student, Buckingham Memphis where she studied women’s hopes to create work that centers and gender studies and history. During Black families, Black women, and her time there she dedicated her spare Black queer folks surviving and time to running the Student History thriving in the Deep South. Society and being a peer educator for the Sexual Assault Prevention and Cam Calisch Awareness Coalition. Adams took a gap year to work in Memphis before Cam Calisch has a BA in anthro- coming to the University of Mississippi pology from the University of to continue her education. Mississippi, where they are now pursuing an MA in Southern Studies. Danielle Buckingham As a UM undergraduate, Calisch Bethany Fitts was raised in Tupelo, organized, studied with, and struggled Mississippi, and graduated from the Danielle Buckingham is a Black alongside students and workers across University of Mississippi in 2019 with southern writer from Louisville, the state with the United Campus a BA in English and creative writing. Mississippi. She received her Workers of Mississippi, which had Her senior thesis, advised by Kiese BA in psychology from Millsaps a profound impact on the way that Laymon, used hybrid nonfiction

The Southern Register Fall 2020 Page 9 and poetry to explore family, reli- gion, and grief within the southern context. She has interned with the Sunflower County Freedom Project in Sunflower, Mississippi, and the Merwin Conservancy in Kahului, Hawaii. Following graduation, she received a Fulbright scholarship and taught English in the Czech Republic during the 2019–20 academic year. species management and rampant Janeth Jackson way of New York City and the San habitat development in Austin, Texas. Francisco Bay Area, where she has Currently residing in Holly Springs worked on editorial and communica- in an 1843 Greek Revival home with tions teams at multiple publications his wife, Kendall, Robinson spent the and companies. With a focus on last seven years managing Strawberry Appalachian history, she is interested Plains Audubon Center, a 2,600-acre in digging deeper where food systems wilderness sanctuary and former intersect with or diverge from social slave and sharecropper plantation. movement, justice, and activism in With a BS in natural resources from the South. Sewanee, the University of the South, his research investigates the David Larson intersections of land-use history, biodiversity, race, and dominator A native of Moss Point, Mississippi, culture in Mississippi. Janeth Jackson recently earned her BA from Tougaloo College in Lilly Slaughter English. During her undergrad- uate career, Jackson was a Tom Joyner, Marcus D. Hughes, UNCF, and Presidential Scholar. While attending Tougaloo, she served as the vice president of the Alpha Delta Alpha Chapter of Sigma Tau Delta, where she implemented service projects for students in the Jackson David Larson is from the Southern metro area to ensure their academic California town of Temecula. success. She also volunteered for He earned a BA in English from TRiO Student Support Services and University of California–Berkeley. the Michelle Obama Early College Among other things, he hopes to Originally from Louisville, Kentucky, High School, forming alliances with focus on the interaction between blues Lilly Slaughter is pursuing an MA teachers to assist students in low- music and culture and the literary in Southern Studies with an interest income areas. Additionally, Janeth works that existed beside them. The in food systems. She holds a BA participated in Howard University’s primary authors he hopes to examine in psychology from the University Pre-PhD Summer Enrichment are Flannery O’Connor, William of Louisville, where she spent two program, where she reported on Faulkner, and Cormac McCarthy. years working in a behavioral health the portrayal of African American psychology research lab. Her inter- women in the media. Her current Mitchell Robinson ests in how food is grown, accessed, research focuses on Black communi- and prepared stem from her previous ties and southern literature. Land, race, and placemaking are experiences working on organic converging threads that drew farms and for food justice organiza- Catherine Jessee Mitchell Robinson back to his tions in rural communities. native Mississippi in 2013. He spent a A Virginia native, Catherine Jessee decade across the country exploring Matthew Streets holds a BA in American studies the consilience of ecology, histori- and English from the University of ography, and community dynamics, Rooted in family and community, Virginia. She comes to Mississippi by such as the conflicts of endangered Matthew Streets is coming to Oxford

Page 10 Fall 2020 The Southern Register She also interned with House of Ruth Maryland, in Baltimore, shad- owing attorneys who represented battered women and children. Prior to Thomas’s graduate studies, she was a CBCF intern on Capitol Hill before accepting a staff position in the office of Congressman Bennie G. Thompson. from his hometown of Pittsboro, North Incoming MFA Students in 2012, both from the University Carolina. Streets graduated in May of Mississippi, and has been 2020 as an Honors College student at teaching writing for the Department Appalachian State University, where Katherine Aberle of Writing and Rhetoric at the he earned a BA in history and minors Katherine Aberle has a BA in University of Mississippi since 2013. in Spanish and Africana studies. Along classics and Southern Studies and Her publications are as varied as an with his studies and employment with is a recent graduate of the Southern article in the Mississippi Encyclopedia the university student union, Streets Studies MA program. She defended on hunting camps and an essay in was heavily involved in voter-turnout her master’s thesis, “Black Power at Ms. Magazine analyzing the 1999 film initiatives, and he received local Mississippi Valley: The Untold Story Cruel Intentions in the #MeToo era. recognition for his volunteer efforts. of the Largest Mass Arrest of Students Before joining the MFA program, While his main interests and past in American History,” this July. she helped collect oral histories for studies have related more directly the Black Families of Yalobusha to American slavery and the ante- Annemarie Anderson project and looks forward to bellum South, Streets’s experiences in continuing that work this fall. Warsaw, Poland, and Havana, Cuba, provided him with unique local, Kelly Spivey regional, national, and global perspec- tives. Regardless of subject, Streets usually finds himself returning to the infinitely rich history of the South.

Braxton Thomas

A Florida native, Annemarie Anderson received a master’s degree in oral history from the University of Florida in 2017, the first graduate Originally from North Carolina, of that program. She also earned Kelly Spivey has lived in Georgia, her bachelor’s degree in English and Louisiana, and currently resides in history from the University of Florida. Memphis, Tennessee. She holds a She is the Southern Foodways BFA in photography from SCAD Alliance’s oral historian and travels and spent ten years as a pastry chef A Tupelo, Mississippi, native, across the South collecting stories in multiple award-winning restau- Braxton Thomas, is a 2019 grad- of people who grow, cook, eat, and rants prior to entering the Southern uate of Millsaps College where serve southern food. Studies program at the University of she earned a BA in history with a Mississippi. She earned her MA for minor in sociology. She is pursuing Michelle Bright her thesis “‘Raised in Their Mothers’ an MA in Southern Studies on Kitchens’: The Southern Evolution the documentary track. While When she isn’t working as an actress of Domestic Science” in 2020. Her at Millsaps, Thomas served as a on film sets,Michelle Bright aspires current research and writing focuses research assistant with the Kellogg to make her own films, so she is on baking within southern food- Foundation, researching methods pursuing an MFA in Documentary ways and its intersection with labor, to incorporate the Mississippi civil Expression. She earned a BA in gender, and race in domestic and rights movement into the Jackson English and journalism in 2009 professional kitchen spaces. Public School District’s lesson plans. and an MA in Southern Studies

The Southern Register Fall 2020 Page 11 SOUTHERN FOODWAYS ALLIANCE SFA Fall Symposium Goes SFA Collaborators Win James Beard, Multiplatform Association of Food In 2020, the Southern Foodways Alliance looks forward. We use food to Journalists Awards imagine, construct, and interrogate the futures of the American South. This year’s symposium will look Writers and podcast producers for and feel different, because our SFA’s Gravy podcast and Gravy moment requires it. Instead quarterly journal took home of staging talks and meals multiple awards for work released over one October weekend in in 2019. Betsy Shepherd, a jour- Oxford, and on the campus of nalist and audio producer, won a the University of Mississippi, James Beard Foundation Award our twenty-third fall symposium for Audio Reporting for “Mahalia goes multimedia. We broadcast Jackson’s Glori-fried Chicken,” from filmed presentations and menus over the summer 2019 season of Gravy four Saturdays in October, with digital and podcasts. Gravy was also represented print companions, podcast amplification, and local gatherings to complement. in four award categories from the From a smart TV or laptop, see contemporary photography that reframes Association of Food Journalists, our image of the South, guided by teacher and essayist Ralph Eubanks. including third place in the Best Food Visionary poet Ada Limón shares original verse invoking chocolate Coverage (All Platforms) category. sunflowers, cast-iron cornbread, and scrapbook recipes heavy with intent. Tommy Tomlinson won third place for Journalist José Ralat maps the topography of Sur-Mex, the integrated cuisines Best Food Essay for “We the People of the American South and Mexico. Cookbook author Chandra Ram asks how Are Larger Than We Used to Be,” a celebration of Indian and southern food connections might move beyond which appeared in the winter 2019 hard questions to inspire real action. And more. Lots more. issue of Gravy journal. Tomlinson Two chefs carry these themes from page to plate. Oscar Diaz, the James is a veteran journalist based in Beard semifinalist behind Raleigh restaurants Cortez and Jose and Sons, offers Charlotte, North Carolina, and the new ways to meld traditional southern cooking with his family’s Mexican author of a memoir, The Elephant in cuisine. You’ll never cook a kettle of Brunswick stew the same. As chef and the Room: One Fat Man’s Quest to Get owner of Virtue in Chicago, Erick Williams connects the South, the Black Smaller in a Growing America. Michael diaspora, and the future of national foodways. Think Tabasco-brined Cornish Graff, also based in Charlotte, North game hen and cucumber salad with biscuit croutons. Carolina, won third place for Best SFA augments these presentations with digital question-and-answer sessions. Non-Newspaper Food Feature for And a special print issue of Gravy that features text from the talks. Attendees “Recipes in Black and White,” from also receive a Symposium in a Box, delivered to their doorsteps, filled the Fall 2019 issue, about a commu- with ingredients, tools, recipes, and more, to bring the Southern Foodways nity cookbook project between two Symposium experience home. Finally, after the month of presentations wraps, Baptist churches in Wilmington, we aim to facilitate a series of safe, local, in-person gatherings, and guided North Carolina—one predominately discussions in early November using Gravy texts as prompts. Black, the other white. Irina Zhorov, SFA invites members and nonmembers to attend the fall symposium. All a reporter and photographer based may purchase tickets at the price of $50, which includes early access to all in Boone, North Carolina, won first symposium programming, the opportunity to participate in Q&As, a custom- place for Best Audio Food Journalism ized discussion guide, and the Symposium in a Box delivery. for “Are Prison Diets Punitive?” from Registration opens Tuesday, September 8, at noon CST at the fall 2019 season of Gravy. Betsy southernfoodwaysalliance.org. The first two hundred attendees to purchase a Shepherd won second place in the ticket before Tuesday, September 22, will receive the Symposium in a Box. same category for “Mahalia Jackson’s The Symposium will begin on Saturday, October 3, and continue on Glori-fried Chicken.” October 10, 17, and 24. If you purchase a ticket and are unable to watch the All of these essays and podcast live talks, recordings will be archived and made available to you. episodes—along with the entire We wish we could greet you in person. But from our couches to yours, Gravy catalog—are available at we welcome you to the Twenty-Third Southern Foodways Symposium. southernfoodways.org. Pajamas welcome.

Page 12 Fall 2020 The Southern Register SOUTHERN DOCUMENTARY PROJECT Camille: The Original Monster Storm SouthDocs Filmmaker Releases New Documentary

In the late hours of August 17, primitive technology, provoked 1969, one of the deadliest and a very different response during most catastrophic natural disas- Camille than it did during ters in recorded history made Katrina.” landfall in Waveland, Mississippi. Although both hurricanes were Throughout that night and into brutal in their own right, the film the early hours of August 18, highlights how they were notably the Mississippi Gulf Coast was different from each other. Jones utterly ravaged by Hurricane explained, “Camille was more of a Camille, a category-five storm wind event and Katrina was more whose short but incredibly of a water event. With Camille, powerful path of destruction you did have storm surges and took the lives of 256 people and tidal waves and that sort of thing, caused $1 billion in damage in but it was really the winds that did her wake. With an estimated the damage. It was a very fast- atmospheric pressure of 900 moving storm with a small eye, mb and with gusts that are so it blew right through, whereas estimated to have reached 200 Hurricane Katrina had a very large mph, Camille is ranked as the eye and was a very slow-moving second-most intense hurricane storm, so it brought a lot of rain. ever recorded in the conti- It was Katrina’s water damage that nental US, second only to the was so devastating.” Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 Camille’s world premiere took in the Florida Keys. place in three sold-out screenings Rex Jones, who has been a at the Premiere LUX Cinema in documentary filmmaker with Biloxi on August 16, 2019. Camille the Southern Documentary then had its television premiere Project since 2011, produced his on Mississippi Public Broadcasting most recent film,Camille: The Original Monster Storm, Television on August 28 and is now accessible online to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Hurricane though the Southern Documentary Project. It is currently Camille and its impact on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. being distributed by the National Educational Television Jones, a native of Hickory, Mississippi, with an MFA in Association (NETA) and has shown on several PBS science and natural history filmmaking, is particularly stations nationwide. “interested in the intersection of nature and culture.” He Jones hopes his film can serve as a frank teacher and noted, “Given my position with SouthDocs at the Center reminder of the past. Natural disasters are bound to for the Study of Southern Culture, a film about the fiftieth repeat themselves—though our responses to them may anniversary of Hurricane Camille was a good fit for my not. “Learn from the past to prepare for the future,” Jones background and interests.” said, “because it’s a matter of not if, but when the next In spite of her monster wrath, Camille’s legacy, espe- storm comes.” His words may ring especially true for cially when juxtaposed with that of the much more recent those living on the Gulf Coast, but even for those who Hurricane Katrina, is an overshadowed, if not forgotten reside more inland the lesson is no less valuable. “The event in Mississippi history. As Jones remarked, “Camille devastation of Hurricane Camille was one of the first big was really one of the first big tests of resilience for the tests of resilience in the modern era for the Mississippi Mississippi Gulf Coast and in many ways prepared the Gulf Coast, and the lessons learned from this storm can Coast for Hurricane Katrina. When Camille hit, there inform us as we enter a period of climate change that was no such thing as NEMA, there was no such thing as causes more frequent severe storms.” FEMA, there were no cell phones. Radar was just begin- ning to be used. So, the lack of technology, or the more Katherine Aberle

The Southern Register Fall 2020 Page 13 CENTER NEWS Center Partners with Walter Anderson Museum of Art on Digital Humanities Project Zaire Love Named Curatorial Fellow in the Humanities The Walter Anderson Museum of Art (WAMA) announces Southern Art/Wider World, a digital humanities project made possible by a CARES Act grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), with addi- tional support from the Mississippi Humanities Council. Southern Art/ Wider World empowers dialogue about the historical and cultural themes present in WAMA’s collection and the southern land, through live-streamed public programs, a mobile app, and a continued education course. Recent alumnus manage media produc- Live-streamed programs will be Zaire Love is the tion, research, and presented between August and new Curatorial program design related December 2020. Fellow in the to the project. The posi- Humanities at the The Center for the Study of Walter Anderson tion will be held by Southern Culture is a project Museum of Art. Zaire Love, a multidis- partner and will help identify ciplinary artist and film- participating scholars and advise maker, whose work is an WAMA on the development of ode to being Black and the digital continuing education southern in America. course. “The Center is delighted to Love earned a Bachelor partner with the Walter Anderson of Arts in Theatre at Museum of Art,” said Center Spelman College, a director Katie McKee. “The muse- Master of Education um’s innovative plans to make from Houston Baptist their holdings virtually acces- University, and, in May sible, supplemented with the interdisciplinary insights of of 2020, a Master of Fine Arts in Documentary Expression scholars at our Center, promise to secure an even wider from the University of Mississippi. reach for their collection that will extend beyond the “This is an exciting time to bring my love of southern short term.” storytelling through many mediums to the Walter Anderson The Mississippi Humanities Council will further advise Museum of Art,” said Love. “Mississippi has always been a WAMA on digital strategies. Its existing support of land of great innovation, art, and culture, and it’s time to let WAMA’s humanities programming augments that of the the world in on it through diverse lenses.” NEH. “This grant from the National Endowment for the “Through his coastal lens, Walter Inglis Anderson Humanities will help support one of our state’s leading sought to make sense of the worlds around him, engaging cultural institutions and enable them to respond to the themes from transcendentalism and environmental current crisis in innovative ways,” said Stuart Rockoff, history to foodways and Depression-era labor,” said director of the Mississippi Humanities Council. “The Julian Rankin, director of the Walter Anderson Museum Mississippi Humanities Council is excited to be an advi- of Art. “We are committed to increasing access to the sory partner in the project.” treasured collection in service to new contemporary Southern Art/Wider World also supports a new posi- voices and understandings that speak to the interconnect- tion, the Curatorial Fellow in the Humanities, who will help edness of southern and American ways of life.”

Page 14 Fall 2020 The Southern Register CENTER NEWS University Presents First Diversity Innovator Awards Jodi Skipper Recognized for Commitment to Equity in the Community, Classroom, and Research

The inaugural class of University of Mississippi Diversity Jodi Skipper Innovator Award recipients are professors who have found ways to not only serve their communities, but also strive to incorporate diversity, equity, and inclusion prin- ciples into their teaching and research, as well as the lives of their students. One of the recipients is Jodi Skipper, associate professor of anthropology and Southern Studies. Carrie Smith, an assistant professor of psychology, and James M. “J. T.” Thomas, an associate professor of sociology and anthropology, are the other two recipients. “The recipients of the inaugural Diversity Innovator award have made exemplary contributions to the University of Mississippi and are all very deserving of this distinction,” said Shawnboda Mead, interim vice chan- cellor for diversity and community engagement. “Each of them has promoted diversity, equity, and inclusion in their scholarship and service to the university.” Skipper, who also was nominated for the 2020 Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning Award for Excellence in Diversity and Inclusion, was recognized for her work on Behind the Big House, a slavery interpreta- tion program based in Holly Springs. Since 2012 she has been working with friends Chelius Carter and Jenifer Eggleston, who own an antebellum home in downtown Holly Springs that includes a slave-connected dwelling. Skipper and her students help develop program content and guide tours. They also work with Gracing the Table, a group that helps facilitate conversations about healing the impacts of slavery in the present. “It’s nice to be recognized for work that I have been privileged to do,” Skipper said. “Thanks to interested students, colleagues like Drs. Carolyn Freiwald and Shennette Garrett-Scott, and a supportive network in Holly Springs, I have been their professional development and research efforts. “Our able to keep going. division is committed to the elevation of faculty and staff “This work is not easy but can be made a lot easier with who are meaningfully committed to engaging principles institutional structures that fully understand and support of diversity and community engagement in their work,” faculty, staff, and students who want to see the univer- Mead said. “Often, this work requires thoughtful planning, sity’s mission to transform communities through. This preparation, and relationship building to execute well. This award signals one of more recent university attempts to award and the corresponding professional development do just that, since the establishment of the Division of funding is one way we want to honor that work.” Diversity and Community Engagement.” Recipients of the award get a $1,000 grant to support J. B. Clark

The Southern Register Fall 2020 Page 15 A Fall Semester in a Virtual World When classes were abruptly canceled Center Faculty Discuss Teaching in March, most people believed the fall would return to normal. However, during a Pandemic Covid-19 numbers continue to climb, and most Southern Studies classes are the option of one-on-one or small- seminar, this could mean more inter- either entirely remote or hybrid for group office hours,” Foster said. active Zooming into one another’s this semester. Another tip is the use of batch kitchens and eating spaces—some- Brian Foster is teaching the SST 101 assignments, by giving students big thing we’re not able to do in a course remotely, with the theme of blocks of time to work on several traditional classroom. We’ll still be “The ’Sipp.” Foster, assistant professor types of assignments, all to be doing a lot of reading, of course, but of sociology and Southern Studies, submitted on a given date. “For we won’t be sitting around a table will have the class divided into four instance, in my summer courses, I talking for three hours, and maybe sections, each corresponding to the gave students three due dates, all that’s a good thing.” major geographic areas of the state: on Friday,” Foster said. “On each Ralph Eubanks decided to teach his the Gulf Coast, the Piney Woods, the due date, students had three or four two courses in person. The first, an Delta, and the Hill Country. reading responses and one other honors section of SST 101, focuses on “We’ll read, watch, and listen to assignment due. Some students southern identity and memory, and material (scholarship, oral histories, worked ahead. Some waited until the second is ENG 349, a special- documentaries, podcasts, music) the day of to do everything, but they topics English course called Must that, if things go well, will teach really appreciated the flexibility. And the Writer Crusade: Civil Rights and us about the history and culture of it made my job so much easier by not Literature, which is a course he devel- these regions, with attention to their having to keep up with a hundred oped while at Millsaps and has taught significance for the state at large,” due dates, emails about due dates, at UM before. Foster said. and emails about missed deadlines.” “My decision to teach in person The main thing he learned from Catarina Passidomo will be was motivated by the events of this going remote earlier this year is that teaching her usual SST 555 Southern past summer,” Eubanks said. “There regular communication with students Foodways course and says that she has been so much debate on issues is important. “Over the summer I feels like the spring semester taught surrounding statues, cultural memory, sent daily morning announcement her much about what not to do, but and the whole idea of southern iden- emails. This semester, I suspect this time, there is the benefit of plan- tity and exceptionalism, I thought I’ll do something similar. Maybe ning for disaster rather than it just this called for being able to have the biweekly emails with announce- sneaking up out of the blue. “I’m discussions in person. We read quite ments, reminders, resources, and trying to come around to thinking a variety of texts, including excerpts favorite quotes,” Foster said. of remote teaching from some- from Grace Elizabeth Hale’s Making He also emphasized giving thing other than a deficit perspec- Whiteness, Albert Murray’s The Omni- students how-to instructions for what tive; when, like me, you are accus- Americans, and Lewis Nordan’s Wolf they need to do. “Don’t assume tomed to teaching and learning Whistle, alongside Dave Tell’s writings they’ll know,” he said. “And, even in person, moving things online on the geography of the Emmett Till if you assume they’ll know, still feels like giving up a lot of what murder. I worried that I would have a give instructions.” Also, he says no has worked reasonably well in the difficult time reaching these students single-method approach is sufficient. past,” said Passidomo, Southern virtually on a topic that in so many “Synchronous only isn’t enough. Foodways Alliance Associate ways demands in-person discussion.” Asynchronous only isn’t enough. Professor of Southern Studies. “But Eubanks says that for him, There should be elements of both. I can imagine framing it differ- teaching in person this fall is a form Prerecorded mini-lectures, links to ently—thinking of remote teaching of activism. “I have not been to a YouTube, Blackboard quizzes, all as opening up new possibilities and single protest even though I have supplemented with periodic synchro- forcing all of us to do things a little been living in an epicenter of protest nous Zoom calls, supplemented with or a lot differently. For my foodways and even can walk two miles from

Page 16 Fall 2020 The Southern Register CENTER NEWS my house to Washington DC’s Black Lives Matter Plaza,” Eubanks said. “Since I have students who want to engage on these difficult topics, I want to do that by looking at them directly, even if it is masked and with six feet of social distance.” Ted Ownby will be teaching a hybrid version of the new SST 107: Introduction to Southern Studies through Gender and Sexuality. Ownby knows the health conditions continue to be uncertain, and will mix online instruction through Zoom and Blackboard with some face- to-face instruction when the latter seems a healthy possibility. “The Mississippi Encyclopedia goal is to broaden the perspective of students and to encourage people to think of those things in a way Partners on Tri-state they haven’t before,” Ownby said. “I’m trying to find a strategy where Mapping Project, Publishes students can show they are learning from readings without just rehashing them. It will be my first time to New Entries assign the Gender volume of the New Encyclopedia for Southern Culture, and For the past year, the Mississippi Encyclopedia has teamed up with the I want to ask students to show they Southern Literary Trail, the New Georgia Encyclopedia, and the Encyclopedia understand some basic concepts of Alabama to create an online collaborative encyclopedic story map and representations by summarizing that lets viewers explore the literary South from Savannah, Georgia, to some kind of reference to something Natchez, Mississippi, without even leaving home. This story map lets you they know or can research.” visit the homes and landmarks that shaped and inspired the South’s most Ownby’s other texts include celebrated authors, with links included that take the reader directly to Lillian Smith’s Killers of the Dream, the author’s entry in each online encyclopedia. The project can be found Ida B. Wells, The Light of Truth, and online at www.georgiahumanities.org/southern-literary-trail-story-map. John Marszalek III’s Coming out of The Southern Literary Trail celebrates acclaimed twentieth-century writers the Magnolia Closet: Same-Sex Couples and playwrights of Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia. Those Mississippi in Mississippi. “I think it will be an authors included in the project are Shelby Foote (Greenville), Walker Percy intriguing semester since there are (Greenville), Stark Young (Como), William Faulkner (Oxford and New Albany), things we can’t do, like go to the Borden Deal (New Albany), Richard Wright (Natchez and Jackson), Margaret library or talk to people, so we won’t Walker Alexander (Jackson), Eudora Welty (Jackson and Columbus), and do an oral history project,” Ownby Tennessee Williams (Clarksdale and Columbus). said. “I’m trying to plan, but not In addition to teaming with the New Georgia Encyclopedia and the to be so specific that I can’t turn it Encyclopedia of Alabama on the mapping project, the Mississippi Encyclopedia has around. And I encourage people to recently published several new entries online, including the overview essay stay as safe as possible.” “Architecture” and entries on the 1969 Supreme Court school-desegregation ruling in Alexander v. Holmes County Board of Education, on writer and educator Rebecca Lauck Cleary Blanche Colton Williams, on civil rights activist Benjamin Murph, on profes- sional wrestler James “Kamala, the Ugandan Giant” Harris, on Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s visits to Mississippi, on journalist and University of Mississippi professor Curtis Wilkie, and on the tornado that devastated Tupelo in 1936. bB Visit the Mississippi Encyclopedia online at www.mississippiencyclopedia.org.

The Southern Register Fall 2020 Page 17 CENTER NEWS Telling the Stories of Home Christina Huff Begins Assistantship with Emmett Till Interpretive Center ASHLEIGH COLEMAN ASHLEIGH Christina Huff will be the first Southern Studies graduate assis- tant to work with the Emmett Till Interpretive Center (ETIC). Beginning this fall, Huff will primarily assist the Emmett Till Interpretive Center with several documentary projects. The Center for the Study of Southern Culture, as well as the University of Mississippi, collabo- rated with the ETIC in order to make this assistantship come to fruition. “The goal of this project is to bring more awareness to the history of Emmett Till and what ultimately sparked the civil rights move- ment during the 1950s through Emmett Till Interpretive Center the Emmett Till Memory Project app,” said Huff, a second-year grad student. “While working at the helping with this partnership. “We County courthouse where the trial of Emmett Till Interpretive Center, are appreciative of Christina sharing Emmett Till’s murderers was held in I will be assisting with the media her documentary talents with us 1955 and the river site where Till’s portion of the app, such as working this semester,” Weems said. “Her body was found,” Weems said. “She with other filmmakers on short docu- work will help share the story of will also assist in an oral history project mentaries, oral histories, as well as Emmett Till in a new medium and documenting the commemoration of doing archival and research work.” will help to document the reconcili- Emmett Till’s murder in the Delta. One of Huff’s professors mentioned ation process taking place today in She will help conduct and record oral the possibility of this internship Tallahatchie County and the Delta.” histories, all of which will be preserved last fall, and she expressed interest. The funding for the assistantship in the oral history archives at the Previously, she was the graduate assis- is provided by a grant through the University of Southern Mississippi, as tant at Ole Miss Sports Productions Institute of Museum and Library well as in the Emmett Till Archives at as the sports archivist. While there, Services, as well as funds from the Florida State University.” she was in charge of digitizing and UM College of Liberal Arts, the Huff said she is incredibly excited archiving sports-related 16mm film, Division for Diversity and Community about this opportunity. “Being able VHS, Betacam footage, and photos Engagement, the Graduate School, the to utilize my documentary skills to dating as far back as the 1930s. Provost’s Office, and the Center for tell incredible stories about commu- “Along with digitizing and archiving the Study of Southern Culture. nities in my home state of Mississippi these materials, I also worked in the The three-year grant is providing fits right into my vision of wanting to control room as a technical director funds to develop the Emmett Till work in academia,” Huff said. “This during live Ole Miss soccer and Memory Project, a mobile app that assistantship is going to give me the basketball games,” Huff said. provides a virtual tour of the sites tools to not only become a better ETIC executive director Patrick involved in the Emmett Till murder. documentarian, but to become a Weems, a 2014 graduate of the “Christina will work with our docu- better listener and a better friend to Southern Studies program, said he mentarian, Dr. Pablo Correa from the the communities I hope one day to is excited to have Huff join his team University of Saint Joseph, and help work closely with.” in Sumner, Mississippi, and thanked produce ten short films about ten sites Katie McKee for her support in on the app, including the Tallahatchie Rebecca Lauck Cleary

Page 18 Fall 2020 The Southern Register CENTER NEWS New Endowment Supports MA and MFA Students Bethany Fitts Named First Joyner Fellow

In 2017 Ernest Joyner III of Tupelo Bethany Fitts At the Merwin Conservancy in surprised his wife, Jamie, on her Maui, Fitts worked in its education birthday with the creation of program and alongside the conser- the Jamie Joyner Endowment in vancy’s gardener. Southern Studies. The endowment While an undergraduate at UM, provides funds that contribute to a Fitts served as editorial assistant for graduate fellowship in the Southern the Alumni Review and as creative Studies MA or MFA program. content editor for the undergrad- Jamie Joyner, a Tupelo resident uate Populi magazine. She won the who was a member of the advi- English department’s Campbell sory committee for the Center for Award and was named the English the Study of Southern Culture for department’s October Student of twenty years, first became inter- the Month. She also volunteers ested in the Center when she with Mississippi Votes and, in 2017, met former director Bill Ferris. “I was an intern with the Sunflower decided to create the endowment County Freedom Project, where because of her dedication to the she taught literacy, gardening, and Southern Studies program,” Ernie creative writing. Joyner said in 2017. structures of both literary form and Additionally, she received a 2019 “We are deeply grateful to the southernness. As a writer and life- teaching assistantship to the Czech Joyners for their support,” said long Mississippi resident, I decided Republic through the Fulbright US Katie McKee, director of the I wanted to continue learning and Student Program. Recipients of Center. “The number of applicants growing in these areas.” Fulbright grants are selected on the to our graduate program continues In 2018 Fitts received the basis of academic or professional to grow, and resources like those Barksdale Award, which was estab- achievement, as well as demonstrated provided by the Joyners help us lished in 2005 to encourage students leadership potential in their fields. attract and retain top students.” to test themselves in environments “We are delighted that Bethany is Thanks to their generous gift, beyond the classroom, teaching joining our program,” McKee said. Bethany Fitts is the first Joyner lab, or library. Fitts spent time in “I was on her Honors College thesis Fellow this fall. Fitts is a Tupelo Washington state and in Hawaii, committee, and I knew then that native who graduated in May 2019 gaining ground-level experience with she would make a good fit with our with a double major in English several kindred topics: poetry publi- curriculum. Her varied interests and and history from the University cation, conservation, and strong academic performance make of Mississippi’s Sally McDonnell W. S. Merwin, two-time winner of her an ideal inaugural Joyner fellow.” Barksdale Honors College, and her the Pulitzer Prize for poetry and a To make a gift to the Center for the assistantship will be working with the founder of a conservancy housing Study of Southern Culture, contact Southern Foodways Alliance. more than four hundred species of Claire Moss, associate director of “My favorite courses from my endangered palm trees. development at [email protected] senior year of college focused on In Washington, with the well- or 662-915-3086. Checks also can be southern literature, history, and respected Copper Canyon Press, she mailed to the University of Mississippi documentary,” Fitts said. “I was also gained hands-on experience with Foundation-CSSC, 406 University super blessed to be able to work with everything about poetry publication, Ave., Oxford, MS 38655. Kiese Laymon and write a senior from helping to organize commu- thesis that tried to press against nity events to editing and marketing. Rebecca Lauck Cleary

The Southern Register Fall 2020 Page 19 Staying Grounded Photographs by Andrea Morales Social Distance Portraits with to Finish 2020 Southern Studies Graduates Covid-19 has impacted grad- Zaire Love uate students across the nation, each at various points in their It was tough. However, I had to get academic careers. Many were some additional footage of [my subjects] trying to finish their degree the first week of April. So I rode down programs, and this past spring on them at my granny’s house, and the had all of us at one point or “ spirit and the energy of that fieldwork another asking, “What can I do to remain productive and energized me to finish. I realized that I creative during this time of was not creating solely for a degree and stress and anxiety?” screenings. I was documenting this story In her own attempt to because it’s needed on all fronts. I’m remain creative, Andrea doing this work because I love to tell Morales, Southern great stories. This reminder got me to Documentary Project producer, photogra- the finish line.” pher, and current MFA in THESIS: “The Black Men I Know” Documentary Expression student, photographed recent Southern Studies graduates at their homes, and this past summer the Center high- lighted our May MA and MFA graduates online by sharing Morales’s collec- Hilary Word tion of photographs and their comments on how they First, I realized that I had to be stayed grounded during a willing to forgive myself if I wasn’t pandemic while finishing up as productive every day as I would their projects. have liked. At the same time, Those May graduates “ included Olivia Terenzio, my family’s love and support, as James G. Thomas, Jr., Hilary well as encouragement from my Word, Hooper Schultz, and committee members, helped keep Zaire Love. Summer MA me focused and grounded enough and MFA graduates included to finish my thesis.” Tyler Keith, Katherine Aberle, Chelsea Loper, Elliot THESIS: “Post-Soul Speculation: Grime, Kelly Spivey, and An Exploration of Afro-Southern Carlynn Crosby. Speculative Fiction”

Page 20 Fall 2020 The Southern Register James G. Thomas, Jr. One of the things that’s kept me grounded enough to finish my thesis and to propel me forward in so many ways has been my time spent outdoors, away from the computer and the electric “whir of all these devices. I’ve been exploring some of the forests in Lafayette County surrounding Oxford, watching the world come back to life after a long winter, and that solitude has given me a lot of quiet time to slow down and think, not only about my work and other projects, but about how we choose to live our lives—about what we find important in this world and why. My wife and daughter joining me for some of those walks in nature has reinforced and helped shape the conclusions of those Arcadian musings and ruminations.”

THESIS: “The Lebanese in Mississippi: An Oral History”

Hooper Schultz Working on mutual aid through the United Campus Workers kept me in touch with my community and enabled “me to feel instantly connected despite physical isolation.”

THESIS: “The Southern Front: Gay Liberation Activists in the US South and Public History through Audiovisual Exhibition”

Olivia Terenzio I feel like I’m cheating because I really finished pre-pandemic, so I’m not sure if I would have had “the same experience working in the current climate. But for me, there is some comfort in just putting your head down and doing the work, and (hope- fully) getting into a flow. It’s a semblance of control when everything feels uncertain.”

THESIS: “Feijoada and Hoppin’ John: Foodways, Collective Identity, and Belonging in Brazil and the American South”

The Southern Register Fall 2020 Page 21 Local Life, Interrupted: This summer, students in David Wharton’s 534 Documentary Photography class showcased a virtual exhibit of a collection of photographs via the Pandemic Center’s Facebook page and Vimeo. Students in the class were Annemarie Anderson, Eli Buguey, Parker Galloway, and Shea Stewart. The photographs, taken in the spring of 2020, were part of a group project Views of focusing on the effects of the pandemic on our north Mississippi surroundings. Themes included were Signs of the Times, Restrictions, and An Empty World. “Just as students were about to start their ‘up close and personal’ photog- Northern raphy of human activity, the pandemic surfaced, along with social distancing and the subsequent lockdown,” said Wharton. “Personal contact was out of the question. We held the remainder of our class meetings online via Zoom. Fairly quickly, we decided to forego the individual projects and instead focus, Mississippi as a group, on the effects of the pandemic on our north Mississippi surroundings.” The full exhibition, Local Life, Interrupted: Pandemic Views of Northern Mississippi, can be found at vimeo.com/436578158. The cover image for this issue of the Southern Register is by Shea Stewart, also from this series. Here are some images from that exhibition.

(left) Eli Buguey, (below) Shea Stewart

Page 22 Fall 2020 The Southern Register Annemarie Anderson

Parker Galloway

The Southern Register Fall 2020 Page 23 ALUM PROFILE The Revolution Might Be Televised Joey Thompson Teaches about the American South through Popular Music

If you think karaoke can only be performed late night in a bar, Joey Thompson would tell you it can also be used in the classroom—as a way to analyze a song and learn about the meaning behind the words. Thompson, who earned his MA in Southern Studies in 2013, recently became an assistant professor of history at Mississippi State University and Joey Thompson taught an undergraduate course on post-1945 US history, as themselves reading/ me a better researcher because it well as a new class he designed performing their taught me to see and hear the South called Race and Twentieth- close analysis of a outside of its geographical borders. I Century Popular Music. song while the song might not have thought about what “The music class is a played. They can it means for country music to spread general survey of popular only speak for the around the world, which was part of music studies from blackface length of the song, my dissertation work, if not for my minstrelsy through the rise so they had to tailor training in Southern Studies.” of MTV with an emphasis on the their analysis to fit their chosen song. While an undergraduate at the way the music industry can both That turned out to be a fun assign- University of Alabama in the early challenge and perpetuate white ment for them to record, and it gave 2000s, his advisor, Jim Salem, told supremacy,” said Thompson. us a way to connect virtually, even if him about the Southern Studies When his class abruptly went it wasn’t in real time.” program because he thought online this spring due to the He says his time at the Center Thompson’s interests aligned Covid-19 pandemic, he had to pivot for the Study of Southern Culture with what was happening at the to make the transition to remote influenced his doctorate work and Center, and Salem even gave teaching and learning as seamless his research by teaching him how to him his old copies of the Southern as possible for the students. So, he read closely. “What I mean is that, Register. However, instead of heading recorded his lectures and met with because we read everything from straight to Oxford after he earned students through Zoom whenever novels to critical theory to historical his BA in American studies and they needed to talk. “Fortunately, works, I learned to analyze different anthropology from the University of I had assigned final papers and kinds of texts about the South,” Alabama in 2002, he took a nine- projects rather than in-class tests, so Thompson said. “That training year break from school. “When I felt I did not have to adapt final exams prepared me for the diversity of like I wanted to return, the Southern to the online format,” Thompson scholarship I encountered at the Studies program seemed like the said. “This included a digital project doctoral level and helped me teach perfect place to do the kind of for the music class called ‘Critical about a wide range of sources in research I wanted to do.” Thompson Karaoke’ in which students recorded the classroom. I also think it made said. “It also seemed like the kind of

Page 24 Fall 2020 The Southern Register program that would give me options. issued for Ecocriticism and the Future of make studying a region, or regional If I wanted to pursue public history Southern Studies, and I knew I had a identity, a tricky scholarly endeavor,” or museum work, Southern Studies good fit that just needed some addi- he said. “How are you going to write could give me that. If I wanted to tional research. I’m very thankful he about the ‘South’ with any specificity combine academics with some- decided to include it.” or authority when there are so many thing creative like documentary Thompson’s research on Scott- Souths to explore? There isn’t an easy making, Southern Studies could give Heron began while he was a solution to that, but I think that the me that. As it turned out, I took to teaching assistant for Claudrena Southern Studies program, at its best, the academic route and landed at Harold’s course “From Motown gives students a chance to find an the University of Virginia for my to Hip-Hop” at the University of answer for themselves. To that end, I doctorate after finishing the Southern Virginia, where he earned another would also encourage students to take Studies program.” MA degree in 2015 and his doctorate classes outside of their comfort zone. His Southern Studies thesis tracked in 2019. “I had loved Scott-Heron’s Are you more inclined towards histor- the 150-year history of a song called music for a long time, but Professor ical studies? Then take a class with a “The Good Old Rebel” and how Harold taught and wrote about him sociologist. Are you more interested popular music informs and perpetu- as a southerner, which was new to in literary analysis? Take a documen- ates white supremacist, anti-govern- me,” Thompson said. “Because of tary photography class. One of the ment politics. “An ex-Confederate her, I began seeing the ways his great strengths of this program is that poet named Innes Randolph wrote music connected to my research on it allows us to explore different styles the ‘Good Old Rebel’ as a joke the Pentagon and southern culture.” and approaches to scholarship. Taking to poke fun at uneducated, unre- In the Ecocriticism chapter, advantage of that helps students grow constructed white southerners,” Thompson points out the structure as scholars and creators.” Thompson said. “Ironically, people of the rhizome, a botanical term for At the moment, Thompson is have adopted this song as a sincere roots sending up shoots progressively expanding his dissertation, “Cold anthem of neo-Confederate sentiment from the upper surface. “My use of War Country: Music Row, the ever since. My thesis created a kind the rhizome as a way to think about Pentagon, and the Sound of American of genealogy for the song, showing culture came from reading A Thousand Patriotism,” into a book. He examines how white southerners incorporated Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, how the Defense Department and it as part of their folklore in the early by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari,” Nashville’s country music industry twentieth century, all the way up to its Thompson said. “Mel Lassiter, my created a business relationship life on YouTube in our current day.” friend and fellow Southern Studies during the last half of the twentieth Thompson, who plays the alum, recommended it to me after century. “In the early 1950s, the mandolin and is always interested reading it in her doctoral program at Pentagon began using country music in listening to new music, expanded UNC. I might have read it too simplis- to create recruitment campaigns on his zeal for the topic in a recent tically—I’m certainly no theoretician— that targeted white southern men volume of Ecocriticism and the but I found that the way those writers and women to join the military. Future of Southern Studies, edited by described culture as a rhizomatic root This connection to the armed forces Zackary Vernon, with his chapter, system that spreads undetected and allowed the country music industry “‘Home Is Where the Hatred Is’: then sends shoots up into the world as to use the military’s global network Gil Scott-Heron’s Toxic Domestic a helpful way of thinking about how of installations to sell its products Spaces and the Rhizomatic South.” elements of the South spread over and promote its artists to service “I had already conducted some spaces and time. It helps us see and members,” Thompson said. “The research into Scott-Heron and the hear southern culture in places outside military also created country music way he used his music to critique of the geographical South.” entertainment by airing thousands of the military-industrial complex, With such a successful base of hours of the genre over the Armed which I presented at the American knowledge from Southern Studies, Forces Radio and Television Service. Studies Association conference in Thompson said he challenges I trace this story over forty years of 2016,” Thompson said. “Initially, I upcoming students to think about Cold War history to show how white planned to include that material in what the South was, is, and will southerners learned to embrace the my dissertation. When that project become. “It might sound straight- military-industrial complex because of took a more concentrated focus on forward, but I think people need this connection between the Pentagon the country music industry, I had to a reminder that there are multiple and Music Row.” cut the Scott-Heron section. I saw a Souths existing within—and beyond— call for chapters that Zackary Vernon this one geographical region. That can Rebecca Lauck Cleary

The Southern Register Fall 2020 Page 25 FACULTY INTERVIEW AT HOME IN THE

A CONVERSATION WITH SIMONE DELERME

By James G. Thomas, Jr. Simone Delerme Puerto Ricans were increasingly moving Sunshine Stateto the US South, to Orlando, Florida, Simone Delerme is the McMullan in particular. So, I decided to follow Associate Professor of Southern Studies the migration south and do fieldwork and associate professor of anthropology in what was identified by social scien- at the University of Mississippi. Her tists as one of the largest Puerto Rican new book, Latino Orlando: Suburban concentrated suburbs in the region. Transformation and Racial Conflict, published in February 2020 by the JGT: I’m always interested in University Press of Florida, investigates researchers’ methodologies, especially the migration of Puerto Ricans and those from across disciplines, and you other Latinos to Central Florida and use a wide variety of sources in your the ways in which they have shaped investigation, including new media. the landscape and soundscape in the SD: I always use a mixed-methods region. Focusing on the four counties approach when doing my research. I’m that comprise the Greater Orlando trained as a cultural anthropologist, so area, Delerme describes the push/pull I do rely heavily on participant obser- factors that made those counties the leading destination for vation and both semi-structured and informal interviews. Puerto Rican migrants since the 1990s, and she uncovers However, I started with the archives and went through ways in which those Latinos have both retained their Latin newspaper coverage of the Puerto Rican migration begin- American culture while forming and embracing a white, ning in the early ’80s until the contemporary moment. middle-class racial identity. Then I moved to Buenaventura Lakes, the Puerto Rican– I caught up with Delerme this summer to discuss her concentrated suburb I mentioned earlier, and had a room- new book, as well as to ask her about her current project mate from Venezuela and one from Mexico. I moved to in Memphis, Tennessee. various houses and rented rooms throughout the two-plus years of my fieldwork to build my social networks and gain James G. Thomas, Jr.: In the prologue you say you informants to help me learn about social and cultural life want to “explain your subjectivities and positionality so in Orlando. New media came in when I tried to under- [your] connections to the diasporic community are clear.” stand how the suburban community and the Puerto Ricans As a way of doing so here, will you tell me about how who resided there were perceived by others. I used virtual you came to this project? forums and blogs about the community to document the Simone Delerme: My research was always personal type of commentary that was circulating online, when indi- to me. My family is Puerto Rican and Haitian. My grand- viduals were protected by anonymous user names. parents migrated from the Caribbean and settled in New York City, and I became fascinated by the Puerto JGT: You mention your Venezulealan and Mexican Rican–concentrated ethnic enclave in East Harlem where roommates, but in the book you focus primarily on the they settled. The place-identity was distinct because of Puerto Rican experience in the Greater Orlando area. the cultural influence of Puerto Ricans, and so I initially Did you discover that other Hispanic groups’ experiences intended to research Latinization and Puerto Rican were different enough to either complicate the Puerto community formation where my family lived. However, Rican story there or make the Puerto Rican experience when I started to look at census data it became clear that unique? In other words, if you opened this study up to

Page 26 Fall 2020 The Southern Register investigate a broader spectrum of Latinos, would you In what ways have Latinos in the Greater Orlando area draw the same or similar conclusions? resisted that push to assimilate? Did you find that push to SD: I think the Puerto Rican experience is unique assimilate unique to that part of Florida, as opposed to, because of the population’s citizenship status. During my for example, South Florida? interviews with other Latinos and while living in homes SD: I don’t think the push to assimilate is unique. with undocumented Latino immigrants it became clear It happens all over the country because of language that Puerto Ricans were perceived as privileged because ideologies people have that equate being American with they are US citizens and can therefore access resources speaking English. However, Latinos were able to resist and services easier. because of the size of the population in Central Florida. In Osceola County, where Buenaventura Lakes is located, JGT: You began this project with questions about how Latinos are the majority. Therefore, the Spanish language “social class identities and social status of Puerto Rican resi- became a part of everyday life, and it was an asset to be dents in Buenaventura Lakes [were] articulated, interpreted, bilingual. At times it felt like a necessity. defended, and performed.” What surprising questions did these questions lead to, and were some of the answers to JGT: Ultimately, Latino Orlando is about Hispanic these questions surprising as well? social-class formation, social-class mobility, and identity SD: Part of the reason I selected Buenaventura Lakes formation. In the book you say, “Hispanics in Florida for my field site was because it contained a large number were far more likely to identify as white than Hispanics of Puerto Rican homeowners. Social scientists described in New York and New Jersey.” In the non-Hispanic the community as middle class and when it was initially white-dominated culture of Greater Orlando, did you constructed it was marketed as a luxurious subdivision find Puerto Ricans often attempting to avoid, escape, or with a golf course and country club. By the time I arrived circumnavigate their Latino identity? in 2010 all that was shut down and the reputation of the SD: I found that some of the upper class, wealthier community was very negative. I was surprised to find that Latinos I interviewed tried to distance themselves from the perception was of a “suburban slum.” Latinos they considered “lower class.” I saw that separa- tion when it came to residential choices, organizational JGT: Tell me about your choice to use the first-person membership, and choices about where to socialize. I voice in your writing. How was this story your story as well? don’t think they were rejecting their Latino identity, SD: I never imagined writing the book any other way. I though. They didn’t automatically feel solidarity with think in the discipline of anthropology we are encouraged other Latinos based on their ethnic identity. Social class to be self-reflexive about our own identities, positionality, mattered, too. and the ways that impacts our research process. And we tend to write ourselves into our ethnography since we are JGT: In that case, in your conclusion you ask the constructing and shaping the narrative. Writing the book question, “Will the category of whiteness expand to was a way to tell not only a story about Latino migration include some Latinos?” Do you believe that potential to Orlando, but also a way to write about my experiences inclusion is dependent on social class, or is it more closely living and conducting research in Orlando. connected to other factors? Is the data trending toward that expansion? JGT: In the book you write, “In the years that followed SD: I definitely think social class matters! There are the development of the Buenaventura Lakes suburb, an other factors that I explore, too, like language. Individuals ethnic enclave formed, expanded, and contributed to who spoke Spanish were perceived as non-white despite the Latinization and globalization of Greater Orlando.” their claims to a white racial identity. I think the category How did this enclave transform the culture of this part of of whiteness will include some Latinos, but probably not Central Florida? the majority. SD: The migration of Latinos to Buenaventura Lakes transformed the landscape and the soundscape. Some of JGT: Finally, have you kept in touch with any of my informants would say it felt like you were in Puerto your informants? And how is your current work in West Rico when you came to Buenaventura Lakes and the Tennessee an extension of your work in Central Florida? surrounding community. You could go into a local store SD: Yes, via social media primarily. My methodology and be greeted in Spanish and hear nothing but the between the two projects is very similar, and the ques- Spanish language being spoken, for example. tions I’m asking are similar. I’m trying to document the experience of migrants that have concentrated in partic- JGT: You tell us that there was—perhaps still is—a non- ular parts of Memphis. However, the experiences of indi- Hispanic white insistence that Latinos “speak English.” viduals are place-specific.

The Southern Register Fall 2020 Page 27 Promoting, Producing, and Performing the Arts Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Announces Winners and Nominees

This year the Mississippi Institute of Ann Abadie Arts and Letters (MIAL) honored several artists, musicians, and writers with connections to the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, including Ann Abadie, Jimmy Cajoleas, and Susan Bauer Lee. Center associate director emerita Ann Abadie won the 2020 Noel Polk Lifetime Achievement Award. “Since 1975 Ann Abadie has been a driving force at the University of Mississippi’s Center for the Study of Southern Culture, contributing to its success as the institution’s associate director, as the editor of numerous book projects, and as the cofounder of the Center’s annual Oxford Conference for the Book,” a state- ment on the MIAL website reads. “Now the Center’s associate director emerita, Abadie has spent the past five decades—and counting—working mostly behind the scenes on educa- from three to eight, with occasional In addition to the Lifetime tional and literary projects across awards for special and lifetime Achievement Award, there are our state. A devoted ally to the arts achievements. MIAL has presented eight categories, including Fiction, and to the written word, she is most 254 awards to individuals and 10 Nonfiction, Youth Literature, Visual deserving of this award.” for groups and special projects, like Art, Music Composition (Classical), Abadie says she has admired the Mississippi Public Broadcasting, the Music Composition (Contemporary), Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters University Press of Mississippi, and Photography, and Poetry. since 1978 when literature scholar the Mississippi Encyclopedia. Jimmy Cajoleas, who was born and gifted author Noel Polk proposed “Being a member of this marvelous in Jackson, Mississippi, earned his that twenty-four prominent leaders organization has brought me infinite BA in Southern Studies and his throughout the state join him in pleasure, and I am deeply touched MFA in creative writing from the founding an organization to recognize and greatly honored to receive the University of Mississippi. He was individuals for their contributions to MIAL 2020 award named in honor nominated in the Youth Literature the literary, musical, and visual arts. of Noel Polk, my longtime friend, category for his novels Minor Prophets Two years later, at its first annual an internationally celebrated scholar and The Rambling, both published in meeting, MIAL presented three and author, and one of Mississippi’s 2019. After their mother’s death, two awards. Since then, the number and most significant leaders in arts and siblings in Cajoleas’s Minor Prophets categories of awards have grown letters,” Abadie said. must navigate the strange world

Page 28 Fall 2020 The Southern Register aftermath of the loss worlds being blown apart and the of Susan’s dad, my two of us hanging on to each other. mom, some close Our parents are represented in friends, and longtime the art by two tiny marks . . . a red canine companions. dot on Tim’s hand represents his We opted to take mother, whose name was Dot, and a a fairly unflinching diamond shape on my hand, which approach to docu- references a ham radio logo. My dad menting that time, and was a ham radio guy for as long as I I like to think it comes could remember. The printing was a through in the songs.” hot, sweaty, physical, cathartic thing, Susan says “This and when it was done, we were very World” and “Walk Small” are her happy with the results.” two favorite songs. When they first saw the nomina- “I remember when Tim brought tion list, Tim and Susan saw many ‘This World’ in and we started working names of friends and artists of whom on it. It made me cry,” she said. “And they were fans. ‘Walk Small,’ when we started playing “When we found out we won, it Jimmy Cajoleas that song live I always introduced it by was really a great feeling,” Tim said. saying that it’s about being humbled “This is not a popularity contest, but of the occult, and The Rambling is by someone you loved very much and an award based on the artistry of middle grade fantasy about family losing them. Both songs are mostly your work. We’re rock ’n’ roll folks, and the power of storytelling. about Tim’s mom.” and I think it’s easy to overlook the Cajoleas has been a celebrated Susan, a graphic designer (the art in that form. It’s very gratifying. young adult writer since he published graphic designer of the Southern “It is a super cool honor, and I his first bookGoldeline in 2017. Of Register, in fact), created the cover was thrilled when we got the news.” Minor Prophets, Booklist said, “The art for Terminal Everything, and says Susan said. narrative is steeped in unsettling she knew before the record was The Mississippi Institute of Arts mystery and surreal mysticism as truth finished what she had in mind for and Letters’ juried competition is bleeds into a fever dream indecipher- the artwork. It turned out exactly one of a kind in the state, with care- able from reality. This is a fascinating, how she wanted. fully selected judges, chosen from well-written examination of family “I had never cut linoleum or out of state, who are prominent in bonds and religious fervor stretched made a print in my life, but the their field. Supported by members, just to the point of snapping,” and label that put out the record MIAL is privately of The Rambling, Kirkus Reviews is also a letterpress and funded, self-perpetu- said, “Vivid imagery and thought- everyone was generous ating, and non-profit. provoking musings make this an ideal with helping me get Although the read-aloud adventure.” started and shepherding 2020 Mississippi “This was my first time to be nomi- me through the process,” Institute of Arts and nated, and it’s quite the honor,” said she said. “The art basi- Letters banquet Cajoleas, who currently lives in New cally symbolizes our has been cancelled York. as a result of the In the Music Composition Covid-19 virus, (Contemporary) category, Tim there are plans to Lee and Susan Bauer Lee of the recognize the accomplishments duo Bark won for their Terminal of the award recipients. Among Everything album. these plans is a joint celebra- Tim Lee said this album is a slight tion of the 2020 and 2021 departure for them, and that the winners in early June 2021 in whole project was quite cathartic and Pass Christian, Mississippi. satisfying. To learn more about the “In addition to the fact that we’ve Mississippi Institute of Arts and grown as a recording entity, which Letters and other 2020 winners, is pretty different for a duo versus a visit www.ms-arts-letters.org. larger combo, the subject matter is more personal,” Tim said. “These Rebecca Lauck Cleary ten songs were all written in the Tim Lee and Susan Bauer Lee of Bark LOST ART PHOTOGRAPHY ART LOST

The Southern Register Fall 2020 Page 29 ALBUM REVIEW Surrender to the Beat Temptation: Tyler Keith’s The Last Drag

The best rock and roll records “Stagger Lee,” Keith rips magic always have a push/pull from a battered old hat. “Beat dichotomy. There’s a desire to Temptation” is a standout on break free, to break away, to get an album full of exceptional clear of whoever and whatever tracks. It sounds like some- is doing the holding back, but thing that could’ve drifted off there’s also a yearning for love, a record by the Shangri-Las, acceptance, understanding. The all hazy wonder and stained first song on Tyler Keith’sThe glass sparkle. “In the Parking Last Drag, “You Can’t Go Home Lot” is another song full of Again,” is a raucous take on that great yearning, focusing on a old Thomas Wolfe-ism. It’s a song moment of purpose. “And when that recognizes how impossible it I tasted your tongue, I felt so is to return to the place that spit undone,” Keith sings, returning you out or that you ran screaming to that pure dream of radio from, to return to a past that can’t love that sifts down like white be and maybe never was. But powder on black chrome. three songs later, in “Take Me The Last Drag is a deeply cine- Home,” Keith sings, “I’m tired of feeling so alone, yeah, matic work. At times, it feels like a lost soundtrack to a ’60s yeah / Trying to make a connection on my telephone / biker movie or some dusty B Western where nameless men All I want is for you to take me home.” It’s a song born of in cowboy hats haunt border towns for revenge. There are exhaustion, the kind that comes from a life spent on the doses of Johnny Thunders in the moments when Keith road or scraping by in dead-end jobs, and Keith makes it sounds like he’s fronting the band on stage at a sad junkie sound especially desperate, given the first track’s declara- prom (“The Last Drag”), and the ghost of Jerry Lee Lewis tion that there is no home to go to. It perfectly sets up the inhabits Keith’s frantic energy and even his voice. He’s album’s conflicted, existential tone. got the thundering confidence and compassion of a young Elsewhere, Keith takes the language of religion and Dion DiMucci. Suicide’s masterpieces “Dream Baby twists it in the name of black humor. “I’m a born again Dream” and “Surrender” come to mind when Keith lets virgin,” he sings on the second track, tongue firmly in his voice wander into the ether. This is the kind of album cheek. “I’m saving myself.” Phony virtue and hypocrisy every garage band dreams of making. Electric and muscled are the qualities he rails against most. One song later: up and crowded with good ideas. The sound is expansive “Shame, lies, and cruelty are the burdens I must bear.” and echoey, made of leather and grease and broken hearts He has it out for preachers sick with hate, and he sees and lonely teardrops. Keith’s skill as a songwriter is such them everywhere. Keith’s from Pensacola, Florida, but that he can knife open a can of tropes and conventions has lived in the North Mississippi Hill Country for thirty you’ve heard before and make them fresh. years (and earned his master’s in Southern Studies in In the end, what The Last Drag most reminds me of is a 2011 and his MFA in Documentary Expression in 2020), pulp crime novel with one of those great covers—maybe and his songs are hung with the heaviness of existing a man in a prison jump suit, strung up to a ball and in a place where traditional notions of sin crunch like chain, headed for a woman in heels on a motorcycle—and gravel under your feet. Constant calls for repentance crumbling bone-colored pages full of dark, sharp words. poison the water. The kind of book you read in a fever, afraid the pages The album evokes feelings of nostalgia without ever will dissipate before you discover what bad roads the coming off as saccharine or damp-hearted. This is gut- protagonist will take to nowhere. Keith’s protagonists are level stuff. Raw, profound. We’re threaded into the on those same bad roads, and the album’s a masterpiece narratives, lit up by sensory details. Parking lots, roads, about the longing and desperation underpinning the Big rivers, bars, stages, haunted houses of the mind. It’s Bad Damaged American Dream. thoroughly carnivalesque and even more thoroughly rooted in folk savagery. When “Down by the . . .” riffs on William Boyle

Page 30 Fall 2020 The Southern Register FROM THE VAULT: SOUTHERN WORKS FROM THE UM MUSEUM Dreams and Visions Theora Hamblett’s Angel’s Request #2 OIL ON MASONITE, 22” X 28” (COLLECTION MUSEUM) OF OF THE UNIVERSITY MISSISSIPPI HAMBLETT, THEORA This issue marks the first installment of a regular column investigating southern artwork found in the University of Mississippi permanent collection. ANGEL’S REQUEST #2, 1956, ANGEL’S REQUEST Born in Paris, Mississippi, in 1895, Theora Hamblett had an early interest in art, but didn’t start painting until the age of fifty-five after taking an oil painting class in the newly formed art department at the University of Mississippi. Her paintings can be divided into #80, SERIES VISIONS AND DREAMS three categories. Her Children’s Games series are vibrant landscapes featuring her famously intricate and colorful trees. She would paint each leaf individually, layering colors to add depth. Because she felt that people brought life to a painting,

this series always included children playing jump rope or climbing trees. Another series, Old Home would not be there.” That summer wonder, Would Papa be pleased with Memories, depicts scenes from her was very difficult for Hamblett, who what I was doing? And really I think youth, growing up on her family’s missed her father dearly. It was then what I am today is from that.” chicken farm in Paris. These scenes that her visions of him began. She Hamblett’s Dreams and Visions portray daily life in rural Mississippi, explained, “It was in the summer paintings were her most treasured, picking pears and tending to the then, in June or early July, that I and she refused to sell them. She animals. Her third series of paint- had the vision of Papa. My first real started having visions at the age ings, which she began after breaking vision of him as an angel.” of seventeen, and they continued her hip in 1954, depict her Dreams The vision she is referring to is throughout her life. Angels, stars, and Visions. Most of these paintings captured in Angel’s Request #2 (1956). butterflies, and chariots all hold reli- she bequeathed to the University In it, young Theora is standing at an gious significance in her paintings, of Mississippi, and include religious ironing board, planning on going but Theora spoke most dearly of the symbols, visions of religious figures, to a ball game later that day. In visions of her father. and loved ones who had passed. those days, children were discour- While attending Blue Mountain aged from playing ball games on Amanda Malloy College in Blue Mountain, Saturdays, but she was determined Mississippi, Hamblett had a dream to go regardless. While ironing, she Amanda Malloy received her MA in of her late father that compelled her looked up to see her father, bathed Southern Studies from the University of to go back to Paris: “He told me, ‘I’ll in light with giant angel wings. He Mississippi, focusing on southern photog- be with you when you go home.’ told her, “Baby, for my sake, don’t raphy. During this time she completed And I went home at the end of the go.” She abided her father’s request, an assistantship with the second semester, it was a three- and that moment changed her life. University of Mississippi semester year. [. . .] When we got to She said of the experience, “After Museum. She is currently the yard lock gate I got out to open that, when I needed to make a deci- the visual arts editor of the gate, and then I realized Papa sion, I would get off to myself and Mississippi Folklife.

The Southern Register Fall 2020 Page 31 FROM STUDY THE SOUTH Study the South Publishes Two Essays This Summer New Work Focuses on the Economic South and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice

In his essay “More Pricks Than Kicks: The Southern Economy in the Long Twentieth Century,” Peter A. Coclanis traces the evolu- tion of the southern economy over the “long twentieth century,” which in his view began around 1865 and is not yet over. During this lengthy period, the economy of the region was shaped—and limited—by factors that originated much earlier with the creation of an economic order based upon racial slavery and export- oriented plantation agriculture. His argument is that it has been very tough for the South to deviate from the “path” taken early in the region’s history. To Coclanis, the The American South and Its region’s difficul- Global Commodities (2016). ties in developing In her new Study the economically are South essay, “Toward usefully framed in Freedom: A Reading of Beckettian terms. the National Memorial “We are incred- for Peace and Justice,” ibly pleased to Margaret Pless shows publish this illu- how Montgomery, minating work Alabama’s National on the history Memorial for Peace and of the southern Justice stands to remedy economy,” said our national forgetful- James G. Thomas, ness, correcting the false Jr., editor of Study the South. “In this long-form essay, record that our many Confederate monuments perpet- Coclanis exposes how ‘the legacy of plantations and uate. This memorial actively teaches the deep roots of racial slavery have limited the South’s developmental slavery in our nation, how lynchings maintained white possibilities ever since,’ shedding new light on how the supremacy long after slavery ended, and how that white historical problems of the southern past continue to affect supremacy still operates today. The strange juxtaposition the southern present.” of the memorial’s history lesson with Montgomery’s other Peter A. Coclanis is Albert R. Newsome Distinguished monuments forces us to wrestle with our nation’s consis- Professor and Director of the Global Research Institute tent dishonesty about our past. at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. He Thomas said that Pless’s essay is a timely one: “We’re works mainly in the areas of economic history, demo- glad to publish Pless’s insightful work in Study the South, graphic history, and business history, and has published especially during this national reckoning of the power widely, particularly on the US South and on Southeast and meaning of memorialization, as well as what we as a Asia, including The Shadow of a Dream: Economic Life society value and feel worthy of commemoration. Pless’s and Death in the South Carolina Low Country, 1670–1920 essay describes how the National Memorial for Peace and (1989); with David L. Carlton, The South, the Nation, and Justice helps us understand and remember the pain and the World: Perspectives on Southern Economic Development suffering in our American past, as well as how those who (2003); Time’s Arrow, Time’s Cycle: Globalization in Southeast experienced it have fought to overcome it.” Asia over la Longue Durée (2006); and with Sven Beckert, Barbara Hahn, and Richard Follett, Plantation Kingdom: continued on page 33

Page 32 Fall 2020 The Southern Register New Publication Studies the History of Clothing and Its Relationship to Work, Power, and Identity in the South

Fashion studies have long centered one hundred and fifty pages,” Ownby on the art and preservation of finely continues, “and I hope that might rendered garments of the upper class, make it accessible to people who and archival resources used in the haven’t read or thought much about study of southern history have gaps clothing in history. The obvious fact and silences. Yet, little study has been is that clothing is part of any story, given to the approach of clothing as so the book could have covered far something made, worn, and inti- more topics and time periods. Just mately experienced by enslaved like the Southern Foodways Alliance people, incarcerated people, and has frequently said their work isn’t the poor and working class, and by just about the food, the articles here subcultures perceived as transgres- are not just about the articles of sive. This new volume, Clothing and clothing but about the historical issues Fashion in Southern History, edited by we can raise by studying clothing.” Ted Ownby and Becca Walton and “One of my favorite points in the published by the University Press of introduction,” said Ownby, “is that, Mississippi, began with the two-day unlike a lot of topics, if one adds the Clothing and Fashion in Southern word southern to the word clothing, it’s History Symposium hosted by the not clear where to begin.” An after- Center in February 2016. word by Jonathan Prude asks how During that 2016 symposium, best to conclude. Other contribu- some scholars presented papers and sold in the South by Jewish immigrant tions to the collection include essays others presented short discussions to peddlers or merchants.” by Grace Elizabeth Hale, Katie encourage discussion. Like the sympo- Essays in the volume explore such Knowles, William Sturkey, Susannah sium, this volume convenes scholars topics as how free and enslaved Walker, Becca Walton, and Sarah from the fields of history and cultural women with few or no legal rights Jones Weicksel. studies to use clothing as a point of claimed to own clothing in the mid- Ted Ownby is William F. Winter departure, encouraging readers to 1800s, how white women in the Professor of History and professor of imagine the “South’s centuries-long Confederacy claimed the making Southern Studies at the University of engagement with a global economy of clothing as a form of patriotism, Mississippi, as well as author or editor through a single garment, with cotton how imprisoned men and women of multiple works of southern history. harvested by enslaved laborers in made and imagined their clothing, Becca Walton is former associate the South, milled in Massachusetts and clothing cooperatives in civil director for projects at the Center for or Manchester, designed with influ- rights–era Mississippi. the Study of Southern Culture at the ence from Parisian tastemakers, and “It’s a short collection, less than University of Mississippi. continued from page 32

Margaret Pless is a graduate of to school for her doctorate, she interdisciplinary academic thought Vanderbilt University with a BA in taught high school history and litera- and discourse on the culture of the English and history, and a minor in ture for five years in her hometown American South, particularly in art history. She is currently working of Birmingham, Alabama. the fields of history, anthropology, on her doctorate in English at the Study the South is a peer-reviewed, sociology, music, literature, University of Mississippi, where she multimedia, online journal, documentary studies, gender studies, also received her MA in English. published and managed by the religion, geography, media studies, She is studying modern and contem- Center for the Study of Southern race studies, ethnicity, folklife, and porary American literature with an Culture at the University of art. Contact James G. Thomas, Jr. interest in the genre of memoir in Mississippi. The journal, founded at [email protected] for more southern literature. Before returning in 2014, exists to encourage information.

The Southern Register Fall 2020 Page 33 FAULKNER AND YOKNAPATAWPHA CONFERENCE Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conferences Update “Faulkner, Welty, Wright: A Mississippi Confluence” July 18–22, 2021

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the to keynote at the 2021 confer- the Writer Crusade? (2001). In 1998 2020 Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha ence. Trudier Harris is University she received the Phoenix Award for Conference on “Faulkner’s Distinguished Research Professor at distinguished Welty scholarship. Modernisms” has been postponed the University of Alabama and the Jerry W. Ward Jr., is emeritus until 2022—repeat, 2022—when it is J. Carlyle Sitterson Distinguished professor of English at Dillard now scheduled for July 17–21. The Professor emerita at the University University, where he taught for ten five scheduled keynoters, Patricia of North Carolina. One of the years after a thirty-two-year teaching Chu, Leigh Anne Duck, Susan nation’s leading authorities on career at Tougaloo College. An Stanford Friedman, Sarah Gleeson- African American literatures, she accomplished poet and interna- White, and Julian Murphet, have has edited or coedited fourteen tionally acclaimed Richard Wright been invited back to the 2022 books and is author of ten books, scholar, he is currently working conference reboot, as have the thirty- including, most recently, Martin on a biography, Richard Wright: An eight scholars whose submissions to Luther King Jr., Heroism, and African Unending Hunger for Life. He has the call for papers were accepted by American Literature (2014), The Scary edited or coedited such important the program committee. We hope Mason-Dixon Line: African American anthologies and essay collections as to hear all of these fine speakers in Writers and the South (2009), Summer Trouble the Water: 250 Years of African Oxford in 2022! Snow: Reflections from a Black American Poetry (1997), Redefining Meanwhile, plans are proceeding, Daughter of the South (2003), and American Literary History (1990), Black the good Lord and Covid-19 South of Tradition: Essays on African Southern Voices (1992), The Richard willing, for the 2021 conference American Literature (2002). Wright Encyclopedia (2008), and The on “Faulkner, Welty, Wright: A Suzanne Marrs is professor emerita Cambridge History of African American Mississippi Confluence,” sched- of English at Millsaps College, Literature (2011). His most recent uled for July 18–22. For this event, where she taught for twenty-seven books include The Katrina Papers: A which will bring together these three years. Throughout that period she Journal of Trauma and Recovery (2008), giants of Mississippi modernism has been at the forefront of teaching The China Lectures (2014), Fractal for five days of discussion, analysis, and scholarship on Eudora Welty. Song: Poems (2016), and Blogs and and perhaps a measure of celebra- Her many books include Eudora Other Writings (2018). tion as well, the program committee Welty: A Biography (2005), One Discount rates for both conferences is working with representatives Writer’s Imagination: The Fiction of are available for groups of five or from the Eudora Welty Society, Eudora Welty (2002), and The Welty more students. Inexpensive dormitory the Richard Wright Circle, and the Collection: A Guide to the Eudora housing is available for all confer- William Faulkner Society to insure Welty Manuscripts and Documents at ence registrants. Contact Mary Leach that the focus of the conference is the Mississippi Department of Archives at [email protected] for details. truly comparative. The call for papers and History (1988), edited volumes of For other inquiries, or to submit for the “Faulkner’s Modernisms” Welty’s letters to William Maxwell abstracts to the 2021 conference conference appeared in the Fall 2019 (2011) and to Ross Macdonald CFP, contact Jay Watson, director, issue of the Southern Register. (2015), and an important essay at [email protected]. To date, three distinguished collection coedited with Harriet scholars have accepted invitations Pollack, Eudora Welty and Politics: Did Jay Watson

Page 34 Fall 2020 The Southern Register READING THE SOUTH Book Reviews and Notes by Faculty, Staff, Students, and Friends of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture

Some Go Home: A Novel change and the preservation of a vicious past. As Colleen puts it in By Odie Lindsey. New York: Derby’s defense, it is a “rich man’s Norton, 2020. 295 pages. war, poor man’s fight.” $26.95 cloth. Ultimately, the plot revolves around Hare Hobbs, a white share- cropper once accused and acquitted After thirty years since the begin- of the civil rights–era murder ning of the First Gulf War and more of Gabe, his Black landowning than a century and a half into the neighbor who had refused to relin- battle for racial equality in America, quish his birthrighted property, but we are finding that these conflicts at the heart of the novel are Derby are as alive today—and as resonant Friar and Colleen. Colleen is Derby’s today—as ever. In Odie Lindsey’s young wife and the mother of their debut novel, Some Go Home, we find twins. She had served two tours a constellation of interconnected of duty at war in the Middle East stories based on traumas that have before they met and is now back long plagued the nation, with race home in Mississippi wrestling with and social class fixing the enduring PTSD and other demons she has problems of violence and oppression carried back with her. Yet Colleen to the American South. is not the only casualty of war: Lindsey’s novel draws on the restoration,” Lindsey writes. “The both Gabe and Hobbs had served eponymous story of Colleen that point was to make an assault.” in World War II, Gabe as a troop appears in Lindsey’s 2019 book of Pitchlynn is struggling to main- in the famed Red Ball Express and stories We Come to Our Senses and tain its Old South heritage while Hobbs as an errand boy, “a platoon opens in Pitchlynn, Mississippi, a fighting to enter a twenty-first runt filling canteens like some fictional hill country hamlet draped century economy, driven by Dru’s mascot, some toy held back from in humidity and intentionally bathed aunt, mayor Susan George Wallis, combat.” Like Colleen, both men in the almost sickly sweet scent of the multigenerational Mississippian came home transformed: Hobbs, the magnolias. In a shifting narrative custodian of the town’s cursed rich man’s tool—in more ways than timeline that begins in 1965, Lindsey cultural inheritance, namely Bel one—and Gabe who “upon his return introduces the reader to a menag- Arbre, a hundred-plus-year-old to Mississippi . . . would no longer erie of characters who have either magnolia tree planted in 1867 by tolerate the way things had been. never left the state or are, for various the Ladies’ Memorial Association There was victory in Europe. There reasons, drawn back to it. of North Mississippi, “a group soon would be victory at home.” In Some One of the central characters, absorbed by the United Daughters Go Home, war takes many forms. Derby Friar, works as a “journeyman of the Confederacy, before recon- Lindsey’s characters populate a builder” in Pitchlynn, hired to help vening as the ‘LMA’ in the 1960s.” community riven by racism and Chicagoan transplant JP remodel The Wallis family manor is now in classism, and plagued with guilt, the town’s most cherished ante- the most immediate danger of being shame, depression, and anger. A bellum property, Wallis House, the commandeered by northern forces writer-in-residence at Vanderbilt ancestral home of his suicide wife, since Gen. A. J. “Whiskey” Smith University’s Center for Medicine, Dru, an outcaste expatriate. JP has burned nearby Oxford. Bel Arbre, Health, and Society, Lindsey shows come to Pitchlynn to fulfill a promise the imperiled ancient evergreen “in us the various, often conflicting ways to her, modernizing not only the some ways a symbol of what they’d these systems and emotional states house but also the town—and the been, . . . their only true living link can manifest in individuals and in social structures underpinning it— to history,” will be the first casu- societies, and how the past is an into something other than what had alty. Derby, much like poor white irrepressible force with a stubborn driven Dru to take her own life. Mississippi dirt farmers in 1861, tenacity to exist long after those “The project had nothing to do with finds himself caught between radical whose selective legacies have passed

The Southern Register Fall 2020 Page 35 from this place and now exist only by a Black folk aesthetic: W. E. B. as a medley of grotesques, a fading Du Bois speaks of The Souls of Black nostalgia. Even Lindsey’s white- Folk (1903), Zora Neale Hurston supremacist Hobbs understands the professes “How It Feels to Be Colored dark corner he has been willingly led Me” (1923), Langston Hughes, into and wonders aloud, “How do I Alain Locke, Richard Wright, and get out of being me?” others also use the power of affect Lindsey is a 2007 graduate of the to communicate profound pain and Center’s Southern Studies master’s plight. By reading for a “common program, and he gives clever nods to cord of feeling,” Labor Pains recon- his post-graduate work as an asso- figures the relationship between ciate editor of the Center’s Mississippi southern modernism and Popular Encyclopedia. Some Go Home is the Front Black radical traditions. clear result of meticulous research Each chapter in Labor Pains centers into Mississippi’s history, evidenced on a specific author, and together in the deft reference to people, the chapters are organized along a places, and events, such as architect temporal axis. The works included Calvert Vaux, Gilbert Mason and are carefully curated following the Biloxi wade-ins, the Jim Henson several winning strategies. Labor Museum in Leland, Lebanese Pains stretches the canon of leftist peddlers, Fannie Lou Hamer, and writing by introducing authors we Sen. Jim Eastland. As the title of his argues that these writers use the may not expect to find there; particu- recent book indicates, yes, some “black folk” trope to engage with larly surprising and provocative is do go home, and as Lindsey’s latest labor politics and the legacies of the inclusion of Eudora Welty in a book shows, we find that some carry radical aesthetics. group of African American writers home with them wherever they go. Building on scholarship that exam- more explicitly committed to political ines how African American writers action. Although Welty has often James G. Thomas, Jr. interact with the literary left, Taylor disavowed any political leanings in investigates how these authors create her work, Taylor argues that despite a sense of “feeling” in their fiction to the lack of “explicit communist carve a “throughway between radical undertones” in her fiction, the author Labor Pains: New Deal protest and folk traditions.” Such an can nevertheless be placed “along Fictions of Race, Work, affective dimension is crucial, she the spectrum of liberal viewpoints.” argues, because unlike theories of Welty’s Black working-folk characters and Sex in the South representation that often pin working reveal a “deeply empathetic imagi- By Christin Marie Taylor. folk into a narrow category, theo- nation,” and her white characters ries of affect investigate how writers articulate a politics of fear and desire. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, work with feeling to direct readers’ Welty’s fiction communicates the 2019. 232 pages. Cloth: responses: “Where representation “unsettling feelings of racial segre- $99, paperback, $30.00. can be a vehicle for identification gation,” an accomplishment with and truth seeking, affect under- “far-reaching implications for larger scores unknowability, the truth of studies of southern modernism and Labor Pains investigates represen- nontruth, and the facts of nearness.” black radical traditions.” By including tations of African American folk Labor Pains proposes that the writers Welty among the Black radical writers workers in fiction from the 1930s included use an emotional dimen- of Labor Pains, Taylor not only moves to the 1960s, a time stretching from sion to offer a complex sense of the needle of Welty’s literary activism New Deal reforms and Popular Front social and racial subjectivity. further to the left, but she produc- movements to the civil rights era. In a quick survey of previous tively realigns authors within seem- Christin Marie Taylor addresses scholarly treatments of Popular ingly separate literary traditions. how radical Popular Front ideas Front–era literature by Barbara Foley, Some of the authors in Labor and sentiments infuse the fiction Alan Wald, Michael Denning, Paula Pains are firmly located in the writ- of four southern writers: George Rabinowitz, and others, Taylor notes ings of the literary left. William Wylie Henderson’s Ollie Miss (1935), an emphasis on politics but a lack Attaway, originally from Greenville, William Attaway’s Blood on the Forge of attention to “feeling.” An affec- Mississippi, was deeply committed (1941), Eudora Welty’s The Golden tive dimension is present, however, to working-class issues, discourses of Apples (1949) and Sarah E. Wright’s especially in works of the African communism, and left labor politics This Child’s Gonna Live (1969). Taylor American literary tradition pervaded when he met other writers of the

Page 36 Fall 2020 The Southern Register Popular Front, including Richard for failure on multiple agents and Wright and Margaret Walker, in the complicated intersectionalities of Chicago. Attaway’s novel Blood on racism, sexism, and classism. the Forge centers on Black working- Labor Pains traces male and female class men from the South in conflict working-class protagonists in fiction with voracious northern industrial by southern writers with varying power. Scholars posit this novel’s affiliations to leftist labor politics. In proletarian realism and industrial different ways, Henderson, Attaway, steel mill setting as central to debates Welty, and S. Wright all use “the about race and labor representa- power of working folk feeling” to tions. Taylor adds to this discussion move their readers. Their literary by exploring the gender dynamics of strategies range from idyllic folk masculinist competitions grounded pastoral to leftist realism, from in a “steel feeling.” modernism to experimental post- Gender is also the focus in modernism, but as Labor Pains makes the chapter on George Wylie clear these works are permeated Henderson’s little-known novel Ollie by a common politics of feeling for Miss, which is generally not part of the Black working class. Labor Pains a leftist roster of fiction. By high- significantly expands Popular Front lighting Henderson’s experiences scholarship and is rewarding reading urban landscape, as the river runs with Alabama labor politics—espe- specially for students of southern and through metropolitan New Orleans, cially the Tuskegee Institute, share- African American literature. is dense, much of it industrial as well cropper unions, and the historical and linked to its riverside location. context of the New Deal Agricultural Annette Trefzer The plantation houses, remnants of Adjustment Act—Taylor uncovers the a different time, attract a few tourists political roots of a novel featuring but now seem out of place. a female agricultural worker in a Enigmatic Stream: In Enigmatic Stream: Industrial romantic love triangle. Reading Landscapes of the Lower Mississippi the proletarian underpinnings of Industrial Landscapes River, photographer Richard Sexton this plot as supportive of agricul- has tried to make visual sense of this tural work, Taylor argues that the of the Lower Mississippi unusual part of the world. In some Black woman’s field labor does not ways he has succeeded; in others he result in her exploitation or oppres- River has not. The book’s ninety black-and- sion, but, on the contrary, in her Photographs by James Sexton. white photographs relentlessly (and empowerment embedded in the act Essays by Paul Schneider repeatedly) focus on large river- of cultivation. Zora Neale Hurston’s side industrial complexes, some so Their Eyes Were Watching God works and John H. Lawrence. New enormous they almost seem to dwarf as a particularly useful comparison Orleans: The Historic New the river. Many of the images are in this chapter. Readers familiar with Orleans Collection, 2018. strangely beautiful, especially if one Hurston’s novel will certainly need is willing to read them as little more to read Ollie Miss. 137 pages, with 90 black- than documentary proof of human Labor Pains is securely grounded and-white photographs. ingenuity. They also contain, at least in African American literary history $40.00 paperback. to this viewer’s eyes, a looming and and numerous references to works seemingly ignored menace, evidence by Hurston, Hughes, Toomer, of an already accomplished degree Wright, Himes and many others Anyone who has traveled along of corporate intimidation. To be add depth, complexity, and context the Mississippi River from Baton fair, Sexton does gesture at human to the astute analyses of individual Rouge to the Gulf of Mexico knows life along this portion of the river; novels. The final chapter on Sarah the passing landscape to be an odd several pictures include houses made E. Wright’s This Child’s Gonna Live mix of agriculture, industry, and the small by their surroundings, and connects with the contemporary urban, with an occasional antebellum occasionally we see a tiny person. “war on poverty” and signifies on plantation house thrown in. The These images, however, are generally the multiple meanings of a Black agricultural is apparent in vast fields reproduced small (four to a two-page mother’s “labor.” A “black radical of sugar cane, corporate in scope. spread) and lack the visual power of feminist narrative,” this novel decon- The industrial, mostly petroleum- the larger industrial pictures, which structs the trope of the strong Black and/or chemical-related, is hyper- are often single photographs spread working-class mother and lays blame industrial, monumental in scale. The across two facing pages.

The Southern Register Fall 2020 Page 37 The lasting sense the book leaves a new conservatism.” Not that this is one of overly dense compression, happened only in Mississippi. The both in regard to the book itself and state’s white resistance methods are the place depicted. This is a reason- “unique and important, [but] they are able conclusion to draw about the not exceptional.” book; there are simply too many The book briefly reviews share- photographs crammed into a space cropping and Jim Crow, the resis- too small for the pictures to breathe tance to Brown v. Board of Education or for text to explain them. This and the civil rights and voting rights jam-packed quality is not the case struggles before focusing on the with most of the actual riverside War on Poverty, which arrived “into environment, however. The broad a maelstrom of intense poverty, Mississippi River makes it seem grassroots civil rights activism, and spacious, and a frequently bright blue threatened-but-still-powerful white sky sometimes can add a sense of power structures.” US senators John airiness. What is in the air is another Stennis and James Eastland opposed matter, of course, an issue largely the antipoverty programs, as did ignored by Enigmatic Stream. This, I Gov. Paul Johnson who told US think, is the source of the invisible Office of Economic Opportunity menace that seems to hover even in director Sargent Shriver, “Blood the most striking of Sexton’s photo- will flow all over the steps of the graphs. Human achievement, no despite the title’s war being waged Mississippi State Capitol, and it will matter how ingenious or stunning, to free people from destitution. The be on the hands of the OEO, not the cannot occur in a vacuum. No action subtitle, however, clues us that things state of Mississippi.” Such statements lacks consequences. This is why did not turn out well. Indeed the title by politicians supported actions by people living along the Mississippi probably should be The War on the their white constituents. Opponents River, especially between Baton War on Poverty in Mississippi, because fired gunshots into Head Start Rouge and New Orleans (the stretch that is what the book is about. classrooms, burned crosses outside often known as “Cancer Alley”) are Poverty won. Or white supremacy program offices, evicted participants, fifty times more likely than other won, and poverty remains. And and refused credit to supportive busi- Americans to develop cancer. Much Mississippi’s anti-antipoverty nesses. Newspapers painted antipov- of the riverside landscape is impres- struggle went national. erty workers as communists, beat- sive to look at (and photograph), but Pres. Lyndon B. Johnson declared niks, and Black Power advocates, it’s a tough place to live. War on Poverty in 1964. Mississippi, feeding the old southern hatred of whose need was greater than any federal interference. David Wharton other state, got in on it early. But OEO regulations stipulated the resistance from whites, in many boards of directors of antipoverty forms and at many levels, not programs reflect the racial makeup only crippled the antipoverty of their communities and include 30 The War on Poverty effort but set the stage for national percent poor people elected by the in Mississippi: From neoconservatism. community. Whites responded by “This fight against the war on disputing and disrupting the elec- Massive Resistance to poverty served as a template for white tions, and intimidating the represen- resistance and entrenchment, and as tatives who managed to get elected. New Conservatism a way to marginalize black political Some of the more “moderate” whites By Emma J. Folwell. and economic power,” writes Emma realized that this was federal funds Jackson: University Press of J. Folwell, the author of The War on pouring into their needy state, and Poverty in Mississippi: From Massive rather than destroy the programs it Mississippi, 2020. 312 pag- Resistance to New Conservatism and might be smarter to take control of es. $99.00 cloth, $30.00 Fulbright scholar and senior lecturer them. One of their tactics was to get paperback. in history at Newman University in “local responsible people,” i.e. white Birmingham, England. “Many white segregationists, onto the boards. Mississippians forged this resistance The book includes a chapter on This book’s title, along with the into the political, economic, and one white Catholic activist from cover photo of a family peering from social structures of the state, contrib- Natchez: Marjorie Baroni, who grew the doorway of a deteriorating shack, uting to the development of the state’s up in a sharecropper family, married might not suggest a feel-good story, Republican Party and articulating at seventeen to an Italian American

Page 38 Fall 2020 The Southern Register from a sharecropper family, raised Confederate States of America. She later earned a master’s in public six children, and became disgusted “Whether this relationship is purely health on a full scholarship to the at the injustices and lynchings she accidental is subject to conjecture. University of North Carolina and saw. Baroni and her husband were But considering the general situation worked for the South Carolina threatened and ostracized for her in the city and the county in which Department of Health, Education, work with Strategic Training and it is located, it is probably not,” a and Welfare before taking a teaching Redevelopment, a federal antipov- federal OEO official noted. position at Tougaloo College. There erty program sponsored by the While the CSA had middle- she became involved in civil rights Diocese of Natchez-Jackson, the class whites on its board, poor activism and did consulting for the only religious institution in the state whites declined to participate in its US Office of Economic Opportunity to sponsor any such program. The programs like Neighborhood Youth before the appointment as MAP church, however, “was unwilling to Corps, which provided job training director. She did not, however, take be an instrument of racial change to fifteen to twenty-one year olds, for a class-based position or side with at the expense of its white parishio- fear of being treated equally to or the Freedom Democrats in her work ners,” Folwell laments. “This luke- supervised by Blacks. The resulting with Head Start, advocating an warm commitment to pursuing social program mostly placed Black youths “integrative approach,” where Blacks justice and racial goodwill was not in menial jobs in public agencies— would learn from whites. powerful or deep enough to ensure “free janitors and maids,” as Don A campaign against Williams was that STAR challenged the institution- Jackson, a Black counselor in the spearheaded by state Sovereignty alized racism in Mississippi.” program, called it. Jackson was fired Commission director Erle Johnston, Although the Ku Klux Klan was a for his efforts to protect the trainees. a former newspaper editor and PR brutal part of the state’s resistance, it They responded with a sit-in at the person for Mississippi politicians. was not as prevalent in Mississippi as director’s office demanding Jackson’s Johnston had a “limited acceptance in some other states, and some large rehiring, better pay and better of Head Start,” based on the idea areas of Mississippi, including the working conditions, and the end of that it would teach Black children Delta, were Klan-free (the southwest abuse by white supervisors. They “hygiene, cleanliness, and concern corner and Neshoba and neigh- were arrested and jailed. for one another.” He did not like boring counties were Mississippi’s Another chapter is devoted Williams’s ideas about grassroots Klan strongholds). However, there to Helen Bass Williams, a Black involvement and considered her a was so much violent suppression woman who in 1967 became execu- threat to white control of the anti- without the Klan that they were not tive director of Mississippi Action poverty efforts. “Johnston initiated as necessary to the resistance. FBI for Progress, the state’s largest a relentless campaign to secure efforts weakened the Mississippi Head Start program. Coming in the Williams’s dismissal,” with smears Klan to some extent, but there was wake of the Mississippi Freedom and accusations about her leader- a resurgence in 1967 to oppose the Democratic Party fiasco at the ship, conduct, and morals. She War on Poverty. White employees convention, an aide to President also suffered threats of violence of Mississippi Action for Progress, Johnson attempted to create a and harassment, including being a $3 million biracial Head Start moderate, integrated board to attacked by four white men who spat program, were among the victims oversee the new program. Activist into her mouth. By 1968 Johnston’s of the new wave of Klan violence. Fannie Lou Hamer, however, accomplice on the MAP board, Fear of such violence often brought was among those not fooled. She Owen Cooper, stripped Williams white communities and authorities described the board as “a few of power. After being demoted, into compliance with Klan goals. middle-class bourgeoisie and some Williams resigned and took a job as And as antipoverty programs came of the Uncle Toms who couldn’t care the first African American professor under white control, they became less” turning the War on Poverty at Purdue University. Folwell notes “one of the mechanisms used by into “a war on us.” Other activ- that the Sovereignty Commission white Mississippians to control the ists likened it to a plantation and was “evolving in response to the nature of race relations and the pace called for demonstrations against racial realities of Mississippi in 1968. of black advancement, obviating the the new program. Folwell neverthe- No longer orchestrating suprema- need for Klan violence.” less calls it “a remarkable feat” that cist violence, the commission was When a white-controlled group an African American woman was now focusing on character assassi- got the governor’s nod over an named its director. nation” while helping turn antipov- integrated group to run antipoverty Williams had grown up in a tiny erty programs “into a mechanism of programs in Jackson, it named itself Illinois mining community, went white control.” Community Services Association, to college and became a teacher, That fall, Republican Richard which had the same acronym, married a doctor and helped him Nixon became US president. He familiar to all southerners, as the with his practice besides teaching. did not dismantle the Office of

The Southern Register Fall 2020 Page 39 Economic Opportunity, deciding it to their political rights as the outside was “politically impossible” to do support for civil rights and for so. Instead, he appointed Daniel southern blacks diminished.” Moynihan as Counselor for Urban The fight against the War Affairs. Moynihan had been an on Poverty thus gave white architect of antipoverty programs, Mississippians “a conservatism that but by then he was a critic whose had national resonance.” It conflated writings influenced later neocon- racism, classism, anti-welfare-ism, servatives. As new head of OEO, anticommunism, pro-Americanism, Nixon appointed Donald Rumsfeld, and the supposed meritocracy. Later, whom he described as a “ruthless when Pres. Ronald Reagan and Gov. little bastard.” That appointment, Kirk Fordice blew dog whistles, Folwell notes, “signaled the fate of “white Mississippians knew exactly the war on poverty” as Nixon and what they were hearing. It was a Rumsfeld “quietly undermined anti- language of their own.” poverty programs at the local level.” After Nixon’s re-election he In some cases, white Republicans proceeded to dismantle OEO. By got involved in antipoverty the time of Reagan’s rise, the ideas programs in Mississippi, to tap of Mississippi’s White Citizens’ into money that was not controlled Council had become mainstream by the state Democratic Party. In conservative, in Reagan’s references Lauderdale County—notable for to Cadillac-driving welfare queens University of Mississippi—provides its high number of church burn- “whose race was never mentioned, the straightforward insights expected ings—Republican Gil Carmichael, but never in question.” In 1992 such by those who have read his work or who would later serve in the Bush ideas helped make Fordice the state’s seen his paintings. Rich in reference administration, helped create and first Republican governor in more to the natural world, from an eclipse develop the local antipoverty than a century. to a bird-eating spider, most poems program, working alongside Black More than fifty years after the war from his fourth collection are acces- board chairman Charles L. Young. against the War on Poverty, we see sible without the benefit of commen- Despite such Republican attempts the fringe ideas of that era turned tary, including his own. For example, to gain money and influence, in even harsher and more mainstream repeated allusions to autumn, general conservative Mississippians conservative, relabeled “Make especially toward the end of the opposed the war on poverty “as a America Great Again.” “What great book, are consonant with the deaths target around which opponents of society?” reads a Klan flier from the of family members and friends liberalism racial integration and 1960s quoted in the book. “It appears throughout. The poem “Salvia” big government could unite.” They to be a society of homosexuals, rack- points to a reconciliation motif by learned to avoid mentioning race but eteers, socialists, and Communists. noting that the flowers “finally” describe the programs “as un-Amer- We don’t want any great society, we planted “together” by father and son ican—against God, freedom, and are damn well satisfied with the ‘old derive their name from the Latin independence.” They threw in “fears time Americanism.’” salvere, or “to heal.” As Wilkinson of an overweening federal govern- reminds his interviewer, nature ment, the threat of communism, and Steve Cheseborough (whether autumnal shadows or the spread of immorality.” summer salvia) is an “endless source A significant part of the War on of ever relevant metaphor.” Less Poverty was the idea of community World without End: Poems obvious, perhaps, is the extent to action, redistributing power “from which every poem in World without city halls to the poor—or at least, By Claude Wilkinson. Eugene, End is “haunted by its own broken to nonprofit organizations repre- OR: Slant Books, 2020. 86 Edenic bond.” Thus, the landscapes senting the poor.” But the 1967 of Wilkinson’s visible world invari- Green Amendment, introduced by pages. $27.00 cloth, $12.00 ably speak to a deeper reality. The US Rep. Edith Green (D-Oregon), paperback, $9.99 eBook. book’s “overarching theme,” he says, required community action boards is “the seemingly infinite spiritual to be designated by local elected offi- implications woven throughout our cials. Nixon and Rumsfeld used the Interviewed by his publisher at experiences of the natural world.” amendment to strip the poor of their the Slant Books website, Claude Epigraphs from the Book of say. They closed “the last avenue for Wilkinson—the first poet selected as Genesis and the Mississippi author African Americans to give meaning Grisham writer-in-residence at the and artist Walter Anderson introduce

Page 40 Fall 2020 The Southern Register this interweaving of nature and spirit of miles away,” the poet faces the or embraces upbringing to do with at the start of the collection. The “unbearable truth / that none of this religion, it’s always wrestled with. title poem comes at the end of the would tarry”: neither the porter nor [Flannery] O’Connor’s characters book; but “World without End” and himself, “nor even the young of the never escape it, and neither do we.” World without End both resist conclu- hawk / back home” (birds that were The wrestling is evident in “Lenten,” sion. Recalling a train ride on trestles still in their eggs before the poet left where the poet admits that, on over the green gorges of Wales, for Wales). The burden of inevi- “many a Sunday morning,” he has this final poem evokes a familiar table loss is lightened, however, by wondered if it would be better to trope of life as a precarious journey. the assurance of the volume’s final be a rabbit, a robin, or some other Mortality intensifies when the train words: “yet everything goes on.” “supposed soulless form of life.” approaches a tunnel, and “an ironic Wilkinson’s title for World without Now, “just a month out / from the porter emerged” to announce, End is also a closing phrase; his full brightness of Easter,” he finds “Refreshments . . . / refreshments . . source is the “Gloria Patri,” or “Glory himself “at times only half believing . refreshments,” while “looking and Be to the Father,” a Christian hymn / though this close to the cherry sounding / more dead than alive.” In that praises God as Father, Son, and orchards / and dogwoods blooming.” one long sentence spread over twelve Holy Ghost: “As it was in the begin- Doubts are expressed more play- lines, the porter’s emergence spans ning, is now, and ever shall be: world fully in a poem titled “Driving Home life and death, past and present, without end. Amen.” In his essay for while Thinking of a Sermon I Had hunger and the promise of relief. Southern Writers on Writing (edited by Just Heard on How God Even Looks The “Edenic bond” does seem to be Susan Cushman, 2018), Wilkinson after All the Animals Too When a broken; and the poet tries to imagine says that spirituality—more than Butterfly Collides with My Car’s the old man “young again,” with a diction or even setting—is “a litmus Windshield.” In the middle stanza, bride in a rose-garlanded “begin- test” of “southernness in my poems” the poet admits that “my butterfly / ner’s cottage”—a “halcyon time” and in much other poetry from the wasn’t a monarch / with stained glass that “passed like a breath into this.” South. He explains: “Whether a wings”; yet, he questions: “wasn’t its Far from his own home, “thousands true southerner opposes, straddles, fragile beauty / enough for sparing,

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The Southern Register Fall 2020 Page 41 / if simply for its fragility?” Fragility and beauty are frequently paired in World without End. Two of the most dramatic cases are the mental fragility of artists in “Walter CONTRIBUTORS Anderson Regrets Killing a Sea Turtle” and “Vincent’s Katherine Aberle is a graduate of the Southern Studies Flowers.” The “broken Edenic bond” is shockingly MA program and a current student in the Southern manifest in the contrast between “unintelligible Whitfield Studies MFA in Documentary Expression program. sounds” (the asylum where Anderson was hospitalized) and “the thunder and sunsets / of Horn Island para- Brett J. Bonner is editor of Living Blues. dise” (the Mississippi coastal island that inspired some of William Boyle is the author of the novels Gravesend, The Anderson’s most brilliant work). The “cleansing surf / of Lonely Witness, A Friend Is a Gift You Give Yourself, and City turquoise tide” and the “iridescence of hummingbirds” of Margins, and a story collection, Death Don’t Have No cannot undo the “thoughtless, human moment” when Mercy. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi. Anderson crushed a turtle’s “inconsolable carapace”; and the “sin returns again and again / and again” in the artist’s Steve Cheseborough is an independent scholar, blues tortured nightmares of his victim’s “Blakean” gaze. musician, and Southern Studies MA graduate. His work Similarly, “Vincent’s Flowers” presents the delicate has been published in Living Blues, Blues Access, Mississippi, beauty and the dark madness of Vincent Van Gogh, and the Southern Register. for whom “revelations came and returned / in bursts of J. B. Clark writes for the University of Mississippi ecstasy and despair.” A vivid immersion in the artist’s life Communications. and work, this ekphrastic poem translates several of Van Rebecca Lauck Cleary is the Center’s communica- Gogh’s paintings into verses artfully spaced across seven tions specialist. She received a BA in journalism from the pages. At some points, Wilkinson links Van Gogh’s words University of Mississippi and her MA in Southern Studies. with images from his paintings; for example, “‘More like music . . . less like sculpture’ / in motifs of cornflowers and Joan Wylie Hall is a lecturer in the English Department chrysanthemums, heliotrope and roses, / poppies and gera- at the University of Mississippi. She is the author of Shirley niums.” On a smaller scale, Wilkinson takes this approach Jackson: Studies in Short Fiction and the editor of Conversations in a one-page poem, “In the Beginning, Audubon,” where with Audre Lorde and Conversations with Natasha Trethewey. he quotes the artist’s metaphor for hummingbirds as Her work has also been published in numerous journals “glittering fragments of rainbows” and then explains the such as Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers, Mississippi process by which Audubon transformed nature into art. Quarterly, Faulkner Journal, and the Eudora Welty Review. Birds appear almost as often in Wilkinson’s poetry as they Amanda Malloy received her MA in Southern Studies do in Audubon’s paintings; for the poet, their song is as from the University of Mississippi, focusing on southern important as their appearance. In the poem “Duet,” for photography. During this time she completed an assistant- instance, the “synchronous antiphony” of male and female ship with the University of Mississippi Museum. She is wrens in Ecuador is “such an Edenic bond.” currently the visual arts editor of Mississippi Folklife. In his essay for Southern Writers on Writing, Wilkinson Andrea Morales is a Southern Documentary Project cites music in second place only to spirituality as a mark producer, a photographer, and a current Southern Studies of southern poetry, adding that blues and spirituals are MFA in Documentary Expression student. among his favorite genres. In the poem “Snow,” his taste ranges from Shostakovich to the Clinch Mountain Boys Katie McKee is the Director of the Center for the Study and Blind Lemon Jefferson; and the poem ends with a of Southern Culture and McMullan Professor of Southern gathering of “misty little songbirds.” Framed in these Studies and English. musical harmonies, “Snow” memorializes the poet’s Annette Trefzer is associate professor of English at the mother, who died in winter but is identified with “our University of Mississippi. She is the author of Disturbing summer’s beefy, / red tomatoes cooled with evening Indians: The Archaeology of Southern Fiction and coeditor of four shade, / beautifully sliced and plated the way she did.” At volumes in the Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Series for the the Slant Books website, Wilkinson says: “Foremost, I want University Press of Mississippi. my writing to be worthy of genuine poetry’s rich tradition, which to my mind entails the language being accessible, James G. Thomas, Jr. is the Center’s associate director for meaningful, uplifting in some way, and rhythmically beau- publications and editor of the Southern Register. tiful.” Faced with snow and death, Wilkinson nevertheless Jay Watson is Howry Professor of Faulkner Studies at the hears music and remembers the essence of summer. University of Mississippi and the director of the Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference. Joan Wylie Hall David Wharton is the Center’s director of documentary studies and assistant professor of Southern Studies.

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