In Thank You Please Come Again: How Gas Stations Feed and Fuel the American South, photojournalist Kate Medley road trips across the South, documenting the evolving service stations, convenience stores, and quick stops of the region. Along the way, she pulls over for the tamales, fried fish, and banh mi at venues both familiar and indispensable. Kate’s images uncover complex landmarks that supply far more than food and gas for locals and travelers. In what feels like an ever-more-divided America, these gathering spaces provide unexpected community, generosity, labor, and creativity.
Kate Medley is a visual journalist based in North Carolina, whose work across the American South focuses on storytelling and environmental portraiture, often exploring issues of social justice and the shifting politics of this region. Medley’s roots are in Mississippi, where she has investigated civil rights–era cold cases, covered the devastating impacts of Hurricane Katrina, and explored the cultural relevance of hot tamales and Koolicles in the Mississippi Delta. In addition to her editorial work, Medley spent ten years leading brand storytelling at Whole Foods Market and is the founder of Medley Media, a documentary and commercial production company.
During this gallery walk, Southern Studies alumna Kate Medley will talk about the inspiration behind this project and her work as a visual journalist.
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 5, NOON
Barnard Observatory
“Telling Richer Stories: Enhancing Interpretation at the Two Mississippi Museums and MDAH”
Michael Morris
Michael Morris will discuss efforts to
SouthTalks • Fall 2025
SouthTalks is a series of events (including lectures, performances, film screenings, and panel discussions) that explores the interdisciplinary nature of Southern Studies. Unless otherwise noted, this series is free, open to the public, and takes place in the Tupelo Room of Barnard Observatory (255 Grove Loop). Visit the Center’s website for up-to-date information about all Center events.
During the 2025–26 academic year, the Center for the Study of Southern Culture’s programming centers on “Reading the South.” Invited speakers will complicate both parts of that theme: “reading” and “the South.” Literally, we read the written word, but texts also encompass landscapes and various media, including music, historical artifacts, films, maps, and art. “The South” itself is variously defined, not neatly limited by geography or experience. Events in this series will encourage us to “read” broadly in order to explore and widen what we mean by “South.”
If you require special assistance relating to a disability, please contact Afton Thomas at amthoma4@olemiss.edu or call 662-915-5993.
expand interpretation at the Two Mississippi Museums (the Museum of Mississippi History and the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum) and how the work is influencing the future interpretive experience of other museum sites administered by the Mississippi Department of Archives and History (MDAH). A Jackson, Mississippi, native, Michael Morris has served as the director of the Two Mississippi Museums since 2023. Prior to working at the Two Museums, he served in several roles during his eight years at the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. Morris earned his BA in history and MA in political science from Jackson State University, where he worked at the Margaret Walker Center and the Fannie Lou Hamer Institute on Citizenship and Democracy. Morris completed the Southeastern Museums Conference’s Leadership Institute, has written text for Mississippi Freedom Trail markers, and was the Mississippi archivist for the Our Story, Our Terms civil rights project at Duke University.
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, NOON
Barnard Observatory
The Charlie Cox Collection: Glass-Plate Images of Benton County from the Early 1900s
Joe W. Moody and Judy Cox Andrews
The Charlie Cox Collection: Glass-Plate Images of Benton County from the Early 1900s is an exhibit that showcases the work of photographer Charlie Cox in the early years of the twentieth century. The medium is glass-plate photography and depicts a wide variety of subjects, from portraits of members of the community to farm animals to images of labor and landmarks. During this SouthTalk, we
Kate Medley
Morris
Joe Moody
will hear from the exhibit’s curator, Joe W. Moody, and Charlie Cox’s granddaughter, Judy Cox Andrews.
Joe W. Moody is the audio-visual librarian and an assistant professor for the University of Mississippi’s Department of Archives and Special Collections. He specializes in the digitization and processing of audio and visual material. Judy Cox Andrews is a native of Benton County, Mississippi. A retired professional photographer, she is a graduate of Ashland High School and Mississippi State College for Women.
See pages 16 and 17 for more on this exhibition.
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 4:00 P.M.
Barnard Observatory
The American Revolution Panel Discussion
In partnership with Mississippi Public Broadcasting, the Center for the Study of Southern Culture will screen an extended trailer of The American Revolution. A panel discussion comprised of University of Mississippi faculty will follow the thirty-minute film.
The American Revolution is a six-part, twelve-hour series, directed by Ken Burns, Sarah Botstein, and David Schmidt, about the people who lived through America’s founding struggle, their experiences over eight difficult years of wartime, and how they created a new nation, the United States of America, where the people themselves would hold the power. “From a small spark kindled in America,” Thomas Paine wrote, “a flame has arisen not to be extinguished.”
The series will air over six consecutive nights in late fall 2025. That year marks the 250th anniversary of the start of the war, and 2026 will be celebrated nationwide as the anniversary of American Independence.
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, NOON
Barnard Observatory
“Queer Activism at the Margins”
Jessica Scott
This talk “reads the South” by positioning the global North location of the US South next to the global South location of South Africa. Intersecting realities of race, class, gender, language, and religion shape queer and trans lives in both places. Geographies that are separated by borders are often considered distinct in their histories and culture yet can
share historical currents that shape the lives of people living within their constructed boundaries. This talk is interested in queer and trans shared realities that translate into powerful activist work that, though underfunded and at the margins, remains transformative.
Jessica Scott is associate professor of gender studies at West Virginia Wesleyan College and author of Home Is Where Your Politics Are. Scott’s primary interest is in the spatial politics of sexuality, which has led to a lifelong preoccupation with what it is like to live in different places, West Virginia and South Africa in particular. Scott is the cofounder of the Center for Restorative Justice at West Virginia Wesleyan College.
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 6:00 P.M.
Overby Center Auditorium
VISITING DOCUMENTARIAN SERIES
Screening of King Coal + Q&A with Director
Elaine McMillion Sheldon
Elaine McMillion Sheldon is one of the Center’s visiting documentarians this spring. She will screen her film King Coal
A lyrical tapestry of a place and people, King Coal meditates on the complex history and future of the coal industry, the communities it has shaped, and the myths it has created. While situated in the communities under the reign of King Coal, the film transcends time and place, emphasizing how all are connected through an immersive mosaic of belonging, ritual, and imagination. Emerging from the long shadows of the coal mines, King Coal untangles the pain from the beauty and illuminates the innately human capacity for change.
Sheldon is an Academy Award–nominated and Emmy and Peabody Award–winning documentary filmmaker based in West Virginia. Known for her intimate, nuanced portrayals of rural communities, she brings an honest, humanizing lens to stories often overlooked by mainstream media. With King Coal, Sheldon continues her exploration of Appalachian culture, drawing audiences into the heart of coal country to see a world beyond stereotypes and headlines.
This Visiting Documentarian Series is made possible in part by the Berkley Hudson Visiting Documentarian Fund.
Judy Cox Andrews COURTESY JUDY COX ANDREWS
Jessica Scott
COURTESY JESSICA SCOTT
Elaine McMillion
Sheldon
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 7, 6:00 P.M.
David H. Nutt Auditorium
Gilder-Jordan Lecture in Southern Cultural History
Annette Gordon-Reed
Annette Gordon-Reed
Annette Gordon-Reed will deliver the Gilder-Jordan Lecture in Southern Cultural History this year. Gordon-Reed is the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard University. She is recipient of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, both for The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family She is the author of six books and editor of two. She was the Vyvyan Harmsworth Visiting Professor of American History at the University of Oxford (the Queen’s College) 2014–15 and was appointed an honorary fellow at the Queen’s College in 2021. Gordon-Reed served as the 2018–2019 president of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic and is currently president of the Organization of American Historians. Her honors include fellowships from the Guggenheim and MacArthur Foundations, and the National Humanities Medal. The Gilder-Jordan Lecture is a partnership with the Department of History, the African American Studies Program, and the Center for Civil War Research. Her latest book is the bestselling On Juneteenth
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 9, 5:30 P.M.
Barnard Observatory
In the Year of the Quiet Sun, Film Screening and Talkback
Adetayo Alabi, Vanessa Charlot, and Richard Purcell
The Otollith Group’s film, In the Year of the Sun, takes its name from the solar phenomenon that occurs every eleven years when the sun’s surface cools enough to allow observatories to study solar activity. In this film, the astronomical time of the quiet sun converges with the political calendar of conferences that took place in cities such as Bandung, Cairo, Belgrade, Accra, Addis Ababa, Saniquelle, and Casablanca throughout the 1950s and 1960s, when politicians, activists and journalists gathered to debate and plan the continental program of Pan Africanist policy. Please join us for a screening of In the Year of the Quiet Sun and stay for a moderated conversation and Q&A featuring University of Mississippi faculty.
Adetayo Alabi is a scholar and literary critic with extensive teaching, research, and administrative experience in the United States, Canada, and Nigeria. He is the author of numerous publications, including Oral Forms of Nigerian Autobiography and Life Stories. Vanessa Charlot is a documentary photographer, filmmaker, and UM professor whose work explores the intersections of race, spirituality, politics, and the visual archive within communities of the African diaspora.
COURTESY ANNETTE
GORDON-REED
Rich Purcell is a researcher, writer, and teacher whose work focuses on the relationship between race, value, and labor in contemporary American art, literature, and media.
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 14, 5:30 P.M.
Barnard Observatory
Extractivism
Jazmin Miller Wilson and Anya Groner
Extractivism is an interactive exhibit that contrasts survival and extraction along the Mississippi River. Scenes from Jazmin Miller Wilson’s upcoming documentary, Jonesland, about Black land ownership, survival, and ecological legacy, will be shown in the Gammill Gallery. QR codes placed throughout the space will allow visitors to use smartphones to listen to recordings of local residents, activists, and researchers discussing the history of extractive economies in Louisiana’s Cancer Alley.
Jazmin Miller Wilson is a director, lecturer, and filmmaker. She has also conducted extensive biographical research on Sojourner Truth and wrote a one-woman play on her life, Journey of Truth, which has been performed across the United States, Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Wilson holds an MFA in theatre direction from the University of Memphis and a BA in theatre from Rhodes. Anya Groner’s writing explores the changing environment’s impact on community and equity in the US South. Her journalism and essays are featured in The Guardian, Oxford American, Orion Magazine, and The Atlantic. Her audio reporting can be heard on Monument Lab’s podcast Plot of Land, the Gravy podcast, and WWNO/WRKF’s Sea Change podcast. She lives in Richmond, Virginia.
During this gallery walk, the curators of the Extractivism exhibit, Wilson and Groner, will speak about the creation of the project and be available for Q&A.
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 15, NOON Barnard Observatory
Cipher: Decoding My Ancestor’s Scandalous Secret Diaries
Jeremy B. Jones
Author Jeremy B. Jones will read from and discuss his new book Cipher: Decoding My Ancestor’s Scandalous Secret Diaries. From 1808 to 1859, farmer and teacher William Thomas Prestwood logged his life in an invented secret code, tracking bird migrations, love affairs, and science experiments from the South Carolina lowlands to the North Carolina mountains. Bookended by the American Revolution and the Civil War, his recorded life captures all the beauty and terror of America in its infancy. More than a hundred years later, his handmade notebooks were discovered in an abandoned house and deciphered
Jeremy B. Jones MARK LEET
and transcribed by a retired National Security Agency cryptanalyst, leaving Jeremy Jones, the great-great-greatgreat-grandson of the diarist, to wonder what this curious man’s life might reveal about life today.
Jeremy B. Jones is the author of two nonfiction books: Cipher and Bearwallow: A Personal History of a Mountain Homeland. His essays appear in Oxford American, The Bitter Southerner, Garden & Gun, and Longreads, among others, and he serves as series coeditor of In Place, a nonfiction book series from West Virginia University Press. He is a professor of English studies at Western Carolina University in his native North Carolina.
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 21, 5:30 P.M.
Barnard Observatory
Tenth Anniversary of SarahFest, in partnership with the Sarah Isom Center
Jon Langford and Jim Sherradan
Visual artist and musician and 2025 Sarahfest artist-in-residence Jon Langford and master printer Jim Sherraden will be in conversation about their individual artwork and collaborations together. Sherraden led Nashville’s famous Hatch Show Print letterpress shop for three decades before retiring in 2018. It will be a night of art, music, food, and conversation with two artists whose first collaborative moment sprang from Langford’s time as the Country Music Hall of Fame’s first visiting artist.
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 22, NOON
Barnard Observatory
“The Park That Was a Prison: Reading the Landscape in Late Twentieth-Century Memphis”
Becky Marchiel
From the late 1960s to the 1980s, Shelby Farms in Memphis, Tennessee, transformed from one of the region’s largest penal farms into a major urban park, revealing deep tensions over land use, memory, and community priorities in the process. During the transition from penal farm to park, stakeholders, including government officials, developers, and activists, brought competing visions for the land—some that centered economic development and others that prioritized environmental protection. Reading the various plans that Memphians had for this particular southern landscape reveals that those who plotted the site’s future ignored its carceral past, avoiding a reckoning with the role that Shelby Farms played in deepening race- and class-based inequality in the city.
Becky Marchiel is an associate professor of history at the University of Mississippi who researches urban history and political economy in the United States. Her first book, After Redlining, was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2020. Her work has been published in the Mississippi Free Press and The Washington Post, and she was the recipient of a fellowship from Harvard’s Charles Warren Center in 2015. The research for this SouthTalk comes out of a set of articles she is writing on urban redevelopment in Memphis in the late twentieth century.
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 12, NOON
Barnard Observatory
“Greenfield Farm: From Faulkner’s Mule Farm to Mississippi’s Writers Residency”
Jim Gulley and John T. Edge
This SouthTalk will be an overview of the history of Greenfield Farm from the time of the Choctaws until Faulkner purchased the property in 1938. Gulley and Edge will explain why Faulkner bought the farm, what happened there during his ownership, and how Greenfield influenced his writing. It will conclude with what happened to the property after Faulkner’s death in 1962 and how the University of Mississippi came to own a portion of it.
Jim Gulley is a native Mississippian who retired from the Coca-Cola Company in 2018 after twenty-eight years with the company. In 2020, he embarked on a second career in academia, earning an MA in history from the University of Mississippi in 2023 and beginning a doctoral program in history from Southern Methodist University later that year. John T. Edge serves as writerin-residence in the Department of Writing and Rhetoric and directs the Mississippi Lab, where he leads the development of Greenfield Farm Writers Residency. His latest book is a memoir—House of Smoke: A Southerner Goes Searching for Home. In 2022, Edge appointed Gulley as the research fellow for the Greenfield Farm Writers Residency project.
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 5, 6:00 P.M.
Barnard Observatory
Fall Documentary Showcase
The Fall Documentary Showcase highlights the work of students enrolled in Southern Studies documentary classes. Each artist will present their work, and attendees can interact with the artists and view their projects during a reception.
Becky Marchiel
COURTESY BECKY MARCHIEL
Jim Gulley
John T. Edge
New Voices of the South
Meet the 2025 Southern Studies MA and MFA Students
From cat-loving truck owners to tattoo collectors, globe-trotters, and fish keepers, this year’s incoming Southern Studies MA and MFA students bring with them an eclectic mix of experiences, passions, and curiosities about the region they now call home. Hailing from Mississippi to Ghana, Texas to Georgia, and everywhere in between, they share a commitment to exploring the South through history, culture, food, art, and community—while adding their own voices to the conversation. Whether they’re diving into documentary work, chasing stories of women’s education, studying the parallels between southern and West African traditions, or just learning how to keep a thumb out of a photograph, these new faces are ready to make their mark.
Amanzi Dowdy is originally from Memphis, Tennessee, he earned his BA in music theory and composition from the University of Memphis. He is primarily interested in studying Black American religious institutions, the artistic output of the Mississippi Delta, and queer communities in the Midsouth. Dowdy is a multi-disciplinary artist: “The freedom to explore coursework in a range of focuses definitely appealed to me,” he said. “Also, as I’ve become more enamored with the South and the stories therein, a program specifically centered on the region felt like a great fit.” He looks forward to working under W. Ralph Eubanks
and hopes to study with Jodi Skipper. He has visited Oxford many times over the years, but he’d like to “learn more about the everyday people in Mississippi communities, eat great food, and find the hidden gems and holein-the-wall spaces.” He collects refrigerator magnets, rare books, and Black memorabilia.
Ayana Jones, originally from Philadelphia, Mississippi, earned a BA in history from Jackson State University and is interested in studying historical preservation. “I love the South and have been blessed to cultivate a chosen family/ community in places like Amory, Morton, and Laurel,” she said. “I look forward to building more community.” She looks forward to doing her own research and making connections in the UM archives, in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, and in the Department of Social Work. Jones loves to kayak and has what she calls a “mild” training in ballet and tap.
Maggie Jones, originally from Atlanta, attended Agnes Scott College for her undergraduate degree. She plans on studying the history of women’s education in Mississippi, looking specifically at the Mississippi University for Women. “My advisor at Agnes Scott, Dr. Robin Morris, received an
Amanzi Dowdy
Ayana Jones
MA in Southern Studies from UM, and when I ran out of classes to take on the South, I realized I needed to follow in her footsteps,” Jones said. “I studied the South through the lens of history in undergrad, so I’m also excited to take courses on oral history and southern foodways, and to take a more interdisciplinary approach to the study of the South.” Her fun fact: Whenever she travels somewhere new, she gets a tattoo.
drawn to the program because of its diverse and interdisciplinary nature. Also, the research areas of faculty have been a motivation to join the program.” Owusu looks especially forward to working with Jodi Skipper. “Outside the classroom, I would want to visit recreational centres, museums, and other sites of history,” she said.
Matilda Owusu is from Ghana, West Africa, and did her undergrad work in Ghana at St. Louis College of Education, with her diploma being awarded by University of Cape Coast, Ghana. “I would like to explore the culture and hospitality, the food, the religion, and the interconnectedness these have with that of Ghana,” Owusu said. “Specifically, I am
Merritt Tompkins, originally from Destrehan, Louisiana, completed her BA in Southern Studies with a double minor in intelligence and security studies and global security studies in May 2025. “I missed out on taking a foodways class in undergrad, so that is at the top of the list right now. More specifically, though, I want to dive into the South and the environment,” Tompkins said. “I am most interested in working with any professor who can teach me to take a good picture. I am hoping to include photography in future projects and currently struggle to keep my thumb out of pictures I take.” Outside of the classroom, she hopes to take advantage of the state parks in North Mississippi. “It will be nice to head out of town on a busy Saturday and go hang out in nature,” she said. Merritt loves her cat, Jonesy, and she bought an old truck this summer that she named Debra.
Sela Ricketts , a Greenwood native, starts the MFA program this fall after finishing her MA in Southern Studies this summer. She also has a BS in integrated marketing communications from the University of Mississippi. “I’m interested in studying photography, tourism, and the paranormal South, and I want to gain a
Maggie Jones
Matilda Owusu
Merritt Tompkins
deeper understanding of my southern identity and what roles photography and new media can play in not just my identity but any other identity,” Ricketts said. She is interested in studying with her thesis advisor, Shiraz Ahmed. “I have an overall goal of documenting and sharing the Mississippi Delta and what it has to offer,” she said. A fun fact about her is that she’s a fish keeper.
Deja Samuel is originally from Hattiesburg and previously earned a BA in art with a minor in theatre from the University of Mississippi. “I’m pursuing the MA/MFA documentary track, with a focus on the origins of documentary practice in the South—particularly how it intersects with foodways, queerness, spirituality, and our relationship to the land,” Samuel said. “Where better to study the South than in the heart of it? I was also drawn to the documentary track—especially as a photographer looking to expand how
I tell stories and engage with southern narratives in a more dynamic, multidisciplinary way.” Samuel is looking forward to learning from a variety of voices and perspectives, and is a musician who is preparing to release a debut album. “I plan to keep nurturing the communities I’ve become part of and to continue building new connections rooted in creativity, mutual care, and collaboration.”
Cody Stickels is originally from Texas but attended New York University’s film program and earned an MA from their Gallatin Individualized Study program. “I was drawn to the MFA in documentary expression program as a chance to return to the South after living in NYC for thirteen years and LA for two,” Stickels said. “It just felt like the right place to keep growing my documentary and advocacy work. The MFA program seems like a close-knit and intimate community, which was one of the things that really drew me to it.” Outside of the classroom, he plans on exploring Oxford and the surrounding area, taking trips to Memphis, eating copious amounts of BBQ, and hopefully taking some horseback riding lessons. “A fun fact about me is that I love board games! I’m into everything from classics like Monopoly and Settlers of Catan to modern games like Avalon, plus I enjoy D&D and video games too,” he said.
We are also welcoming Nia Brooks and Janelle Minor to the MA program, and several others will begin part-time MFA work.
Sela Ricketts
Deja Samuel
Cody Stickels
A Message from Dr. X
Xavier Sivels Welcomes
Incoming and Returning Undergrads
Most people hate to see the summer go. Here, at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, we are excited for what always proves to be the start of a phenomenal school year! It gives me pleasure to have the opportunity to write a few lines in this issue of The Southern Register.
First, I want to extend a warm welcome to our sixty-six incoming Southern Studies majors. I encourage you to take advantage of all that the Center has to offer. As majors, you have prime access to unique courses taught by our distinguished professors. When you are not busy with classes, the Center also offers a range of programming throughout the semester— SouthTalks, the annual Barnard Barbecue, Southern Studies Cinema, and the Oxford Conference for the Book, to name a few. Having met many of you, especially our forty-nine firstsemester freshmen, I’m confident each of you possesses what it takes to excel at the University of Mississippi. Coming from states like Georgia, Tennessee, and Kentucky, this will be the first time away from home for most of you. During your four years here in Oxford, you’ll make plenty of friends and even more memories. However, if you can find the time, I hope that each of you finds just a little piece of yourself in Barnard.
To our returning students, I wish you much success for yet another year here. As seasoned veterans of the Center, each of you embodies our stated commitment to critical inquiry into the American South. Continue to apply yourselves academically. At the same time, make sure you have some fun, too. With that in mind, I encourage you to also see the Center’s role in your social development. Need a place to study? Come to Barnard. Want to
see some cool art? Come to Barnard. Trying to find a place for your group of friends to meet? Come to Barnard.
At the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, people truly do enliven our mission. In two years, we will celebrate half a century of perfecting our stated commitment to “document, interpret, and teach about the US South through critical research and public engagement.” It is my hope that all people—students, faculty, staff, and the general public—continue to see the Center as a resource for meaningful and honest intellectual engagement. Over the last five years,
undergraduate enrollment has swelled from a little over a dozen to almost three hundred active majors. I say to all Southern Studies majors: You are shining examples of the importance of the academic work the Center does. Here’s to a great year and a growing academic program!
Each May, Southern Studies graduates return to Barnard Observatory to celebrate their achievements on Graduation Day. Pictured here are nine of our undergraduate graduates from last spring. One day, this could be you!
Proud Larry’s Owners Support Center Projects
Caradine Gift Funds Mississippi Encyclopedia, Film Residency, Graduate Stipends, and More
Enjoying a Proud Larry’s burger and fries while listening to a live local band play is a quintessential Oxford experience. A gift from Scott and Lisa Caradine, who opened the restaurant and music venue in 1993, promises to help document and preserve such iconic southern experiences.
“Our livelihood has revolved around the culture of the South in Oxford, Mississippi, and we understand the importance of that surviving,” Scott Caradine said. “We have had a lifelong commitment to the fundamentals of Southern Studies in areas of food and music.”
“This is the lead gift in supporting the Center at 50 Fund, which will help us celebrate and take stock of the role the Center has played in the study of regional culture,” said Center director Katie McKee. “This gift is delightful any way you look at it, but especially delightful because it comes from friends.” The Caradines’ gift will support several projects at the Center and Southern Foodways Alliance. The Center will celebrate its fiftieth anniversary in 2027.
The Caradines, University of Mississippi alumni who met while taking a military science class, share the experience of attending UM with several of their family members, including Scott’s dad, Emmett Everett Caradine; Lisa’s father, Eugene Owen “Sonny” Mitchell Sr.; Lisa’s brother, Eugene Owen “Butch” Mitchell Jr.; and Scott and Lisa’s daughter, Haley. “This gift is also in memory of my Uncle Jimmy, who grew up in West Point, Mississippi, but spent his entire career in New York. He loved
southern writers and southern food. In retirement in Florida, he had his favorite restaurants that had pimento cheese and fried green tomatoes, and he even always maintained a Mississippi driver’s license. When we decided to help celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Southern Studies and put money toward the continuation of the encyclopedia, we knew those were things that Uncle Jimmy would be really proud of.”
Lisa said her path and Scott’s probably crossed many times when they were kids hanging out with their families in the Grove, before they actually met as adults. “The lineage of our dads going to Ole Miss brought us both to Oxford,” Lisa said. “My dad’s favorite thing in the world was attending Ole Miss football games, and I’m excited to be able to honor both family and friendships with this gift.”
The gift also includes funding for the Southern Foodways Alliance Keeper of the Flame award, film residency program, and stipends for graduate students. It also supports maintaining the online Mississippi Encyclopedia for the next five years, since recent cuts to the National Endowment for the Humanities led to withdrawal of funding for the project by the Mississippi Humanities Council, one of the Center’s key partners on the project.
“The encyclopedia is important because it is a free resource for people all over the world who are doing important research on Mississippi, and it is mostly written by people who live in this state,” said Jimmy Thomas,
Center associate director for publications and Mississippi Encyclopedia editor. “The encyclopedia is scholarly and smart, and I’ve seen it used as a source in the national media when people want to place Mississippi in context with current events.”
Each fall, the Southern Foodways Alliance honors an unsung foodways tradition bearer with the Keeper of the Flame award and pays homage to their life and work through a documentary film produced by Joe York. Documentary work is foundational to the SFA’s mission to study and explore the diverse foodways of the changing American South. This also appealed to the Caradines.
“The consideration of our daughter, Haley, eventually coming back to Oxford and taking over our family business one day gave it some resonance,” Scott said. “And the fact that our son, Miles, is learning to be a filmmaker at Loyola in New Orleans gave us the idea of wanting to support anything that had to do with being creative on campus.”
To support the Center, contact Claire Moss at claire@southernfoodways.org or 901-409-5991.
Scott and Lisa Caradine
BRUCE NEWMAN
Changing the World One Film at a Time
Angela Tucker Joins Center Faculty
Filmmaker Angela Tucker understands how films have the power to change the world, a sentiment she will share as a new assistant professor of practice in documentary expression at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture.
Born and raised in New York City, Tucker has called New Orleans home for the past eleven years. She features underrepresented communities in unconventional ways through her films, which include roles as director, producer, and creator. “I am excited to teach in an interdisciplinary department with colleagues who love what they do,” Tucker said. “Mississippi has a lot of stories that need to be told by local storytellers, and this program gives them the chance to do that.”
Tucker is the winner of an Emmy Award, a Webby Award, an Amplifier Fellowship, and a Chicken and Egg Breakthrough Award. Her films have been screened at Sundance, the Film Forum in New York, and Frameline, among many others. Building on that success, Tucker’s latest project has already begun making waves on the festival circuit. “I just finished a feature documentary about the congresswoman Barbara Jordan from Texas called The Inquisitor, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and will be on public television in early 2026,” Tucker said. “We recently won best documentary at the University Film and Video Association conference, and there are more screenings to come.”
Andy Harper expressed his excitement about having Tucker join the Southern Documentary Project staff, as she brings more than twenty years of experience in producing and directing films largely focused on the African
American experience. “As excited as we are to have Angela joining SouthDocs as a storyteller, I am equally pleased that Southern Studies students will soon benefit from the experience of an Emmy Award winner in the prime of her career,” Harper said. “Angela Tucker rounds out an already stellar SouthDocs staff with her years of experience in fundraising and distribution. We are so lucky to have her.”
Though she is in the field of documentary expression, she makes dramatic films as well, and in 2022 she co-wrote and directed a holiday movie for Lifetime called A New Orleans Noel starring Patti LaBelle and partially filmed in Natchez, Mississippi.
Tucker earned her MFA from Columbia University in New York, her BA in African American studies
from Wesleyan University, and a certificate in arts and culture from the School for International Training in Ghana. Her academic training and international experiences have shaped not only her artistic vision but also her enthusiasm for guiding the next generation of filmmakers. “I am excited to teach both graduate and undergrad students,” she said. “I can’t wait to expose them to new films and to engage in the spirited discussions when they love (or hate) what they’ve seen. I’m actively making films right now and have been for a long time, so I have a lot of wisdom to share.”
While in Oxford, she plans on being at Square Books a good bit, as well as on attending her first college football game.
Rebecca Lauck Cleary
Angela Tucker
Connecting Past and Present Through Food and Culture
SFA Welcomes New Foodways Professor Ellie Palazzolo
Valuing the insights and methods of multiple disciplines turned into a career in academia for Ellie Palazzolo, the new Southern Foodways Alliance Assistant Professor of Southern Studies and assistant professor of history at the University of Mississippi.
Palazzolo, an historian and food studies scholar with a focus on labor and consumer cultures in the nineteenth- and twentieth-century United States, earned her doctorate in history from Johns Hopkins University in June. She also has an MA in history from Johns Hopkins, a BA in history and French from the University of Richmond, and a certificate of studies in social sciences and humanities from the Paris Institute of Political Studies.
Initially, the professorship’s connection to the Southern Foodways Alliance attracted her attention. “I had encountered the SFA around 2019 while reading widely about southern food for a project on connections between designation of food as ‘Creole’ and the rise of the Lost Cause at the end of the nineteenth century,” Palazzolo said. Since then, she’s followed SFA’s social media and Gravy
by what might be revealed when SFA’s cultural lens and Dr. Palazzolo’s historical lens focus together on the American South.”
This fall, Palazzolo is teaching SST 555: Foodways and the South and HST 406: US WWI–WWII, 1914–1945. A major project she is working on focuses on labor and consumer politics in Gilded Age and Progressive Era Chicago, but she says her approach to the research is rooted in the scholarship of southern history, ongoing struggles for and against the achievement of a multiracial democracy, and complex processes of myth, memory, and reconciliation after the Civil War.
Between 2020 and 2024, Palazzolo worked on the project Keywords for Black Louisiana:
Reimagining the Place of Black Life in the Louisiana Colonial Archive, which works to find and highlight stories of people of African descent in Louisiana’s colonial archive through the transcription and translation of documents, reparative data practices, and development of historical narratives.
“Between growing up in Richmond, Virginia, studying food, and working briefly in craft spirits and in the service industry, I’ve been interested in and learned a lot from SFA publications,” she said. “I was drawn to the Center’s interdisciplinary commitments and the creative and intellectual potential of examining the questions that brought me to food studies, cultural studies, and history through the lens of Southern Studies.”
Palazzolo’s dissertation focused on people engaged in food production, distribution, and service, and her academic interests aligned well with the work of the SFA. Melissa Booth Hall, codirector of the SFA, said, “We’re intrigued
Her personal projects this semester are baking the perfect loaf of bread and exploring more of Oxford’s food scene.
“After accepting this position, I had a lot of fun cheering for the women’s basketball team during their Sweet 16 run, and I hope to make it to a few games this year,” Palazzolo said. “I couldn’t be more excited to be at UM and in the Center and can’t wait to meet folks here.”
Her dog, a poodle named Princess Sol, will accompany her on walks to check out the local parks and trails, and both are looking forward to having a yard for gardening and playing fetch.
Rebecca Lauck Cleary
Ellie Palazzolo
COURTESY ELLIE
PALAZZOLO
Faulkner Scholar Retires After Three Decades at the University
Jay Watson Leaves Long-Lasting Impact on Students, Southern Literature, and Faulkner Studies
Jay Watson, a leading voice in William Faulkner studies and University of Mississippi professor, retired on Monday, June 30, after more than three decades of teaching, research, and service. Watson served as the Howry Professor of Faulkner Studies in the Department of English since 2010 and directed the annual Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference since 2011.
Watson earned his doctorate from Harvard University in 1989 and joined the UM faculty that same year. “This is the best place in the world to teach and do scholarship on William Faulkner,” he said. “Oxford is a great place to raise a family, and I’ve really enjoyed my colleagues here. So, I’ve just never really been seriously tempted to leave.”
The Athens, Georgia, native leaves the university as much more than just a professor. His international contributions include editing academic journals, publishing books and articles on southern literature and film, and serving as president of the William Faulkner Society.
Former students describe Watson as the “complete package” when it comes to energizing education. “Jay taught me how to be a professor,” said Ben Child, a former doctoral student of Watson’s and associate professor of English at Colgate University. “He showed me how to make material feel alive and relevant. Years later, I still find myself thinking, ‘What would Jay do?’ He set a standard that continues to influence how I teach and write.”
Watson’s blend of encouraging students to think deeply and holding
Jay Watson, an English professor and respected Faulkner studies scholar, speaks at Rowan Oak during a 2019 event unveiling the William Faulkner marker installed along the Mississippi Writers Trail. Watson retired after more than three decades of teaching, research, and service to the university.
them to high standards also extended to generations of undergraduates. Patty Jernigan, an English and Southern Studies major from Oxford, said one of Watson’s Spring 2025 courses reshaped her perspective of the South. “Our class read through various lenses, ranging from the African American experience, the Asian American experience, Native Americans, refugees, migrants, women—the list could go on,” Jernigan said. “The connections we explored in the class have deepened my appreciation and understanding of southern literature and culture. Dr. Watson’s teaching style will always be memorable to me because of how open, thought-provoking, and engaging the class environment was.”
Teaching has never felt like a one-way relationship, Watson said. His
students helped keep his work fresh and his spirit young. “I’ve gotten my last couple of big research ideas from teaching classes,” he said. “They just kind of grew out of discussion with my students. Sometimes you turn around and your research feeds your teaching because you create new classes based on that work. Service, scholarship, and research all tie together.”
The fifty-first annual Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference, held on the Oxford campus this past July, marked Watson’s final year as conference director. This year’s “Faulkner’s Bodies” theme invited scholars to explore topics such as health, disability, aging, gender, and biography across the Nobel Prize–winning author’s work.
Under Watson’s leadership, the Faulkner conference evolved into a
THOMAS GRANING/OLE
MISS DIGITAL IMAGING SERVICES
global gathering of scholars, students, and readers, including attendees with expertise outside Faulkner studies. People from across the US and abroad regularly attend, with the conference drawing speakers from as far away as Japan and Kazakhstan.
Watson’s legacy unquestionably includes his conference leadership, said John T. Matthews, a Faulkner studies scholar and English professor at Boston University. “At the annual Faulkner conferences from the ’90s on, I remember him particularly as the most interesting and acute
questioner of speakers, something I really admired,” Matthews said. “That’s always been one of his personal scholarly abilities: the ability to size up others’ arguments on the spot, marshal his vast knowledge of Faulkner and other southern writing, and facilitate conversation.”
Those qualities obviously reflect Watson’s reputation as a renowned educator, as well as one of the preeminent Faulkner scholars of his era, Matthews said. “His own scholarship— in its breadth, currency, imaginativeness, and authority—have shaped our
field in fundamental ways that will have long-lasting influence. And that field, I should add, extends well beyond Faulkner studies.”
As Watson retired, he looked forward to a serendipitous new title: first-time grandfather. “The end of June marks my retirement date,” Watson said back in May, “and it’s also when our first grandchild is due, which I obviously didn’t see coming when I made the plans. So, I have a second career waiting for me: learning how to be a grandfather.”
Marvis Herring
Cyanotypes and Southern Threads
An Artistic Tribute to Jay Watson
On the opening evening of the 2025 Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference, the Center for the Study of Southern Culture presented Jay Watson with artwork by Greta Koshenina to commemorate his retirement.
Koshenina holds both an MA in Southern Studies and an MFA in documentary expression from UM. Commissioned for the occasion by the Center, the artwork is a collage of handstitched cyanotype prints of a selection of posters and book covers from Faulkner conferences that Watson directed. Koshenina hand-stitches her collage work on antique linens and uses oldfashioned techniques “as a nod to seamstresses and to my grandmother, Opal.”
The cyanotype printing technique uses a combination of chemicals that react to UV rays in sunlight. Koshenina fell in love with this process while earning her MA in a class with photographer Brooke White, and the process has inspired her art ever since. The developed images are bright blue in color. To create a more subdued hue, Koshenina then tea-tones the prints by soaking them in black tea until they reach a brown tone while also preserving the “lovely hints of blue that remain in some of the prints.”
The Center thanks Jay for his decades of work at UM and with the Center and congratulates him on his retirement.
Maggie Muehleman for the Study of Southern Culture
Artwork by Greta Koshenina, commissioned by the Center as a retirement gift for Jay Watson.
A New Look Through an Old Medium
University Librarian Brings the Charlie Cox Collection to Gammill Gallery
The Charlie Cox Collection: Glass-Plate Images of Benton County from the Early 1900s is an exhibit that showcases the work of photographer Charlie Cox in the early years of the twentieth century. The medium is glass-plate photography and depicts a wide variety of subjects, from portraits of members of the community to farm animals to images of labor and landmarks.
These glass-plate images depict life within the small town of Ashland, Mississippi, and the surrounding Benton County, roughly thirty years after Ashland was incorporated as a town in 1871.
Born in Ashland in 1881, Charlie Whitfield Cox may have brought the first photography to this agricultural area. Cox had no studio; he would travel to his subjects on horseback and, later, on a Sears motorcycle. He used only natural light, often bringing a painted canvas to use as a background. Most of his subjects were friends and family, reflecting all levels of society. As most photography from the period
would usually focus on the affluent, these images are rare for featuring the community as a whole.
As Cox did not use an enlarger, his images were the same size as the negatives. These ranged from 2.5 square
inches to 5 by 7 inches. The negatives were stored under a tin roof in the attic of his home for more than seventy
years. As a result, many were damaged, broken, and ultimately discarded. It is remarkable that any survived at all.
The surviving glass-plate negatives were donated to the Department of Archives and Special Collections at the University of Mississippi by the artist’s granddaughter, Judy Cox Andrews. Archives and Special Collections is appreciative
of Andrews providing not only the images but also the accompanying information on the collection.
The prints in this exhibit are selections from digital photographs of the 987 negatives that make up the collection. The entire collection can be found online within the University of Mississippi’s eGrove digital repository.
The curator for the exhibition is Joe W. Moody. Moody is the audiovisual librarian and an assistant
Images from the Charlie Cox Collection in the Department of Archives and Special Collections at the University of Mississippi depict life in rural Mississippi in the early twentieth century.
professor for the University of Mississippi’s Department of Archives and Special Collections. He specializes in digitization and preservation. He has won awards for the making of radio documentaries through his work as a news producer and host for Alabama Public Radio. Moody has a background as an educator and is a current contributor to the podcast Roundabout Oxford .
The Charlie Cox Collection will exhibit in Gammill Gallery in Barnard Observatory from September 9 through October 10. Moody will give a SouthTalk presentation on the exhibition at noon on September 17 in the Tupelo Room in Barnard Observatory.
Upcoming fall exhibitions include Extractivism, by filmmaker Jazmin Miller Wilson and journalist Anya Groner (October 14–November 14), and the Fall Documentary Showcase of Student Work (December–January).
Faulkner’s Tree Bodies
Text and art by Brooke P. Alexander
The 2025 Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference, held from July 20 to July 24 in Oxford, focused on the theme “Faulkner’s Bodies” and explored the representation of embodiment in William Faulkner’s work, encompassing human, nonhuman, and symbolic forms. On Thursday, July 22, Brooke P. Alexander, a painter living and working in North Mississippi, gave a presentation on “Faulkner’s Tree Bodies.” The drawings connected to her presentation have hung in Barnard Observatory this summer and will exhibit there until mid-September. Here’s a bit of what Alexander has to say about this work.
Trees populate William Faulkner’s literary landscape as heavily as people do. They line the streets and congregate in woods and copses because that is the landscape of North Mississippi. However, they are not just there to mimic the landscape of his place. Sometimes Faulkner’s trees take on a humanness, and sometimes his characters take on a tree-ness, neither of which we expect. Seeking to understand these tanglings, interconnectedness, and transformations, my inquiries into the relationship of figures and trees in Faulkner’s work take form in the method most natural to me—visual art. I wanted to see his tree bodies. So I drew them.
In As I Lay Dying, Jewel’s eyes are described as “two colors of wood, the wrong one pale and the wrong one dark.” In charcoal and tinted graphite, I drew eyes over and over again, trying to capture the grain of gaze. Jewel’s treeness serves to estrange him from us. In contrast, his mother, Addie, is “no more than a bundle of rotten sticks.” She is decomposing before she is even dead. The wood of her coffin “bleeds.” The planks still remember the sap that ran through them while the blood that used to run through Addie’s veins never ran anything but cold.
In Absalom, Absalom!, the French architect, whose story is told in fragments, forsakes the mansion he is being forced to build. He runs away, climbs up a tree, and for two days moves across the treetops. He is an architect turned squirrel. He risks it all
As I Lay Dying
and trusts in the trees, the brothers of those who had been felled to build the great house. I imagined he gained tree sight, looking down upon his pursuers, the figures made strange by the overhead perspective, those on horseback becoming odd centaurs, the architect
in the bottom right-hand corner looking down while in the comforting hold of the tree, a whippoorwill screaming his story into the night.
The last tree body is one of violent beauty. This is the scene in The Hamlet where Faulkner gives a tree a human heart. Mink Snopes murders Jack Houston and then hides his body in the “shell of a once-tremendous pin oak.” It is an intensely visual scene, because when Houston’s body does not quite fit, Snopes jumps on it until Houston and Snopes both plummet deep into the tree’s interior. Sheltered within the tree, Houston’s blood would have mixed with sap. Skin and wood would graft together. There is a sharing between them, a blurring of where the tree begins and where the figure ends. Houston— who has not been held or maybe even hugged by anyone since his wife died years ago—being held and clasped closely by this tree. And the tree, which had lost its heart, holds this broken heart that bleeds just as the tree does.
I often describe trees to my students as people with lots of arms. Within his writing, Faulkner reveals the similarities and the sharings between the two, a perfect union between tree and flesh, where the human is just a tree with fewer limbs.
Human Heartwood
Jewel’s Eye I
The Architect’s Escape
The Art of Healing:
Creativity, Ceremony, and Chinese Medicine
Southern Studies Alum Blends Ancient Traditions and Modern Insights to Heal Body and Spirit
At first glance, people may not associate creativity with medicine—but practicing medicine is inherently creative, said Southern Studies alumna Mary Warner (MA 2009).
Warner is in Canada studying traditional Chinese medicine and will earn her clinical doctorate in December, a path she started at the Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine a few years ago. “I was drawn to Chinese medicine by a desire to keep traditional ways of understanding health, community, and our relationship to nature alive. Over time, it also became a way to challenge harmful hierarchies in medicine,” she said. “My approach is what I call ‘intermedicinal’—a practice that sees healing as emergent and shared, deeply rooted in the sacred, the ecological, and the human. Healing isn’t handed down from on high; it’s relational, alive.”
Like a Western-trained medical doctor, Warner starts by assessing the body. After a diagnosis, she draws from a range of tools: Chinese herbs, acupuncture, dietary therapy, and movement or mindfulness practices like tai chi or qigong. “People come to me with everything from frozen shoulder and sinus infections to UTIs and insomnia,” Warner said. “As research grows—and with the World Health Organization now recognizing Chinese medicinal remedies in its International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems—I expect we’ll
Mary Warner
JULIE VOLA
see more Western doctors collaborating with traditional Chinese medical practitioners on treatment protocols.”
As a student in China, Warner worked hard studying both Western pathology and the classical frameworks of Chinese medicine side by side, ten hours a day, five days a week. But then something completely unexpected happened: “In 2020, a short trip to Florida turned into an unexpected exile when I was on a flight with someone believed to be Covid-19’s Patient Zero. Borders closed. I couldn’t return. My husband, Michael, couldn’t leave China,” Warner said. At night, she continued her studies online in China, and by day, she reconnected with the landscape of her childhood— the quartz beaches, salt marshes, and cypress groves. She says Florida became its own kind of medicine during that time. Eventually, she and Michael reunited in China and then relocated to Canada.
She still uses writing and photography to hone her creativity after the difficult days of being immersed in medicine. “My current creative work is rooted in nature,” she said. “I make
earth pigments, but photography and writing remain my primary mediums. We are nature, after all. The ancients knew this—and southerners often do, too. Every illness arises from some disruption in our ecological or internal coherence. So, paying attention to the land, to seasons, helps me as a practitioner.
“I began visiting a Shinto shrine near my home in Victoria, British Columbia, and noticed how much more grounded I felt after the ceremony, so I began photographing ceremonies—not just to document what happened, but to capture their emotional impact,” she said. “Whether a New Year’s purification ritual or a shared pot of gong fu tea, these everyday ceremonies changed how people showed up—more present, more attuned. Reading studies on the link between ceremony and wellbeing, something clicked. Even in Western medicine, we begin with a kind of ritual: washing our hands. That moment is sacred. I began expanding that idea by incorporating a small opening ceremony into my treatment space. After a few months, I noticed a
shift in my own presence and energy.”
That work led to a pilot study she designed, launching this fall, on the role of ceremony in reducing practitioner burnout, which grew out of research during the Covid-19 pandemic. “My hope is to contribute to a broader understanding of how ceremony can support both individual and communal healing,” she said.
Her Southern Studies degree is instrumental in her ability to listen to patients—and to hold silence—in the treatment room. “As a student at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, I documented gospel music for the Library of Congress and co-created a film for Thacker Mountain Radio that became part of my thesis,” she said. “Those experiences taught me not to rush into the silence. In clinical work, silence often says more than words.”
Warner said she hopes the Center might broaden its study of healthcare in the South. “That’s one of the most vital intersections I’ve found between Chinese medicine and the culture of the American South,” Warner said. “Our traditions as southerners aren’t just cultural—they’re medicinal. They shape how we live, how we gather, how we heal. Chinese medicine teaches us to attune to the rhythms and cycles of life. Southerners, especially those still connected to the land, know this deeply. These traditions aren’t just worth preserving—they’re essential to imagining a healthier, more connected future.”
There is even a connection to the greatly maligned kudzu plant. “Kudzu or ge gen in Mandarin is widely used in Chinese medicine and is being studied for its use in alcohol dependence and menopausal symptoms,” Warner said. “This always made me laugh considering the disdain/nostalgia for the plant in the South.”
For those interested in learning more about Warner’s studies, check out her Substack On Good Medicine
Rebecca Lauck Cleary
Practicing forest gongfu cha at W - MÍYEŦEN Nature Sanctuary in British Columbia, Canada
COURTESY MARY WARNER
Latino Artists in the Nuevo South
By Simone Delerme and Michael Perez • Photography by Alexandra Brown
Since its founding more than two centuries ago, Memphis has been defined by the complicated entanglements of its Black and white communities. Whether in terms of music, cuisine, or politics, Memphis reflects a southern culture born of the divisions and connections of America’s racial binary. Memphis today, however, is changing. Over the last three decades, the city has seen a dramatic expansion in its Latino population—a shift that is transforming its ethnic and racial makeup and redefining its culture as a southern city. Throughout Memphis, Latino-owned businesses punctuate the streets in what were once exclusively Black and white neighborhoods. On the historic Summer Avenue, tacos are as easy to find as BBQ and Latin bodegas outnumber major supermarket chains.
Like most major cities, Memphis has numerous public and private institutions dedicated to promoting local art and culture. Some of these institutions have recently made significant progress in diversifying their exhibits to include once-excluded communities. The increasing visibility of the Latino community notwithstanding, its presence in the arts remains marginal.
In May of 2025, we began a collaboration with two Memphis organizations, the Cazateatro Bilingual Theatre
Karina Ramirez came to Memphis from Mexico and is the owner of Artelements Kollection where she designs and creates unique handcrafts that she sells at art festivals and through her website.
Group and the Dixon Gallery and Gardens. The objective is to develop an oral history collection at the University of Mississippi—the Southern Latinx Artist Archive—as well as a series of “empowerment” workshops for Latino artists in Memphis that focus on economic and entrepreneurial opportunities in the arts. The research initiative is being supported by a Sociological Initiatives Foundation grant and is guided by two central questions: “What obstacles prevent the visibility and inclusion of Latino artists—including visual, performing, and folkloric artists—and what forms of empowerment can be developed to overcome these challenges?”
In early 2023, Cazateatro conducted an exploratory survey with a group of Latino artists to determine what obstacles they faced in Memphis. Their findings suggested that two key issues were impeding their success. The first was discrimination by arts institutions that treated them as foreign immigrants without roots in Memphis. Despite the diversity of their backgrounds and their deep connections to Memphis, Latino artists suggested that they were seen as perpetual immigrants external to local culture. The second issue was the lack of educational resources for Latino artists who were interested in entrepreneurship and in accessing opportunities to promote their work, including grants and venues.
To build on the earlier work of Cazateatro, we led a research team this summer that included four undergraduate students from across the country. They were participants in a ten-week summer research program at the University of Mississippi, funded by the National Science Foundation. Together, the undergraduate students worked with Southern Studies
Nestor Rodriguez is a visual artist who designs clothing and other products. His fashion brand is called 787-Mi Isla. He draws on images connected to his Puerto Rican culture in his designs, such as the flag and the coqui (a species of frog native to Puerto Rico).
graduate students Samson Oklobia and Alexandra Brown, anthropology graduate student Taufiqul Bari, videographer Hutch Bailey, and filmmaker George Guiterrez to capture the stories of artists in Memphis and to document their migratory experiences, the development of their artistic skills, and the challenges they’ve encountered as they navigate the Memphis arts scene.
Thus far, we have found the exploratory research conducted by Cazateatro to be accurate. Artists have responded to our interview questions about the obstacles they face by describing their difficulty learning the business skills necessary to promote their artform. Photographer Leslie Navarrete, for example, explained, “I think that it’s pretty difficult to get your foot in when you don’t come from a lineage of artists.” She recommended more workshops, specifically run by Latino artists, since she struggles with the idea of art as a valid career. “If there were more representation from Latinos, that could really help get past that fear and get past that barrier.”
The interviews with the different Memphis artists will be added to the Southern Latinx Artist Archive on eGrove, the University of Mississippi’s online repository.
My SumMer in Shanghai
Center Documentarian Finds Community in China’s Underground Punk, Metal, and Goth Scene
Starting in late May, I was given the opportunity to live and work in Shanghai, China, as an artist in residence at the Swatch Art Peace Hotel, a former luxury hotel built in 1908 and operated since 2010 as a
By John Rash
multidisciplinary artist residency run by the same Swiss Swatch corporation that sold me the wristwatch I wore as a teenager. My three months as a resident artist were focused on documenting the burgeoning underground
metal/goth/punk community that has flourished there in recent years. Admittedly, the growth of this culture in China is not a Shanghai-specific phenomenon, and a handful of legacy venues, bands, and promoters have
JOHN RASH
been instrumental in building the scene across the country for the past couple decades. However, what seems to have nurtured the culture in recent years is the post–Covid 19 loosening of governmental restrictions and social media’s role in increasing accessibility.
I moved from Shanghai to Oxford in 2017, and upon returning to Shanghai this summer, I was surprised by the tremendous increase in punk and metal music events and audience sizes. I hit the ground running and quickly developed relationships with people I encountered at venues hosting punk, metal, goth, and indie music events.
I was inspired to document the scene through portraits I made at these events and in the studio provided by the residency.
I decided this project should highlight the community aspect of this culture, and I would focus primarily on audience members rather than performers. Initial engagements began with portraits taken during breaks between bands and as people were spilling out onto the sidewalk at the end of the night. I would ask people if I could photograph them and later share the images digitally. This opened a line of communication that I used to
extend invitations for formal portraits at my studio. This method quickly inspired word-of-mouth recommendations, and within a few weeks I had people approaching me, recognizing me from previous concerts, and asking if I would photograph them.
The initial field photos became a great collection of faces and styles of people attending underground music events in Shanghai. The final work is a combination of photography and culturally relevant clothing constructed by printing the photos on small pieces of canvas and then sewing them onto a denim “battle vest” in the same style that many punk and metal fans sew patches representing their favorite musicians onto their own vests or jackets. The vest both documents the fans who comprise this community and reflects the culture it represents. As the audience, this community is an active participant in the music events, so my battle vest turns the camera away from the stage and onto the audience to acknowledge this reciprocal relationship.
In the studio, I created a formal series of portraits photographing individuals twice, each time wearing a different set of clothing of their choosing. Because many people wear quite elaborate outfits to attend concerts, I was curious about what they might look like at their jobs, in their classrooms, or going about their regular daytime activities. So, I asked each person to bring their metal, punk, or goth clothing and then something they might wear in a different environment in their life. I paired two images of the same individuals, linked by a visual representation of a spirit drifting from the mouth of each portrait into the other. The effect is created in-camera with slow-shutter techniques, inspired by late nineteenth-century spirit photography (also called ghost photography). Each participant was asked to sit completely still and to place a thin piece of cheesecloth or medical gauze in their mouth, which was then shaken by an off-camera assistant. The resulting images, displayed as diptychs, attempts to capture two
Photographer John Rash wearing his “battle vest,” constructed by printing the photos on small pieces of canvas and then sewing them onto denim
Members of the metal/goth/punk community in Shanghai
different sides of an individual’s personality or identity.
My summer was one of creativity, collaboration, and cultural exchange—all set to a soundtrack of black metal, melodic death metal, folk metal, and the occasional punk band. I returned to Oxford just a few days ahead of the fall semester feeling inspired and full of ideas about new approaches to my work and methods of exhibition. Swatch’s intention for the residency is to “support artists and encourage creative exchange,” a much-needed resource for creative
professionals and academics. Swatch facilitates this by hosting up to eighteen artists at any given time across all disciplines. The residency is an everchanging creative community that inspires meaningful conversations, collaboration, and feedback.
To provide structure for creative workflow, creative professionals tend to establish well-worn pathways of production and networks of trusted collaborators. This structure is paramount for staying creative while balancing other life obligations. The unintended danger, however, is that “comfortable” and “predictable” can drift into “mundane.” In this sense, our students are lucky to experience a constant rebirth of their creative environments, as each semester renews with fresh creative influences and challenges supported by a community of classmates and professors. The discussions that come from such an environment push creative ideas in new directions and inspire continuous growth.
My takeaway from this summer’s residency is to continue to seek new environments in which to do my work, to listen to new voices for feedback and collaboration, and to avoid letting the comfort of my routine lead to lethargy. I would urge others to do the same, even if, like in my case, the “new” environment is a return to a place you already hold dear. You might just find a new community in a place you thought you already understood.
Portraits made using slow-shutter techniques, inspired by late nineteenthcentury spirit photography
A portrait of members of Shanghai’s metal/goth/punk community
JOHN RASH
JOHN RASH
Living Blues News
Sometimes we spend too much time focusing on the big stars of the blues and forget about the local and regional players who sustain the scenes in cities big and small—artists who understand that without their passion and dedication there might not be a blues scene in their town. Throughout the history of the blues, countless artists have decided to play the blues while also staying home to raise a family—men and women, with all the talent needed to hit the road and tour, who chose to place their family first. Norman “Boogie Cat” Sylvester is one of those artists. The undisputed king of the Portland, Oregon, blues scene, Sylvester has played music for more than sixty years. But, during that time, he also raised seven children and worked a day job as a mechanic servicing big-rig diesel trucks. Though a dedicated musician, he is also a dedicated family man. Guys like Sylvester, Tee Dee Young, or Wallace Coleman put in a lifetime of work at a day job but never put aside their passion for making music. These artists rarely get signed to record deals since they don’t tour, but their contribution to the blues shouldn’t be overlooked because of this. They are the anchors of their local scenes. They play the clubs, play the regional festivals, mentor younger musicians, and make sure the tradition carries on.
We’ve got two articles from Jas Obrecht in this issue. The first is a fascinating dive into some of the earliest blues guitarists to record. In the beginning blues recordings were mostly of female vocalists backed by a piano or small jazz band with the occasional banjo. Recording techniques were primitive and a guitar’s low volume was lost under the volume of the other instruments. But with the sudden popularity of blues records, producers soon went looking for other artists to record for the African American audience. In October 1923, Louisville guitarist Sylvester Weaver became the first guitarist to back a blues singer on record when he accompanied
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NORMAN SYLVESTER
Portland’s King of the Blues SIERRA GREEN DONNIE RAY LET IT ROLL: HOUND DOG TAYLOR MEMPHISSIPPI SOUNDS
Sara Martin on her “Longing for Daddy Blues.” Just a week later, Weaver was back in the studio to record sides under his own name, becoming the first solo blues guitarist on record. Over the next year several other guitarists began to record blues sides. Men like Daddy Stovepipe and Papa Charlie Jackson recorded a somewhat primitive style of blues rooted in a minstrel style. But they laid the groundwork for what would follow. By 1925, a more contemporary style of blues was being recorded by artists like Blind Blake, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and Lonnie Johnson.
THE BLUES ARCHIVE OF JIM SIMPSON
This issue’s edition of Let It Roll focuses on Hound Dog Taylor’s first recording for Alligator Records. Perhaps the most fun ever captured on vinyl, Taylor’s joyful exuberance leaps out of the speakers and dares you to not smile. Hound Dog Taylor and the HouseRockers was Alligator’s debut record, and the seat-of-the-pants endeavor captured the wild abandon that occurred when Hound Dog Taylor, Brewer Phillips, and Ted Harvey took the stage.
There was a panel at the recent Chicago Blues Festival to honor Living Blues’ fifty-fifth anniversary. The panel featured LB founders Jim O’Neal and Bruce Iglauer, former editor Scott Barretta, contributing writer Deitra Farr, moderator Richard Sherman, and me. I was participating via Zoom and unfortunately, due to a technical issue, no one could hear what I said. But it was good to see everyone, especially Jim. This was his first public outing since his most recent cancer treatment and he seemed to be doing well.
Congratulations to the winners of the 2025 Living Blues Awards. Kingfish continues his rising popularity in the blues world while perennial winners Shemekia Copeland and Bobby Rush are multiple winners again. Chicago bluesman Ronnie Baker Brooks had a big year and won his first LB Awards. We also implemented a new Blues Band category, and I was happy to see the response to that.
Brett J. Bonner
The First Blues Guitarists on Record
Hope on the Half Shell
As Southeast Louisiana’s Coastline Changes, so Does Its Oyster Industry
by Eva Tesfaye • Photos by Rita Harper
Two hours south of New Orleans, on the way from Leeville to Grand Isle in southeast Louisiana, there’s a concrete highway bridge on the edge of the calm, dark-blue water of Caminada Bay. In this part of the state, solid ground gives way to the Gulf of Mexico. On a nice, cool day, this stretch of Louisiana Highway 1 will be dotted with people fishing, casting their lines over the bridge. They’re hoping to catch red drum, speckled trout, and other coveted fish that are abundant in these waters.
Fishing, shrimping, crabbing, and oystering have long been central to the culture and economy here. But the area has seen a lot of change in the last generation, much of it caused by intensifying hurricanes. In Leeville, the devastation and resulting land loss
has pushed out most of its residents. In nearby Grand Isle, storms and nearby development have decimated the natural oyster reefs.
“Right on the south side of the island, Hurricane Ida messed up that area. It tore up a lot of the bottom. It made the water a lot deeper,” says Kirk Curole, an oyster farmer in Grand Isle.
With oysters, an iconic symbol of the state, some people in this area are adapting, changing how they interact with the keystone species, and using them to restore habitat and slow land loss. But the immense economic and environmental impacts of climate change are challenging their efforts.
Two key environmental conditions affect oysters: water salinity and temperature. Romain Lavaud, a
marine biologist at the LSU AgCenter, focused on those two factors when he published models in 2024 for the US Geological Survey to show how climate change would affect oysters across the Louisiana and Texas coasts in the coming decades.
Though Gulf oysters can grow in brackish bays and sounds, they do best in estuaries, where freshwater and saltwater converge and create the ideal salinity for them—14 to 28 parts per 1,000.
With climate change altering those conditions in the Gulf, that’s important to understand. Gulf oysters also grow best in temperatures from 68° to 86° F.
“The oysters in this population are facing, already, temperatures that are the highest compared to other oysters that are growing in the
Kirk Curole checks his oyster cages.
northeast,” says Lavaud. “So any rise of temperature for oysters located in this southern part of the distribution range is going to have potentially more of an effect than if they were located farther north.”
Climate change is expected to cause more extreme rain in these areas, which disrupts the water and lowers its salinity.
With this understanding, and using existing climate-change models, Lavaud was able to see which areas in the Gulf Coast will be able to best support oyster populations moving forward.
His results were likely welcome news for Curole and other local oystermen: Using models projecting the water conditions from 2041 to 2050, Lavaud found that oysters should still thrive in Grand Isle.
As a barrier island, Grand Isle helps protect other parts of Louisiana farther inland from hurricanes but often takes the first blow from incoming storms. On the island, which is less than eight miles long, most of the large houses raised on stilts seem new. Yet some of the damage from Hurricane Ida in 2021 is still apparent. Local officials said around seven hundred buildings were destroyed in that storm, pushing some permanent residents off the island. Most of these houses are rentals or weekend fishing camps whose owners live elsewhere. Tourism and the abundant fishing scene are the economic drivers of the island.
“It’s just the right place in the country where everything kind of just comes together, and it’s like a paradise, not only for us, but for the seafood industry,” says Curole.
Hurricanes devastated many of Grand Isle’s natural oyster reefs, but the currents and salinity of the water created by nearby Barataria Bay still make it a place where oysters thrive. That’s helped off-bottom oyster farming, also called alternative oyster culture, to take off in this area. The practice has existed in other states
Kirk Curole, owner of Bayside Oyster Company in Grand Isle, Louisiana, started farming oysters after retiring from the oil-and-gas industry.
“Instead of harvesting oysters from
natural
reefs, oyster farmers buy baby oysters from local hatcheries and then put them in cages that float at the surface of the water.”
and countries for the better part of a century but has only reached Louisiana—where traditional oystering is deeply intertwined with the state’s culture and history—in the past decade. Instead of harvesting oysters from natural reefs, oyster farmers buy baby oysters, called “seed” or “spat,” from local hatcheries and then put them in cages that float at the surface of the water. There, they grow into marketable oysters.
Curole runs one of these companies, Bayside Oysters. It’s his second career after he retired from working in the oil-and-gas industry. He was renting the apartment of his fishing camp on Grand Isle to someone who worked at Louisiana Sea Grant, an LSU research program on the island. She told him about its hatchery, where oyster farmers buy seed, and how he could get started.
“I was curious. I had seen specials on PBS and National Geographic. You know, the East Coast has been doing this for years and in China they do it on strings, on ropes, they grow them. I just thought it was really interesting,” he says.
He started out by “oyster gardening,” informally growing some oysters in a few cages just off the dock of his camp. Eventually, he got a permit to start his own farm.
It takes just fifteen minutes to drive the boat over to his lease. Curole has
four hundred cages connected by sixteen hundred feet of rope. He shares the eight-acre stretch of water with six other farmers who, in total, are growing close to 1.5 million oysters at a time. Curole himself produces just over a hundred thousand oysters per year.
“We pretty much work as an unofficial co-op. When somebody needs help with something, we jump in and we help them,” he says.
This spring, the off-bottom oyster farmers in Grand Isle came together to create a regional brand called Grand Isle Jewels.
Curole put his waders on, tied a green rope around his waist, and hopped out of the boat into the thigh-deep water. He walked over to the rectangular mesh cages, marked by buoys on either side. He flipped some of them over to kill the grasses growing on the bottom.
As he lifted a cage from the water and gave it a shake, he explained, “We shake them so we break the edges [of the shell], so they can grow good and help shape them.”
Sometimes, Curole told me, he puts the oysters in a tumbler, kind of like how one would polish rocks, to get this effect. He said this shapes the oyster to give it the flat top shell and deeply rounded cup. It also puts the oyster under a little bit of stress, which causes it to eat more and grow faster.
Before leaving the lease, Curole
dragged a cage of oysters over to the boat and dumped them out. Satisfied that they had reached market size, he drove the boat back to his camp to wash and bag them.
“Grand Isle used to be kind of the king of oysters, but with the hurricanes wiping out all of the natural reefs— and then it takes years for those reefs to build up,” said Curole. “When our alternative oyster culture came out probably fifteen to seventeen years ago, it was a new way to grow oysters.”
Cultivating oysters offers a number of advantages over wild harvesting. Oyster farmers like Curole can monitor the oysters as they grow, harvesting them at the size—about three fingers wide—that most restaurant clients prefer.
The cages also keep the oysters safe from most predators. And Curole can simply take them out of the water during hurricanes. He stores the cages at his fishing camp when he’s not using them. Seed is easy to come by, he says, but the equipment is more expensive.
The process takes anywhere from six to sixteen months from seed to harvest, depending on the type of oyster. Curole sells mostly to restaurants and retail clients.
Louisiana has issued thirteen alternative oyster culture permits since 2014. Encouraged by the state and the industry, Louisiana Sea Grant helped expand the practice across
the coast through a $3 million grant received in 2021.
Yet according to a Sea Grant economic analysis from 2023, even if alternative oyster culture does continue to grow, under the most optimistic conditions, it would only make up less than one percent of oyster production in the state. Most oysters still come from public grounds or traditional private leases.
Alternative oyster culture is also expensive, requiring money for the gear, seed, and labor to get started. It costs Curole $3,200 to fill twenty cages with seed. A single line of two hundred floating bags could cost over $6,000. That’s not including the costs of a boat, motor, truck, and trailer. Curole said there are grants available to cover some, but not all, of the start-up costs.
He doesn’t see his work as replacing traditional oystering. Rather, his oysters are a luxury product—and a conversation starter. “They’re fat,
they’re creamy, they’re buttery, they’re just delicious in the summer. And we’re educating a lot of people,” he says.
When Super Bowl LIX came to New Orleans in February 2025, the NFL partnered with local organizations to implement green projects across the southern portion of Louisiana.
At one of these projects, hosted by the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana (CRCL), Curole was invited to serve his oysters and educate volunteers about off-bottom oystering.
“We want to see the oyster industry continue to exist, continue to thrive. And to be able to do it, to adapt to changing conditions, I think is really useful,” says James Karst, CRCL’s communications director.
One of CRCL’s initiatives is the creation of “living shorelines,” or barriers in the water just offshore made from recycled oyster shells. These structures slow erosion by interrupting
waves. They also provide a habitat for baby oysters, or spat, to latch onto. Karst says other reefs they’ve built have reduced the rate of land loss by around 50 percent. Efforts to stanch land loss are vital in Louisiana, which is losing land at the rate of roughly a football field every one hundred minutes.
CRCL partnered with the NFL to build a living shoreline at Theogene B. Melancon Boat Launch in Leeville, just a thirty-minute drive from Curole’s camp in Grand Isle.
“Leeville is the poster child of land loss in Louisiana,” says Karst.
It used to be a bustling fishing town. In the early twentieth century, oil and gas production moved into the area, eventually turning it into the oil capital of Lafourche Parish. But over time, dredging, subsidence, and sea-level rise meant the area experienced rapid land loss, turning it into a narrow strip of what it once was. That and increasingly intense hurricanes forced people
Curole shucks one of his oysters.
“Oysters will grow on oyster shells. Over time, this reef will grow, and it will provide a lot of habitat.”
to leave. There are hardly any houses anymore, mostly just road, marsh, and a few industrial buildings.
“There are very few permanent residents left,” says Karst. “The cemeteries are usually underwater.”
At the Melancon boat launch, fishers can park in the large gravel parking lot and walk out onto the dock. The industrial landscape of the parking lot draws a sharp contrast to the gray water, where fish leap and dolphins swim.
CRCL chose to build the living shoreline here in part because the boat traffic creates shore-eroding waves. The other reason is that, like in Grand Isle, oysters thrive here.
“What’s special about using oyster shells is that oysters will grow on oyster shells. And so over time, this reef will grow, and it will provide a lot of habitat,” says Mike Biros, CRCL’s restoration programs director. “We only put this thing in the water about a month and a half ago, but we’re already starting to see some little shrimp and crabs in there.”
Creating habitat for more sea life supports the local fishing scene and even could benefit the oyster farms down in Grand Isle. Oysters filter out excess nutrients, improving the water quality for all of these organisms.
CRCL invited Curole to the reefbuilding event in part because they want to strengthen the relationship between the seafood industry and coastal restoration. The fifty-nine tons of recycled oyster shells—one ton for
each year of the Super Bowl—came from restaurants in New Orleans and Baton Rouge.
“That process of pulling seafood from the landscape and putting it onto people’s plates is really a great thing, but if we can make it cyclical and then have it feed back into the landscape—complete a circular economy— that strengthens the ties between the seafood industry, our culture, and our landscape,” says Biros.
The reef in Leeville is CRCL’s eighth living shoreline since the program started in 2014. The organization aims to build two a year.
While these reefs appear to be beneficial, Biros and Karst admit they’re not perfect. For one, the oyster shells that comprise the reef must be held together with plastic netting. CRCL has tried other, biodegradable materials, but they dissolve too fast to keep the oyster reef in place, which takes a couple of years to fully establish.
“We need it not to biodegrade, or at least not for a very long time. So that’s the reason we’re using what we’re using,” says Karst. The organization is still trying to find alternatives.
The other downside is that a living shoreline can only protect a small stretch of land. The living shoreline in Leeville is only 250 feet long, though CRCL has plans to extend it another 616 feet.
“It’s going to do a little bit right here that’s beneficial for this particular area, but the real strength of these
types of projects is how it connects with people,” says Biros.
This is CRCL’s first shoreline that doesn’t require a boat to get to and can be reached easily by the public, which makes it a great spot for educating people about how the climate crisis is affecting Louisiana’s coast.
“People come from around the region—really, around the world—and they eat our oysters and our other seafood,” says Karst. “It’s really an important component of the identity of New Orleans and other parts of south Louisiana.”
“And to see the oyster industry and to see our restaurants become involved in addressing coastal land loss like this strikes me as really poignant and also really important and really effective, too.”
Whether it’s through alternative oyster culture or living shorelines, oysters are playing a vital role in highlighting the impacts of land loss, intensifying hurricanes, and fluctuations in water temperatures caused by climate change on coastal Louisiana. Despite the very real challenges towns like Leeville and Grand Isle face, the culture of Louisiana’s Gulf oysters remains.
This story first appeared in Issue 96 (Summer 2025) of Gravy, published by the Southern Foodways Alliance. Beth McKibben guest edited the issue in collaboration with Gravy editors Sara Camp Milam and Rosalind Bentley.
SFA Fall Symposium to Be Held in Birmingham, October 24–26, 2025
The Southern Foodways Alliance is bringing the fall symposium to Birmingham on October 24–26, 2025. During this weekend, we’ll explore both the built and imagined southern city. Together we’ll query how to better understand urban spaces in a region commonly imagined as rural. We’ll consider the role urban spaces play in our collective constructed memory. We’ll imagine how cities might shape the future of the American South. We’ll examine metropolitan landscapes, learn how urban communities stay connected to the land, and ponder how newcomers find space in crowded cityscapes. Tickets are on sale now at www.southernfoodways.org.
Eudora Welty Award Winners Announced
Each year the Center for the Study of Southern Culture presents the Eudora Welty Awards in Creative Writing to Mississippi high school students during the Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference. Established and endowed by the late Frances Patterson of Tupelo, the awards are given for creative writing in either prose or poem form. In addition to a cash prize, each winner also receives a copy of the Mississippi Encyclopedia, a project that began at the Center in 2003, concluded with publication in 2017, and also has an online component: MississippiEncyclopedia.org.
The first-place winner is Kelsey Diveley from Northeast Lauderdale High School in Meridian for her poem “When He Forgot My Name.” The judges said the poem, a reflection on aging, is spare, but thoughtful, using excellent descriptive images that are self-aware without being self-involved.
This year’s second-place winner is Jayden Legnon from Stone High School in Wiggins for his short story
“Zuflucht.” The judges felt the story is an original form that borrows from other genres, including screenplay and interview format, all wound up into a direct address between the writer and the audiences. It captured the attention of the judges with its striking images such as the phrase “blender of reality.”
This year, there is an honorable mention for Elayjah Earles’s short story “The Magic Rabbit,” which is a thoughtful world-building fantasy. Earles is a student at Mississippi School for the Arts in Brookhaven.
Everyone at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture congratulates this year’s winners on their success and encourages them to continue writing.
Kelsey Diveley
Jayden Legnon
The online Mississippi Encyclopedia has recently added new entries on artist L.V. Hull, on the annual Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference, on Freedom Primers, on the Mississippi Book Festival, on the Marquis de Lafayette’s visit to Mississippi, and on writers Aimee Nezhukumatathil, Catherine Pierce, and Nell Neill James. Here’s another recent addition, this one on the writer Tallulah “Lulah” Ragsdale. You can find this and other work about Mississippi’s past and present online by going to www.mississippiencyclopedia.org.
Tallulah “Lulah” Ragsdale (1862–1953) Writer
Tallulah James Ragsdale, also known as “Lulah,” was born on 5 February 1862 in a mansion called Cedar Hill near Brookhaven. She was the daughter of Martha Louise Hooker Ragsdale and James Lafayette Ragsdale, a Confederate soldier. Her father died on the battlefield a mere four months after her birth, leaving her mother widowed and Lulah fatherless. After her father’s death, Lulah and her mother moved into the Hardy House on Natchez Avenue in Brookhaven to live with extended family.
James Ragsdale’s death led to Martha making Lulah’s education her chief priority. At sixteen, Lulah graduated from the all-female Whitworth College in Brookhaven. Soon after, she left Mississippi for New York City to study acting under Fannie Hunt. Her time in New York brought her a wide variety of new experiences: her first publications— mostly poetry in local magazines and newspapers—and her first performances on stage.
After her time in New York, Ragsdale returned to Mississippi, where she wrote her first novel, The Crime of Philip Guthrie, published by Morrill, Higgins & Co. in Chicago in 1892. J. B. Lippincott & Company published her second novel, A Shadow’s Shadow, the following year, which remains lauded for its commentary on women’s limited social options: specifically, the choice
between marriage and career. Despite its ambitious scope, this second novel received little attention upon its publication. After her second novel’s publication, Ragsdale pivoted to teaching. She taught at Whitworth College, Belhaven College, and in the Gulfport and Brookhaven public schools. Though she never fully fell in love with teaching, she taught for around twenty years while also writing and publishing poems and short stories in periodicals such as the New Orleans Times-Democrat, Harper’s Monthly, Harper’s Weekly, Young’s Magazine, Arena, and Today’s Housewife
In 1917, Ragsdale published her third novel, Miss Dulcie from Dixie. This novel is widely touted to be her best
work. While similar to her previous novels in themes of women’s rights and social justice, it omits some of the melodrama found in her past work, marking the indication of a maturing writer. This novel elevated her to some measure of celebrity among southern authors. Two years later, it was adapted into a silent movie of the same name, directed by Joseph Gleason.
Following this success, Ragsdale published her fourth and final novel, The Next-Besters, in 1920 Following themes found in her previous work, The Next-Besters yet again tackles the issue of a woman’s choice between ambition and homemaking, voicing Ragsdale’s discontent with a woman’s social status and limited options in the world. This novel marked the apex of Ragsdale’s literary success. The screen rights were purchased, but a film adaptation was never made.
Ragsdale reportedly suffered a mental health crisis in 1921. In 1929, she published her last book, a collection of poetry titled If I See Green . Her vision deteriorated in the last fifteen years of her life, marking her later life with troubles. She died in 1953 at age ninety-one at her longtime home, the Hardy House, in Brookhaven. She is buried in the Rose Hill Cemetery.
Ford New Orleans, Louisiana
Mattie
Tallulah “Lulah” Ragsdale
A New Study the South Essay
In this essay, “The Extraordinary, Enigmatic Life of Mississippi Writer Neill James,” Carolyn J. Brown recounts the life and afterlife of Neill James, the author of the “Petticoat Vagabond” travel books. James was an explorer, writer, entrepreneur, and philanthropist whose government career set her on a path of worldwide travel to the remotest corners of the globe. She recorded her adventures in four travelogues edited by famed Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins. James was forced to retire from strenuous travel after two accidents in Mexico required a lengthy recuperation, and she redirected her energies to the community that helped heal her over the next fifty years. Despite her enormous successes, James’s life is shrouded in mystery: Researchers have been unable to answer basic biographical questions or adequately explain what she did for the government. This essay presents both the facts and the previous research behind the story of a fascinating Mississippi woman whose life has much to be remembered for.
James wearing a lei on the Island of Hawaii, where she “frolicked on the summit of Mauna Kai, a 13,000-foot volcano”
Carolyn J. Brown is a writer, editor, and independent scholar who, after sixteen years of living in Mississippi, now resides in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. She has a BA from Duke University, and an MA and PhD in English Literature from the University of North Carolina–Greensboro. She is the author of five biographies of Mississippi women, including the award-winning A Daring Life: A Biography of Eudora Welty and Song of My Life: A Biography of Margaret Walker, as well as her most recent work, To Dance, To Live: A Biography of Thalia Mara (all published by University Press of Mississippi). Brown has previously published in Study the
South (March 2015) in addition to many other peer-reviewed journals. Find her at www.carolynjbrown.net.
Study the South is a peer-reviewed, multimedia, online journal, published and managed by the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi. Founded in 2014, Study the South (www.StudytheSouth.com) exists to encourage interdisciplinary academic thought and discourse on the American South, particularly through the lenses of social justice, history, anthropology, sociology, music, literature, documentary studies, gender studies, religion, geography, media studies, race studies, ethnicity, folklife, and visual art.
Study the South publishes a variety of works by institutionally affiliated and independent scholars. Like the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, Study the South embraces a diversity of media, including written essays with accompanying audio, video, and photography components; documentary photography; interviews with scholars and artists; video projects; and book reviews.
To submit work for consideration to Study the South, please email a completed manuscript as a Word document, along with any available illustrations, graphics, video, or audio, to editor James G. Thomas Jr. at jgthomas@olemiss.edu.
Final manuscripts and projects must attempt to build upon and expand the understanding of the American South in order to be considered for publication. Copyright for essays published in Study the South is retained by the authors.
PHOTO COURTESY NEILL JAMES ARCHIVES, PROPERTY OF THE LAKE CHAPALA SOCIETY
CALL FOR PAPERS
Percival Everett’s James
Study the South invites submissions for a special issue exploring Percival Everett’s provocative novel James As a peer-reviewed, multimedia, online journal, Study the South (www .StudytheSouth.com) encourages interdisciplinary academic discourse on the culture of the American South, and we seek contributions that engage with James’s profound reimagining of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Percival Everett’s James offers a critical and compelling re-narration from the perspective of Jim, an enslaved man, delving into themes of racism, dehumanization, and the pervasive hypocrisy embedded in the institution of slavery and its aftermath. The novel powerfully examines identity, narrative, and agency, particularly through Jim’s remarkable intelligence, literacy, and his strategic use of language as a means of survival and resistance, urging a re-evaluation of the American South’s complex past and its enduring legacies.
Study the South exists to encourage interdisciplinary academic thought and discourse on the American South, particularly through the lenses of social justice, history, anthropology, sociology, music, literature, documentary studies, gender studies, religion, geography, media studies, race studies, ethnicity, folklife, and visual art. Possible
topics for essays might include but are by no means limited to:
• T he reinterpretation of classic American literature through a
the performance of identity and language as resistance
• T he depiction of violence and brutality in James compared to historical accounts or other literary works
• Interdisciplinary approaches to understanding the cultural, social, and historical implications of Everett’s work
• The role of humor and satire in addressing profound societal issues
Submissions should aim to build upon and expand the understanding of the American South through the lens of Everett’s James. We encourage innovative research that challenges existing paradigms and offers fresh insights into the region’s diverse histories and experiences.
Submission Guidelines:
Manuscripts should not have been previously published or be under consideration by another journal or press. Authors interested in submitting should email a completed manuscript as a Word document or PDF, along with an abstract and any available illustrations, graphics, or audio, to editor James G. Thomas, Jr. at jgthomas@olemiss.edu. Advance
For more information about the journal, please visit the Study the
The theme for the Center for the Study of Southern Culture’s upcoming 50th anniversary is “The South in All Directions.” Your gift will help us take stock of the past, continue our work in the present, and plan a celebration for the future. Donate using the form below to support these ongoing Center activities and to help plan for our 50th-anniversary celebration in 2027. Thank you!
The theme for the Center for the Study of Southern Culture’s upcoming 50th anniversary is “The South in All Directions.” Your gift will help us take stock of the past, continue our work in the present, and plan a celebration for the future. Donate using the form below to support these ongoing Center activities and to help plan for our 50th-anniversary celebration in 2027. Thank you!
Dr. Kathryn McKee | Center Director | kmckee@olemiss.edu | 662-915-3372
Dr. Kathryn McKee | Center Director | kmckee@olemiss.edu | 662-915-3372
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CONTRIBUTORS
Brooke P. Alexander is a painter living and working in North Mississippi. Her work is painted extensively from life, inspired by literature, while intermingling elements of memory. She has participated in regional and national exhibitions and was awarded the 2024 Mississippi Fellow for South Arts. She is an instructional assistant professor at the University of Mississippi in Oxford.
Brett J. Bonner is the editor of Living Blues.
Rebecca Lauck Cleary is the Center’s communications specialist. She received a BA in journalism from the University of Mississippi and her MA in Southern Studies.
Simone Delerme is an associate professor of anthropology and Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi. She specializes in migration to the US South, with interests in race relations, integration and incorporation, community development, and socialclass inequalities.
Mattie Ford is a graduate of the Southern Studies undergraduate program and the University of Mississippi Honors College. She lives in New Orleans.
Rita Harper is a documentary photographer and photojournalist from Atlanta.
Marvis Herring is a communications specialist for the University of Mississippi’s University Marketing and Communications team.
Katie McKee is the director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture and McMullan Professor of Southern Studies and English.
Maggie Muehleman is a PhD student in the University of Mississippi’s Department of English.
John Rash is an assistant professor of film production and Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi. He earned his MFA in experimental and documentary arts from Duke University.
Xavier Sivels is an instructor of Southern Studies and the undergraduate coordinator and Academic Common Market advisor for the Center.
Eva Tesfaye is a coastal reporter for WWNO and WRKF, NPR’s affiliate stations in Louisiana. She also reports and produces for the stations’ podcast Sea Change about life on the changing coasts. Previously, she covered agriculture, food, and the environment across the Mississippi River Basin for KCUR in Kansas City and produced for NPR’s daily science podcast, Short Wave.
From creepy to cozy, SouthDocs gets an update.
SouthDocs
Remodel Complete
This summer, SouthDocs has been on a roll, literally. Inspired by feedback from our graduate students who felt that our spaces were dingy and a little “creepy,” we rolled up our sleeves and got to work. We’ve created sleek workstations with new computers for better film and photo editing. We transformed our communal areas with fresh paint and thoughtful remodeling—with room for everyone’s favorite coffee or tea. The audio recording suite also got an upgrade so our students’ voices (and their podcast jokes) will be heard loud and clear. And just when you thought it couldn’t get any better, our new SouthDocs website (www.southdocs.org) launched—spotlighting faculty, staff, and student voices front and center.
The University of Mississippi Center for the Study of Southern Culture University, MS 38677
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