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Southern Studies Welcomes New Graduate Students JIMMY THOMAS
Perhaps the most compelling aspects of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture are its eclectic faculty, staff, and students. This fall the Center welcomed 12 new students into its Southern Studies MA program, all of whom contribute to the Center’s notable diversity. These individuals bring with them an array of interests and experiences that benefit the program on the whole and serve to provoke interesting and enlightening class discussions. So far, these students have covered the difficulty in mapping “the South,” questions about “Southern exceptionalism,” the production of explicit T-shirts promoting regional identity, and Japanese editions of the classic Southern film and novel To Kill a Mockingbird, among countless other topics. Meet the students. Amanda Berrios graduated from the Virginia Military Institute, where she majored in psychology and minored in English, writing, and fine arts. She is interested in doing research on historical individuals and looks forward to pursuing this at the University of Mississippi. She has been an arts editor for a literary journal for two years and a poetry editor for a literary journal for one year. Amanda enjoys playing soccer and water polo, and her party trick is juggling. Mary Blessey was born and raised in Biloxi, Mississippi. She attended Millsaps College in Jackson where she earned her BA in philosophy and minored in history
1st row (l-r): Kayla Marion, Katie Gill, Irene Van Riper. 2nd row (l-r): Sophie Hay, Brandy Williams, Sarah Holder, Amanda Berrios, Mary Blessey. 3rd row (l-r): Bryan Hawks, Chris Colbeck, Yaeko Takada, Amanda Malloy
and religious studies. In addition to her graduate studies, Mary works as a McLean Institute Innovation Fellow with the CEED (Catalyzing Entrepreneurship and Economic
Development) program, which is dedicated to solving poverty-related problems in rural Mississippi. continued on page 25