FALL 2016
Introducing the First-Year Southern Studies MA Class JAMES G. THOMAS, JR.
This year’s incoming class of graduate students includes two international students and others from all areas of the United States. They have a wide variety of backgrounds and ideas, but all share a common interest in the South. Rachel Childs was convinced to pursue her MA in Southern Studies after volunteering at the Southern Foodways Alliance’s 2015 fall symposium. She holds a BA in Englishwriting from Berry College. Childs recently spent four years in Boston as a developmental editor for textbooks and professional resources at Macmillan Learning. A metro-Atlanta native, she is delighted to be back below the Mason-Dixon line, where grocery stores carry pimento cheese. Victoria De Leone grew up in Sisters, a small mountain town in Central Oregon. She fled the small town life after high school, landing at New York University. After defending her thesis on immigrant foodways and literature, she stuck around Brooklyn to work as a community manager for a tiny food startup. After a year of moving too often and a handful of cross-country road trips, she decided she was tired of subways and headed south. She is now a Graduate Fellow at the Southern Foodways Alliance. Don Harvey is returning to Mississippi after a thirty-five-year absence. Born in Biloxi and raised in Hattiesburg, Don graduated
The incoming Southern Studies graduate class gathers on the steps of Barnard Observatory. Row 1: left to right, Victoria De Leone, Holly Robinson, Je’Monda Roy, Jacqui Sahagian; row 2: Rachel Childs, Kevin Mitchell, Elise Potentier. Not pictured, Don Harvey
from Mississippi State University in chemical engineering in 1971. His federal career in occupational safety and health began in Jackson, Mississippi, and his career later took him to Kentucky, North Carolina, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. While in Maryland, he completed his masters of health science in environmental heath science at Johns Hopkins University in 1999. He retired from federal service in 2011. After moving to Northwest Arkansas, he spent many weekends traveling to blues festivals around the South. His abiding interest in blues music led
him to the Center for the Study of Southern Culture. Kevin Mitchell earned both his AOS in culinary arts and his BPS at the Culinary Institute of America. Through his passion for food culture, the preservation of Southern ingredients, and the history of African Americans and food, he decided to pursue his MA in Southern Studies where he will work with the Southern Foodways Alliance. He is a fan of the mission of the Slow Food organization continued on page 27