The third annual Southern Foodways Symposium will be held October 20-22, 2000 on the campus of the University of Mississippi. This year's theme is "Travelin' On: Southern Food En Route," an examination of what happens when Southerners--and Southern foods--travel north, and west, and across the Atlantic.

As was the case with previous symposia, this event will provide an opportunity for cooks, chefs, food writers, and inquisitive eaters alike to come to a better understanding of Southern cuisine and, in turn, Southern culture. Lectures, to be held in Barnard Observatory, the restored antebellum headquarters of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, will be complemented by a series of informal lunches, served in the sylvan grove at the heart of the Ole Miss campus.

Featured foods will include "dueling gumbos" prepared by New Orleans restauranteur Leah Chase, Fritz Blank of Deux Cheminées in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Johnny Faulk of Grand Lake, Louisiana, bass player for the Grammy-nominated Cajun band the Hackberry Ramblers. Friday lunch will feature a sampling of more modern Southern fare from chef Neal Langerman of Georgia Brown's restaurant in Washington, D.C.

Evening events include author readings, regional food and drink tastings, a barbecue, a catfish dinner with appetizers from chefs Karen Carrier, Jimmy Kennedy, and Louis Osteen, and a street dance hosted by the Hackberry Ramblers. Festivities close with a dinner on the grounds.

Host for the event is the Southern Foodways Alliance at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture. Contributing sponsors include the American Center for Wine, Food, and the Arts, Bottletree Bakery, City Grocery, Fat Possum Records, the Oxford Tourism Council, and Viking Range. Supporting sponsors are Southern Comfort and The Catfish Institute.

Artwork: Down the Road by Taylor Bowen Ricketts. Sold on the closing day of the symposium.

Symposium Speakers and Chefs

Fritz Blank, a microbiologist by training, is chef-proprietor of the restaurant Deux Cheminées in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Roy Blount Jr. is a widely published author. His most recent work is a memoir, Be Sweet: A Conditional Love Story.

Linda Carman is co-author of the cookbook Southern Traditions: 100 Years of Recipes from the Martha White Test Kitchens.

Karen Carrier is the proprietor of numerous Memphis, Tennessee, food concerns including two restaurants, Automatic Slim's Tonga Club and Cielo.

Leah Chase is the proprietor of Dooky Chase's restaurant in New Orleans and author of The Dooky Chase Cookbook. She was one of 175 women featured in I Dream a World: Portraits of Black Women Who Changed America. She is president of the SFA.

Joe Dabney is the author of, among other works, Mountain Spirits and Smokehouse Ham, Spoonbread, & Scuppernong Wine, the latter of which won a James Beard Award in 1999.

Nathalie Dupree is a television personality and author with numerous books to her credit including an early work on modern Southern cookery entitled New Southern Cooking.

John Egerton is the author of numerous books including Speak Now Against the Day. His Southern Food: At Home, on the Road, in History is a contemporary classic.

Lolis Eric Elie is a columnist for the New Orleans Times-Picayune and author of Smokestack Lightning, a cultural portrait of barbecue in America.

John Floyd is the editor of Southern Living magazine.

J. C. Hardaway is a veteran barbecue pitmaster of great renown, who now practices his art at the Big S Grill in Memphis, Tennessee.

The Hackberry Ramblers have been playing the Cajun dance halls of Southwest Louisiana since the 1930s. Their 1997 album, Deep Water, was nominated for a Grammy.

Jessica B. Harris, a professor of English at Queens College, has written extensively about the foods and foodways of the African Diaspora.

Jimmy Kennedy, a native of Mississippi and a graduate of Ole Miss, is the chef-proprietor of River Run Café in Plainfield, Vermont.

Neal Langerman is the executive chef of Georgia Brown's in Washington, D.C., a restaurant featuring the cuisine of Lowcountry South Carolina.

Matthew and Ted Lee write about food for, among other publications, Food & Wine and Gourmet. They are co-proprietors of the Lee Brothers Boiled Peanut Company in Charleston, South Carolina.

Ronni Lundy is the author of, among other works, Butter Beans to Blackberries: Recipes from the Southern Garden.

Peter McKee is an attorney. During the 1970s, while serving as a VISTA volunteer, he fell in love with Fresh Air Barbecue in Jackson, Georgia. Since 1980 he has been staging the Jackson Fresh Air Barbecue Cook-off and Feed in his home of Seattle, Washington.

Louis Osteen is chef and co-owner of Louis's restaurant in Charleston, South Carolina, and author of the book Louis Osteen's Charleston Cuisine: Recipes from a Lowcountry Chef.

Richard Pillsbury is a cultural geographer. His most recent book is No Foreign Food: The American Diet in Time and Place.

Kathleen Purvis is the award-winning food editor of the Charlotte Observer.

William Rice, former editor of Food & Wine magazine, is a food writer for the Chicago Tribune. His most recent book is The Steak Lover's Cookbook.

Alexander Smalls is author of the book Grace the Table: Stories and Recipes from My Southern Revival. His new restaurant, Shoebox Café, opens this fall in New York City^(1)s Grand Central Station.

Monique Y. Wells, a native of Houston, Texas, now living in Paris, France, is author of the book Food for the Soul, first published in the French as La Cuisine Noire Américaine.

Bill Williams is founder of Glory Foods, a Columbus, Ohio, canner of Southern-style vegetables, in business since 1992.

Charles Reagan Wilson is director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture. His latest book is Judgment and Grace in Dixie: Southern Faiths from Faulkner to Elvis.