Having built upon the success of the inaugural Southern Foodways Symposium held in May 1998, a second gathering was held during which conferees explored the Creolization of Southern Cuisine.

The symposium was held October 29-31, 1999 on the University of Mississippi campus in Oxford. This event provided an exciting 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 were held in Barnard Observatory, the restored antebellum headquarters of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture and complemented by a series of informal lunches and dinners, served in the sylvan grove at the heart of the Ole Miss campus. Featured foods included retired farmer Ed Scott's sandy-brown fried catfish, chef John Folse's modern interpretations of traditional Louisiana cooking, and burbling kettles of pilau, the prized stew of the South Carolina Lowcountry.

Evening events included book signings, regional food and drink tastings, and a staging of Nyam, a folk opera performed by author and National Public Radio personality, Vertamae Grosvenor. Festivities closed with a dinner on the grounds, served as a gospel choir performed.

Host for the event was the Center for the Study of Southern Culture. Supporting sponsors included the American Center for Wine, Food and the Arts, the Georgia Pecan Commission, Hal & Mal's Restaurant and Brewpub, G.P. Putnam's Sons, publishers of A Gracious Plenty: Recipes and Recollections from the American South; the Southern Peanut Farmers Federation; and Viking Range.

We would be happy to let you know when the dates for the next symposium are announced. Please e-mail the Southern Foodways Alliance for more information.

Speakers and Chefs

Leah Chase is the owner of Dooky Chase 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.

John Egerton, is author of numerous award-winning 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 the author of Smokestack Lightning, a cultural portrait of barbecue in America.

John Folse, owner and chef of Lafitte's Landing Restaurant in Donaldsonville, Louisiana, hosts a television show, A Taste of Louisiana, on PBS. He is the author of a number of books, including The Evolution of Cajun & Creole Cuisine.

Damon Lee Fowler, of Savannah, Georgia, a food historian and teacher, is the author of, among other works, Classical Southern Cooking: A Celebration of the Cuisine of the Old South.

Vertamae Grosvenor is author of, among other works, Vibration Cooking or the Travel Notes of a Geechee Girl. She is host of the National Public Radio series, Seasonings, and composer of Nyam, a folk opera.

Jessica Harris, a professor of English at Queens College, has written extensively about the foods and foodways of the African Diaspora. Her most recent book is The Africa Cookbook: Taste of a Continent.

Lionel Key of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, still makes file' the way his forefathers did, pulverizing sassafras leaves into powder by plunging a weathered pecan wood maul into the concave cavity of a cypress stump. He is proprietor of Uncle Bill's Creole Filé.

Edna Lewis, a native of Freetown, Virginia, is a renowned cook and keeper of the Southern culinary flame. She is author of a number of cookbooks, including The Taste of Country Cooking and In Pursuit of Flavor.

Ronni Lundy, a native of Corbin, Kentucky, is the author of Shuck Beans, Stack Cakes and Honest Fried Chicken and Butter Beans to Blackberries: Recipes from the Southern Garden. She has been writing about food, music and the South for 20 years.

Ed Scott was the first African-American catfish farmer in the Mississippi Delta. Though now retired, Mr. Scott still has his hand in the catfish business -- as a cook of the most succulent fried fish you have ever had the pleasure to eat.

Kathy Starr, a native of the Mississippi Delta town of Hollandale, is author of The Soul of Southern Cooking, an early, important work on African-American foodways.

Joe St Columbia is proprietor of Pasquale's Tamales in Helena, Arkansas. His Sicilian-American family has been making tamales since the early years of the twentieth century.

John Martin Taylor is a food historian, writer, and owner of Hoppin John's Lowcountry culinary web site. The author of numerous books, including the seminal Low Country Cooking, he lives in Charleston, South Carolina.

Psyche Williams is a doctoral candidate in American Studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her field of expertise is African-American foodways.

Charles Wilson, a professor of history at the University of Mississippi, is director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture. His latest book is Judgement & Grace in Dixie: Southern Faiths from Faulkner to Elvis.