History of Southern Studies

Dedicated to strengthening the University of Mississippi's humanities program through the exploration and documentation of the American South's complex and diverse cultural traditions, a committee of the school's faculty and administrators began planning the Center for the Study of Southern Culture in 1975. In 1976 the National Endowment for the Humanities awarded the University a consultant grant of nearly $4,000 to aid in the planning, and in November of 1977 a three-day Eudora Welty symposium, featuring the author herself, marked the Center's opening.

In 1978 William Ferris was named director of the Center, and under his 20-year tenure, the University of Mississippi became internationally recognized as a leader in the examination and study of the South. Much of that recognition came with the award-winning Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, published in 1989 by the University of North Carolina Press and edited by Ferris and Charles Reagan Wilson, who became Center director in 1998, when President Bill Clinton appointed Ferris chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Associate Director Ann J. Abadie edits Southern Register, our newsletter that has chronicled the activities of the Center almost from the beginning.

Throughout its history, the Center has emphasized its academic program as the foundation of its work. A National Endowment for the Humanities curriculum grant led to the creation of a Bachelor of Arts program in Southern Studies, which now enrolls 40 undergraduate majors, and the University of Mississippi supported the program through the appointment of faculty working in the Southern Studies Program and in a home department. In 1986 the University established the Master of Arts program, which now enrolls two dozen students from across the nation and around the world. In 1997 James and Madeleine McMullan added to the strength of the program by establishing an endowment to support two additional joint Southern Studies professorships, one in literature and the other in cultural anthropology.

Documentary Studies has long been a particular strength of the Center, and David Wharton heads this program now, working with Southern Studies students who learn how to use photography and oral history to document individuals and communities. The Gammill Gallery provides a venue to display faculty and student work, as well as photographs from across the region.

The Center's outreach projects are part of its distinctive character, bridging the gap between the latest scholarly research and broad audiences interested in the American South. The Center has long sponsored or cosponsored the Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference, the Porter L. Fortune Jr. History Symposium, and the Oxford Conference for the Book. The Southern Foodways Alliance was created in 1999, and its annual symposium brings enthusiastic students of food to campus each fall. In 2003 the Center inaugurated the Blues Today Symposium, with a keynote address by noted critic Stanley Crouch; 2005 saw a Southern gardening symposium and the initiation of the Music of the South Symposium.

Now in its third decade, the Center remains a hothouse of ideas about the American South, as seen in our production of publications for a wide audience. The Center is producing the New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, a series of paperback volumes to be published by the University of North Carolina Press. In addition, Center staff have partnered with the Mississippi Humanities Council, the Mississippi Department of Archives and History, the Mississippi Arts Commission, and the University Press of Mississippi to produce the Mississippi Encyclopedia. The Center's book series, New Directions in Southern Studies, to be published by the University of North Carolina Press, will publish innovative new interdisciplinary studies on the region. Center faculty help to set our publication agenda through their seminal works in history, literature, anthropology, and documentary studies.

The Center has long been associated with the study and presentation of Southern music, especially the blues, and that connection has recently been strengthened. Living Blues remains the premier blues journal, and the Blues Today Symposium helps support its work. The University's Blues Archive attracts scholars from around the world. Highway 61, a weekly radio program on the blues, is produced by the University's Office of Outreach, which has become an important supporter of Center work, in conjunction with Mississippi Public Broadcasting. Center director Charles Reagan Wilson serves on the Mississippi Blues Commission. The Music of the South Symposium, a new performance series at the Gertrude C. Ford Performing Arts Center, and the live community radio show, Thacker Mountain Radio, are all part of Center efforts to preserve and study Southern musical achievements.

Other new initiatives are addressing the contemporary South, including sponsorship of two symposia on the Global South and symposia and workshops on the Southern environment. November 2004 marked a turning point for the Center, as we embarked on a new path to explore connections between the humanities, economic development, and public policy in the South. The American South: Then and Now Symposium, which took place November 18-20, 2004, brought distinguished journalists, politicians, policy makers, and scholars together in panels to hold conversations on race relations, politics, the media, religion, and other public policy issues. Thanks to a challenge grant from the Hardin Foundation, the Center will host an annual conference bringing the light of the humanities to public policy discussions about the South.

The Center for the Study of Southern Culture continues to build on its history in helping to chart ways into the South's future.