Over the past 20 years the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi has become a focal point for innovative education and research on the American South. The Center was founded in 1977 after two years of planning by a campus-wide committee of faculty and administrators who saw its potential for strengthening the University's instructional program in the humanities, promoting scholarship on every aspect of Southern culture, and encouraging public understanding of the South through publications, media productions, lectures, performances, and exhibitions. By almost any standard the Center has far surpassed the goals of its founders.

The Center offers both B.A. and M.A. degrees in Southern Studies. Students are attracted by the Center's pioneering curriculum, composed of more than 40 courses taught by faculty from 10 departments in the College of Liberal Arts. A grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1979 helped launch the curriculum, which combines innovative, interdisciplinary instruction with traditional approaches to the study of the South. A Ford Foundation grant funded a three-year (1986-1989) project to strengthen Southern Studies at the University and other institutions in the region by bringing distinguished visiting faculty and faculty fellows to the campus.

The Center is particularly proud of its publications. The Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, edited by Charles Reagan Wilson and William Ferris, was 10 years in the making and involved more than 800 scholars and writers in many fields. The University of North Carolina Press published the reference work as a 1634-page, hardcover volume in 1989 and Anchor Books issued it in four paperback volumes in 1991. U.S. News & World Report recognized the Encyclopedia as "the first attempt ever to describe every aspect of a region's life and thought, the impact of its history and politics, music and literature, manners and myths, even the iced tea that washes down catfish and cornbread." A phenomenal publishing success, the work won the American Library Association's Dartmouth Medal and other awards.

The South: A Treasury of Art and Literature, compiled and edited by Lisa Howorth, provides more than 100 literary selections and 200 works illustrating a full range of Southern artistic traditions. Among other Center publications are Dorothy Abbott's five-volume anthology, Mississippi Writers: Reflections of Childhood and Youth, volume five of which has been adopted as a state textbook; the 636-page The Blues: A Bibliographic Guide; several other books including Lower Pearl River's Piney Woods: Its Land and People; the bimonthly Living Blues, and the biannual Mississippi Folklife. Friends of the Center follow its activities through the its quarterly newsletter, the Southern Register. The Southern Culture Catalog is a means of documenting the present and the past by bringing together some of the finest audio-visual materials available on the South in one collection.

One of the favorite proverbs of former Center Director William Ferris is "When an old man dies, a library burns to the ground." The Center for the Study of Southern Culture seeks to preserve and disseminate knowledge about the South that might otherwise be lost. The Southern Culture Catalog is a means of documenting the present and the past by bringing together some of the finest audio-visual materials available on the South in one collection.

We invite your interest and participation in our efforts.

For further information about the Center, write us at:
Center for the Study of Southern Culture
Barnard Observatory
University of Mississippi
University, MS 38677
or call us at 662-915-5993. The fax number is 662-915-5814 and e-mail is cssc@olemiss.edu

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