Southern Studies and History Professor Ted Ownby's Southern Studies undergraduate seminar, SST 401, is a study of the cultural response to poverty in the South. Noting that one of the apparent continuities in the South is the degree of poverty and the importance of poverty upon the identities of its inhabitants, Ownby has structured the course to explore the following questions: (1) How have poor Southerners interpreted and solved their own economic problems? (2) How have Southerners who are not poor interpreted poverty and dealt with it? (3) Does poverty inspire particular forms of creativity? (4) How has Southern poverty changed with the decline of agricultural work and the growth of Sun Belt cities?

To attempt to answer these questions, SST 401 students read fictional, historical, anthropological, and sociological texts related to poverty in the South, including Pete Daniel's Breaking the Land, James Agee's and Walker Evans's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, Nicholas Lemann's The Promised Land, Harry Crews's Classic Crews, and Dorothy Allison's Bastard Out of Carolina. Ownby was pleased with the students in last fall's class, noting their high interest in the course: "Although many people think most of our [Southern Studies] undergraduate students come from upper-class backgrounds, the topic of poverty was alive and personal. It was the most talkative group of undergraduate students I have ever taught."

In addition to taking a final examination and participating in class discussion on the readings, each student in SST 401 is required to write a research paper exploring the issue of poverty in Southern culture. Representative papers from last fall's class include Tamika McCullar's study of Richard Wright's literary depiction of poverty and family life and Jason Wester's analysis of economic change at the Choctaw reservation in Philadelphia, Mississippi. Several students chose to research poverty in their hometowns when writing their papers. For example, Lesley Ayres of Hammond, Louisiana, wrote about the need for public transportation in the rural areas of her parish while Lindsay Nusloch of New Orleans, Louisiana, recorded her observations of the community of lower income residents living in her city's Catholic-sponsored AIDS care clinic. Overall these students gained a better understanding of poverty and the nature of cultural responses to it.

For more information on the Southern Studies 401 seminar, contact Ted Ownby by phone at 601-232-5360 or via e-mail at hsownby@olemiss.edu.

--Allison Vise Finch