New
Southern Studies Graduate Students
And Then There Were Six
With
a smallish six new students this year, Southern
Studies is all about less being more. There’s a
fair amount of diversity in that small number: ages
span the 20s, and hometowns cover most of the South.
One place of origin, however, is really South: Belo
Horizonte, Brazil, which produced Erika Almeida
Carvalho de Salles. A former literature student
at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, 26-year-old
Erika fell under the spell specifically, she says,
of “the black folks’ sensibility.” It so captivated
her that she decided to study the black experience
in the South in depth, ultimately in hopes of producing
a comparative study of race relations in the United
States and those in her native country.
Brooke Butler, 25 years old and from Little Rock,
Arkansas, graduated with a B.A. in Women’s Studies
and Classics from Westminster College, in Fulton,
Missouri, in 1999. Since then, Brooke has been an
au pair, raised money for community radio, and traveled
Australia. As for her hobby, Brooke says, “When
I’m rooted in one place for a while, I dig gardening.”
Nash Molpus, a Jackson, Mississippi, native, comes
to Ole Miss directly from Furman University in Greenville,
South Carolina. The hyperambitious 23-year-old English/Women’s
Studies major has already picked up a spare job
at Square Books. The other native Mississippian
is Christopher Hedgelin, also just out of college–in
his case, Millsaps, in Jackson, Mississippi. Christopher
ended up at Ole Miss instead of several divinity
schools he considered, with a future of working
with children in mind. He says he’s quite certain
he made the right choice.
Two relatively old people round out the mix. Kendra
Myers, 28 and from Atlanta, and Christopher Schultz,
29, an Alabama Gulf Coast native who attended high
school in Memphis. Both graduated from Duke in 1995,
where they became friends in an honors creative
writing program for seniors. Since then, Myers has
been in her native Atlanta, making a living by freelancing
for the Centers for Disease Control, writing her
own plays, and doing and teaching improv comedy.
Clearly the bigger patriot, Chris was in the navy
for four years, fighting the important battles as
a supply officer (for example, ordering Snickers
bars and Gatorade). After finishing in 1999, he
moved immediately to New York City, where he’s worked
as a writer at various magazines and newspapers
for the last three years, as well as writing fiction.
Add to six new students one who started in the Southern
Studies Program when the prospect of a learner’s
permit thrilled the younger among us. Ellen Meacham
graduated from Ole Miss in 1990 with a degree in
journalism and started in the program shortly thereafter,
with her academic study interspersed with news reporting.
She is a crime reporter at heart and, most recently,
covered the courts, crime, and legal issues for
the Charleston, South Carolina, Post and Courier
until returning to school full time in January 2002.
She is writing her thesis on the influence of Southern
culture on domestic violence in the South.
Christopher Schultz
Clockwise
from lower right: Erika Salles, Brooke Butler, Kendra
Myers, Christopher Hedglin, Chris Schultz, Ellen
Meacham, Nash Molpus
