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Director's Column

Happy New Year. This is my first column as the new director of the Center. Since Charles Wilson became Kelly Gene Cook Chair of History and Southern Studies in fall 2007, I have been serving as interim director. When the Center conducted a search for a new director last year, many of us hoped to hire someone from outside the University of Mississippi. The goal was to hire someone with a different set of experiences and some new ideas. When that search did not end with the hiring of a new director, I decided to apply the position, hoping both that I understand what works well at the Center and also that I can help us develop some new ideas. I was flattered to be offered the position of director in December.

In the various discussions that were part of the interview process (being interviewed by friends was odd, but not really painful), I mentioned a few principles I would try to use as director.

First, the Center for the Study of Southern Culture begins with the academic program. One of many things the original designers of the Center did absolutely right was to put the teaching of students in an undergraduate and graduate program at the center of our mission. Many academic institutions come and go or, worse, start and stagnate, in part because they fail to generate the excitement and new ideas and need for relevance that comes from teaching students. I am excited by efforts many colleagues are making to broaden Southern Studies teaching in various directions, among them the global South, foodways, racial definition and reconciliation, studying and making film, and discovering new theories about place and region. Making sure teaching and scholarship remain at the center of Southern Studies means, among other things, making connections between outreach and teaching, keeping graduate funding in mind in discussing new projects, and—always—keeping up with current scholarship.

Second, the Center has long relied on partnerships with various departments around the University, and I want to continue those partnerships, making sure we are all benefiting from them, and develop new ones. The range of the Center makes it ideal to keep building new and even better bonds with those outside Barnard Observatory.

Third, the Center and its alumni and friends have over the past three decades developed a set of accomplishments and skills we can continue to use for the benefit of the program. For example, we can invite interested Southern Studies alumni to visit and, when possible, give presentations, or we can start working to put more photography by Center faculty and staff and alumni on the walls of Barnard Observatory. We can call on Southern Studies alumni to consider becoming more involved in making financial contributions to the Center. Above all, we can use suggestions.

Finally, I am encouraging faculty, staff, students, alumni, and friends to start discussing new ideas so the Center will be ready to be pursuing them by the time we complete our encyclopedia projects. The Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, published in 1989, its successor The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, and the not-yet-published Mississippi Encyclopedia have been extraordinary in making the Center a
place that sets agendas for scholarship, identifies and publishes the work of new and established scholars, and brings that scholarship together in accessible ways. The New Encyclopedia just published the 12th volume (Music) of an eventual 24-volume set, and the Mississippi Encyclopedia will be ready to be published in 2010. We need to make plans so that, when our last encyclopedia volume is published, we are pursuing other ideas.

So, I encourage everyone reading the Southern Register to send ideas—big or small, complimentary or critical, similar to past projects or completely new, simple or impractical, inexpensive or virtually unfundable—to me at hsownby@olemiss.edu or by mail at Barnard Observatory. The faculty and staff will consider all of them in discussions we will have about new possibilities in the coming months.

Just a word about the help friends and colleagues offered in my time as interim director and now as a new director. Writing about my predecessors Charles Wilson and Bill Ferris, Associate Director Ann Abadie, and many other friends among the faculty, staff, Advisory Committee, alumni, students, and administrators runs the risk of the kind of clichés and unnecessary adverbs that I try to discourage in the writing of my students. Worse yet, effusive thanks risks using the language well-dressed actors use in receiving awards. So, to avoid clichés, adverbs, and effusive language, let me say thanks.

TED OWNBY