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Southern Studies Alumni and Their New Jobs
In hard economic times, it is easy to imagine that new graduates may have difficulty finding jobs they want. The happy news is Southern Studies graduates continue to find new and interesting positions. Here is a short albeit incomplete list of some of the program’s graduates and the positions they have taken within the past year.
Mary Margaret Miller (MA 2007), with a graduate degree in Southern Studies and an undergraduate major in journalism and minor in Southern Studies, seems ideal for her new position as director of the Heritage Program of the Mississippi Arts Commission in Jackson. A Greenwood native, she has moved back to Mississippi after some time working in communications in Nashville. Teresa Parker Farris (MA 2005), is the marketing coordinator at the Newcomb Art Gallery at Tulane in New Orleans, where she is teaching classes on folklife in Louisiana. Governor Bobby Jindal recently appointed her to serve on the Louisiana Folklife Commission. Here on campus, Aaron Rollins, a current master’s student, will become a recruiter for the University of Mississippi Graduate School.
Hicks Wogan (MA 2008) is working in Washington, D.C., at the Newseum, where he researches and writes exhibits. Becca Walton Evans (MA 2008) is the development coordinator for the Georgia Historical Society in Savannah. Sarah Abdelnour (MA 2008) took a position as operations logistics associate at Teach for America in New York City. Miranda Cully (MA 2008) teaches school in Oxford while also working at Living Blues, and Mark Coltrain (MA 2008) has taken a job in the library at Central Piedmont Community College in Charlotte. Laura Anne Heller (BA 2000) has started work at a new position as archivist/ librarian at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. Katherine Huntoon (MA 2007) has a new position as director of exhibition programming at the Visual Arts Center of Richmond. Bland Whitley (MA 1996) moved from Richmond to Princeton to work for the Thomas Jefferson Papers. Ellie Campbell (MA 2006) has returned from England to Oxford, where she works in Special Collections at the John D. Williams Library. Rebecca Domm (2008) is interning for a law firm in Nashville, and numerous alumni are either lawyers or lawyers in training. Joyce Miller (MA 1992) has moved to New Orleans, where she is helping organize KnowLA: The Online Encyclopedia of Louisiana for the Louisiana Humanities Center.
Bert Way (MA 1999) is preparing his work on Southern environmental history for publication while he has a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of South Carolina. Molly McGehee (MA 2000) teaches English at Presbyterian College in South Carolina, and Kerry Taylor is teaching history at the Citadel and Anne Evans (MA 2000) teaches writing at Metropolitan State College of Denver. We are happy to say that Elizabeth Boyd (1989) returned to the University of Mississippi as visiting assistant professor of Southern Studies for the spring semester 2009.
Some Southern Studies alumni who have do not have new jobs have new books. Amy Schmidt (MA 2007) is associate editor of The Civil Rights Reader, a project visiting scholar Julie Buckner Armstrong developed at the William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation. Joel Rosen (MA 1993), who went from Southern Studies to a PhD in sociology, is coeditor of a new book, Reconstructing Fame: Sport, Race, and Evolving Reputations and Anne Percy (MA1994) has recently published her Early History of Oxford, Mississippi. Sally Graham (MA 1992) produced a series on world ecology for CNN International. Amy Wood (MA 1995) is the author of Lynching and Spectacle: Witnessing Racial Violence in America, 1890–1940, to be published this spring in the New Directions in Southern Studies series at UNC Press. Here at Barnard Observatory, John T. Edge (2002) is general editor of the Cornbread Nation series, which recently published its fourth volume, and Jimmy Thomas (MA 2007) is managing editor, working under Charles Reagan Wilson, of The New Encyclopedia Southern Culture, which has new volumes on music, politics and law, and agriculture and industry, with gender on the way.
Other alumni are no doubt doing fascinating things in their professional, personal, and creative lives, and they should feel free to send us their news. Also, please visit the Alumnisection of the Center’s Web site for more on our graduates.
TED OWNBY
