As the Center prepares to celebrate its Silver Anniversary, the University’s Master of Arts degree program in Southern Studies enters its 16th year. Graduates of the program have found jobs in diverse fields such as historic preservation, cultural tourism, documentary studies, historical studies, and filmmaking, and with both academic and cultural organizations and institutions. Also, alumni have entered doctoral programs at William and Mary, Emory, Brown, Vanderbilt, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the University of Florida, among others. The Center is proud of its alumni and in this brief report recognizes the endeavors and accomplishments of some of them. Reports on others will follow throughout the Center’s anniversary year.

Tamara King (1994) received her Ph.D. in history from Auburn University in 2000 and has just completed her first year teaching history at the University of Georgia. She acknowledges the Southern Studies Program’s influence on her current teaching style: "Because I learned about the South from multiple perspectives, my history classes are better. I can use a variety of approaches to help students learn."

Joel Rosen (1993) has taught at several colleges and universities since completing his M.A. degrees in both Southern Studies and sociology at Ole Miss. One of the courses he teaches, Sociology of the Blues, is a direct result, he says, of his Southern Studies classes under Bill Ferris and Peter Aschoff. Rosen is preparing to defend his doctoral dissertation, "Through a Prism of Modern Discourse: The Nature of Competition in American Sport," at the University of Kent-Canterbury in April of this year.

Other Southern Studies alumni are also nearing completion of Ph.D. degrees. Darren McDaniel (1994) is working on his doctorate in sociology at Vanderbilt while living in Orlando and producing and directing a feature film he wrote, set in rural Texas. Bland Whitley (1996), a student at the University of Florida, is completing his dissertation on the relationships between religious and political cultures in Mississippi after the Civil War. Bland and his wife, Sarah Torian (1997), met at the Center while pursuing Southern Studies degrees. Sarah helps edit Southern Changes for the Southern Regional Council.

Some Southern Studies alumni are teaching. Robin Morris (2001) was recently hired as educator of Youth and Family Programs at the Levine Museum of the New South in Charlotte, North Carolina. Melissa McGuire Bridgman (1999) has found her "dream job." She has become a potter and joined an independent potters guild in Memphis. She teaches at the Center for Arts and Education, part of the Memphis Arts Council, and in the public schools. "This was a totally new twist on Southern Studies for me, but I am so glad that I’m able to use my study of self-taught and folk art to make connections with these children’s daily lives and environments."

Southern Studies students have been uniquely qualified to help lead cultural institutions. Josh Haynes (2001) was recently hired as the community relations and special events coordinator at the Alabama Historical Commission in Montgomery. He joined graduate Patrick McIntyre (1995), who has been the endangered properties coordinator there since 1999. Michelle Weaver Jones (1993) administers a field office of the Historic Preservation Division of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History housed in the School of Architecture at Mississippi State University.

Meredith Devendorf operates Melon Bluff, a 3,000-acre nature and heritage center in coastal Georgia. Devendorf’s parents assist with the center, which is on family land. For her work, she has received the Cultural Olympiad Regional Designation Award for Excellence and Innovation in Humanities Programming (1994-1995), Best New Tourism Product Award, State of Georgia (1996-1997), and Outstanding Tree Farmer of the Year (2000), among others. Allison Finch (1996) currently serves as communications coordinator of Grace Covenant Church in Austin. She previously served as the assistant director of the Walker Percy Internet Literacy Project.

The Center is continually enriched by the successes of its graduate students. Likewise, Southern Studies alumni attest to the Center’s influence in their current professions and daily lives. The unique relationship cultivated between the Center and its students and alumni remains strong long after students graduate from the Southern Studies Program.

Sudye Cauthen (1993), who is building a house on the banks of the Suwannee River in White Springs, Florida, works at the North Florida Center for Documentary Studies, which she established in 1997. "The Center for the Study of Southern Culture is my proudest affiliation," Cauthen said. "The program gave me perspective on my work and my life and is, arguably, the best single decision I’ve ever made; friendships in Oxford still sustain me."

RANA WALLACE