Director's Column

Gardeners know that winter is the time to see the framework of their gardens. With foliage gone and limbs bare, garden trees and shrubs appear in their essential skeletons. I look out my window and see the girth of a sturdy oak, the graceful branches of the spirea, the red bark on my Japanese maple, and the tough tentacles of the spreading wisteria.

The Center’s conferences and symposia similarly provide the framework for much of our work. They divide the year into seasons as we bridge the gaps between the academy and the broader public interested in the American South. Autumn is the time for the Southern Foodways Symposia, with weather usually nice enough to eat the marvelous food of the meeting outside in the Grove. This lively gathering every year extends our interest in a newer area of Southern Studies, bringing an eclectic and utterly engaged group of people here. The fall also is time for the Porter L. Fortune Jr. History Symposium, and I can usually count on it as the first time I will wear my tweeds for cooler weather, while listening to the best scholars open up new directions in the study of the South. Far different weather greets the loyal attendees of the Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha Conference in July, always among the hottest times of the summer, it seems. That conference similarly brings people who are deeply engaged with the conference topic and enjoying the atmosphere of the small town Mississippi that produced our Nobel laureate.

February saw two symposia that represent new Center initiatives growing out of our long-standing interest in literature and music. Katherine McKee, one of our two McMullan Southern Studies professors, and Annette Trefzer, assistant professor of English, directed the U.S. South in Global Contexts Symposium, February 13-15. The meeting was part of an on-going dialogue among those of us in Southern Studies about the future direction of the field. Discussions focused on new theories and teaching methods in Southern Studies and on the exciting expansion of “Southern” to include sharper comparisons with Southern places beyond the United States. We are eager to follow up this meeting with other activities to extend our interest in this new direction in Southern Studies.

Another of our Southern Studies professors, Adam Gussow, took the lead in directing the second Blues Today Symposium, February 26-28. Adam works closely with the Living Blues magazine staff in planning the symposium, which brings together performers, scholars, journalists, academics, music critics, and leaders in the music industry. The theme was “From Africa to Mississippi,” with sessions on Africa and the blues, blues music today, and the history of Living Blues itself. A session on hip-hop, spoken word, and contemporary blues poetics linked traditional blues with newer forms of African American music. Paul Oliver, a distinguished blues scholar, came from Britain to deliver the keynote. A highlight of any season is a B. B. King concert, and he rocked the Gertrude C. Ford Center for the Performing Arts.

If these two symposia brightened a dark winter month, the 11th Oxford Conference for the Book promises to bring its usual exuberance to early spring, April 1-4. The conference is dedicated to author Walker Percy, one of the most compelling of recent Southern writers, one who helped take Southern literature out of its obsessive preoccupation with the past and refocus it on the concerns of modern life (albeit still with a Southern twist). One highlight of the conference will surely be Mildred D. Taylor, a native Mississippian who has had a distinguished career writing award-winning books for young readers. Taylor is not often mentioned among the great African American writers coming out of the state who have been major figures in Southern literature, but she surely deserves such attention from scholars. We will honor her and her Mississippi family. In addition to other writers, the conference, as usual, will attract some of the most influential book people in the country, including Ralph Eubanks, director of publishing at the Library of Congress; William Jay Smith, former poetry consultant to the Library of Congress; and Jonathan Galassi, president and publisher of Farrar, Straus, and Giroux (Percy’s publisher).

Barnard Observatory may not be a garden, but it is a hothouse of ideas, and our symposia and conferences are forums for all of our friends of the Center to share our enthusiasms.

Charles Reagan Wilson