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Traveling Exhibit Celebrates 400th Anniversary of King James Bible

May 15, 2012 By Leave a Comment

A unique traveling exhibition celebrating the 400th anniversary of the first printing of the King James Bible in 1611 is coming to the University of Mississippi.

“Manifold Greatness: The Creation and Afterlife of the King James Bible,” will be on display at the J.D. Williams Library beginning May 29. The exhibit examines the little-known story behind one of the most widely read books in the world.

“We are delighted to have been selected as a site for this exhibition,” said Julia Rholes, UM dean of libraries. “The captivating history and influence of the King James Bible will interest many viewers.” The library is among only 40 locations throughout the country selected to host the exhibition. The successful application benefited from the support of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture and the departments of Philosophy and Religion, English, and History.

“The library hopes that this exhibit will help viewers gain a better understanding of how the book influenced 400 years of our culture in surprising ways,” said Melissa Dennis, outreach and instruction librarian and assistant professor. “This is not an exhibit designed for just one discipline. People from different departments on campus and members of the local community may examine the display in different ways.”

The exhibit includes high-quality reproductions of rare and historic books, manuscripts and works of art from the collections of the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., and the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford. Full of rich images and information, the exhibition consists of 14 graphic panels combining narrative text with numerous high-resolution images of rare books, manuscripts and works of art, printed on double-sided, freestanding banners. It not only focuses on the fascinating story of the Bible’s creation but also examines the book’s afterlife and its influence on personal lives and local communities.

“While I love the history of the translating and writing of the King James Bible, the most fascinating aspect to me personally is how the language and worldview represented there is still influencing our world today,” said Christina Torbert, head of serials and associate professor. “We hear echoes of well-loved phrases in sermons, literature, politics and casual conversations. As a society, we are still having similar conversations about the power of government and the church’s role in politics and law.”

The King James Bible influenced literary works in both the United Kingdom and the United States. Many authors have demonstrated the influence of the language and style of the King James Bible on their work; among them John Milton, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Harriet Beecher Stowe and Nathaniel Hawthorne.

In conjunction with the exhibit, Archives and Special Collections will display some interesting Bibles from the collections and other materials related to religious and biblical influences in Southern history and culture.

The traveling exhibit was organized by the Folger Shakespeare Library and the American Library Association Public Programs Office. It is based on an exhibit of the same name developed by the Folger Shakespeare Library and the Bodleian Library, with assistance from the Harry Ransom Center of the University of Texas. The exhibit was made possible by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

“Manifold Greatness: The Creation and Afterlife of the King James Bible,” will be on display on the first floor of the library during regular hours through June 29. For more information on the exhibit, visit http://www.manifoldgreatness.org/.

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Filed Under: Center for The Study of Southern Culture, English, Featured Content, History, Philosophy & Religion

New Course Offers Multidisciplinary Look at Social Inequality in Mississippi

May 15, 2012 By Leave a Comment

This summer, University of Mississippi students can examine how government policies have shaped the American diet, particularly in north Mississippi.

The new summer session course, “Bringing Food to the People: Food Policy and Social Inequities in Mississippi,” was developed jointly by the Southern Foodways Alliance, an institute of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, and the university’s Department of Public Policy Leadership.

The university is a leader in the development of foodways studies as a scholarly discipline, and the public policy leadership program is well-known for producing effective communicators well-versed in policy-making from the local to the global, said John T. Edge, director of the Southern Foodways Alliance, or SFA. “With teachers from two complementary departments and a compelling syllabus, the class will, we think, prove a great primer on the interdisciplinary approaches that can be applied to the field,” Edge said.

Postdoctoral fellow and visiting assistant professor Jill Cooley

The course will be led by Jill Cooley, postdoctoral fellow and visiting assistant professor at SFA, and Jody Holland, visiting assistant professor of public policy leadership.

Cooley notes that interdisciplinary, team-taught courses provide a unique opportunity for students.

“From these different perspectives of history and policy, we will consider how the nation’s food policy developed historically and how public policy continues to influence American diets,” she said.

The course will include seminar and practicum components. Cooley and Holland have posed the question of how government policies have shaped the socio-economic and political realities of north Mississippi. Studies of the intersection of race, class and gender in 20th century Southern history will provide context for understanding historic and contemporary federal policy efforts to ease hunger and poverty.

For the practicum component of the course, students will examine area farmers markets to gauge the effectiveness of current efforts to revitalize the area by making local, fresh, healthy foods accessible to economically-disadvantaged populations.

“The U. S. Department of Agriculture estimates between 30,000 and 50,000 farmers currently sell at farmers markets,” Holland said. “This number represents a growth spurt in farmers markets, which emphasize small and mid-scale farming operations. This course will explore the impacts and policy due to emerging local food economy.”

The course listing is at the graduate level, SST/PPL 598, but advanced undergraduates are encouraged to enroll. UM will offer the course during the first summer term, starting June 1 and ending June 27. Thanks to funding from the Chisolm Foundation, the Center for the Study of Southern Culture  and SFA plan to offer more foodways classes in this fall and in the spring of 2013. To enroll in SST/PPL 598, students should visit http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/registrar/csinfo.html

In fall 2011, the SFA received funding from the Chisholm Foundation to fund the post-doctoral position until 2014, guaranteeing more new class options for students.

For more information on the SFA, go to http://southernfoodways.org/.

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Filed Under: Center for The Study of Southern Culture, Latest News, Public Policy Leadership, Southern Foodways Alliance

June Course to Bridge Foodways Scholarship and Public Policy, Examining Social Inequality in Mississippi

April 28, 2012 By Leave a Comment

The Southern Foodways Alliance will collaborate with the University of Mississippi Department of Public Policy Leadership (PPL) to offer a June 2012 course entitled “Bringing Food to the People: Food Policy and Social Inequities in Mississippi.”  The course will be led by Dr. Jill Cooley, Postdoctoral Fellow and Visiting Assistant Professor at the SFA, and and Dr. Jody Holland, Visiting Assistant Professor of PPL.
The University of Mississippi is a leader in the development of foodways studies as a scholarly discipline, and the UM Public Policy Leadership program is well-known for producing highly-effective communicators well-versed in policy-making from the local to the global.  “With teachers from two complementary departments and a compelling syllabus, the class will, we think, prove a great primer on the interdisciplinary approaches that can be applied to the field,” says John T. Edge, Director of the Southern Foodways Alliance.
Dr. Cooley notes that interdisciplinary, team-taught courses provide a unique opportunity for students—“from these different perspectives of history and policy, we will consider how the nation’s food policy developed historically and how public policy continues to influence American diets.”
The course will include seminar and practicum components. Cooley and Holland have posed the question of how government policies have shaped the socio-economic and political realities of North Mississippi.  Studies of the intersection of race, class, and gender in twentieth-century southern history will provide context for understanding historic and contemporary federal policy efforts to ameliorate hunger and poverty.
For the practicum component of the course, students will examine area farmers’ markets to gauge the effectiveness of current efforts to revitalize the area by making local, fresh, healthy foods accessible to economically-disadvantaged populations. Holland notes that “The U. S. Department of Agriculture estimates between 30,000 and 50,000 farmers currently sell at farmers’ markets. This number represents a growth spurt in farmers’ markets, which emphasize small and mid-scale farming operations. This course will explore the impacts and policy due to emerging local food economy.”
The course listing is at the graduate level, SST/PPL 598, but advanced undergraduates are encouraged to enroll.  UM will offer the course during the First Summer Term, starting June 1 and ending June 27, with final exams following on June 28-29.  Thanks to funding from the Chisolm Foundation, the CSSC and the SFA will offer additional foodways classes in the fall of 2012 and the spring of 2013. To enroll in SST/PPL 598, students should visit the website of the Office of the Registrar for more information.
* * *
In fall 2011, the SFA received funding from the Chisholm Foundation to fund the post-doctoral position until 2014, guaranteeing more new class options for students.
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Filed Under: Center for The Study of Southern Culture, Featured Content, Public Policy Leadership, Southern Foodways Alliance

Order of the Okra Attracts Support for UM’s Southern Foodways Alliance

April 25, 2012 By Leave a Comment

Okra has long been the quintessential Southern food, a vegetable so versatile that it can be deep-fried in batter, boiled with tomatoes, pickled in brine or tossed into a big pot of simmering gumbo, bringing a unique and unmistakable flavor to every dish. Now it has a new role in Southern culinary culture – a symbol of donors’ generosity in support of the Southern Foodways Alliance (SFA), an institute of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture (CSSC) at the University of Mississippi.

The SFA, a member-supported, non-profit organization that documents, studies and celebrates the diverse food cultures of the changing American South, recently established the Order of the Okra, a society of donors who each pledge a total of $10,000 over 10 years, with the money going to support the SFA’s mission. Hall said the SFA had originally hoped to attract 25 members to the Order of the Okra. It has since drawn 29 members, and now the goal is to bring in 50 by the end of the fiscal year.

“A small percentage of our operating budget comes from the university. We raise the rest,” said SFA director John T. Edge. “We have an ambitious 10-year plan that focuses on scholarship, support for foodways students, and production of oral histories and films. These dollars will help us do that good work.

SFA events manager Melissa Hall said that the majority of funding has come from corporate donors who contribute at least $25,000 a year for three years. Additionally, annual SFA membership dues – $50 for students, $75 for individuals and $100 for families – net more than $40,000 per year.

“What we haven’t done in the past is to ask individual members to be regular financial supporters,” Hall said. “That’s how the Order of the Okra came about. SFA members are very passionate about the organization, and we feel really fortunate to have that passion. We wanted to see the SFA’s documentary and academic work flourish, so we decided it was time to see if that passion would translate into dollars by turning to the membership and asking if they’d be willing to support us this way.”

Founded in 1999, the SFA has accomplished a great deal with a small staff. It has collected more than 600 oral histories and made more than 30 films, covering topics ranging from barbecue in North Carolina and boudin in Louisiana to Chinese grocers and Lebanese restaurateurs in Mississippi. It has earned praise in national publications like The New York Times, The National Review, The Atlantic Monthly and Travel & Leisure.

“Like literature, like music, like art, food is a product of people and place,” Edge said. “Understand what we raise, cook, serve and eat, and you understand the region. The CSSC pioneered the multifaceted study of the South, with particular emphasis on literature, history and music. The SFA has led the national charge to study our foodways. And the University of Mississippi is in a great position to leverage that 14-year track record of work.”

Its Southern Foodways Symposium attracts authors, journalists, chefs, scholars and engaged consumers from across the United States for lectures, readings, tastings and performances.

SFA also stages regional such events as Potlikker Film Festivals in cities like Charleston and New Orleans and Stir the Pot suppers in Raleigh and Nashville.

As SFA has grown, its academic component has expanded as well. “Successful fundraising has allowed us to increase our academic commitment to Southern foodways,” Hall said. “We are in the inaugural year of our post-doctoral fellowship, a program that allows a recently minted Ph.D. to spend a year or two writing about and teaching foodways classes. And we are looking forward to the day when we, in conjunction with the College of Liberal Arts, have the funding to hire a fulltime foodways professor.”

SFA board member and Order of the Okra member Jay Oglesby, an Ole Miss alumnus, recalls attending a Potlikker Film Festival in Nashville that featured cuisine by noted local chefs, musical performances by members of Old Crow Medicine Show and documentaries by SFA filmmaker Joe York.

“The diversity of those in attendance, from the Southern Studies students and SFA staff … to the chefs, cooks, farmers, brewers, writers and plain old civilians, was astounding,” he said. “Here were people of various disciplines, generations, races and classes, gathered in celebration and soaking up one another’s ideas and stories, along with the wonderful films, food and music.”

That event inspired Oglesby to become an active member and supporter of the SFA.

“As a financial professional, my career was built analyzing the financial health of companies and projects to determine if they’re well-managed and financially viable,” he said. “The window I now have into the financial discipline and good stewardship of the limited resources of the SFA has further inspired me. I know that any money I give or assist the school and staff in raising will be well-deployed in expanding the university’s leading role in this field of study. I know that every dollar will support the gathering of more oral histories, documentary film work, dedicated course offerings, scholarships, and, one day, hopefully, an endowed professorship.”

The Southern Foodways Alliance is open to receive gifts from individuals and organizations by sending a check to the University of Mississippi Foundation, P.O. Box 249, University, MS 38677 or by visiting www.umfoundation.com/makeagift.

Rick Hynum
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Filed Under: Center for The Study of Southern Culture, Featured Content, Southern Foodways Alliance

Clarion Ledger: Center for the Study of Southern Culture celebrating 25 years

March 1, 2012 By
The Center for the Study of Southern Culture at Ole Miss hosts the Music of the South Symposium Friday and Saturday to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the center’s Southern Studies master’s program. The main organizers of the free event are Ted Ownby, center director, and Mark Camarigg of Living Blues magazine, which is published by the center. Read the story
Filed Under: Center for The Study of Southern Culture, Latest News, Syndicated News From Zing

Chisholm Foundation Provides $103,000 to Support Center for the Study of Southern Culture, Foodways Alliance

January 11, 2012 By Leave a Comment

The Chisholm Foundation of Laurel is contributing $103,000 to support the academic study of foodways at the University of Mississippi through its Center for the Study of Southern Culture and Southern Foodways Alliance.

UM officials describe the support as a key step toward establishing an endowed professorship in the emerging cultural studies field of foodways, a discipline in which SFA is recognized nationally. SFA has been described by the Atlantic Monthly as “this country’s most intellectually engaged (and probably most engaging) food society.”

The Chisholm Foundation resources will support a postdoctoral fellow, with the recipient teaching foodways classes within the Southern Studies curriculum and foodways-focused courses in other disciplines. For example, the inaugural holder of the fellowship, Angela Jill Cooley, will teach an undergraduate history class this spring using foodways to understand home-based race relations.

The course, “Historicizing ‘The Help,’” will contextualize Katherine Stockett’s novel “The Help,” the basis of a recent hit movie. Cooley, who earned her doctorate at the University of Alabama, is an adjunct assistant professor of Southern studies.

The Southern Foodways Alliance is documenting the Downtown Greenwood Farmers’ Market in Greenwood, Miss., where Spooner Kenter serves up Spooney’s Bar-B-Que. The Downtown Greenwood Farmers’ Market was established in 2008 as a project of Main Street Greenwood, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to promote economic development and revitalization in this Delta town that was once known as the Cotton Capital of the World. Photo by Amy Evans Streeter.

“We anticipate this generous Chisholm Foundation grant playing a pivotal role in the creation of curriculum examining the role of food as both a cultural artifact and form of expression,” said Ted Ownby, director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture and professor of history and Southern studies. “This support will allow the center to extend foodways classes introduced this academic year for two more years, during which time we will pursue funding for a permanent endowment supporting this position.

“The Chisholm Foundation is helping both the center’s academic programming and also the work of the Southern Foodways Alliance. We appreciate the confidence the Chisholm Foundation expresses in our work by providing these financial resources.”

SFA funded the fellowship for the 2011-12 academic year, and the Chisholm Foundation gift assures the continuation through 2014. During the fall semester, Cooley taught a course on Southern foodways for graduate students, with the response exceeding class capacity. Each holder of the fellowship also will be encouraged to transform his or her doctoral dissertation into a book, expanding scholarly literature exploring the foodways.

“Of late, more and more students have arrived at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture with an interest in foodways,” said John T. Edge, director of the SFA, which is supported by more than 1,000 academics, chefs, artisans, farmers and others. “This gift from the Chisholm Foundation ensures that we will be able to serve their classroom needs and, in turn, inspire a new generation of scholars.”

Ownby said the Chisholm Foundation support reflects positively on SFA’s momentum.

“Receiving this gift is an indication of the success our Southern Foodways Alliance has had over the past decade in establishing the University of Mississippi as the best place to study humanities issues related to food. Through its offerings, the SFA has encouraged a wealth of new thinking about the meanings of food in relation to cultural life,” he said.

The study of foodways has become a central approach to understanding issues of race, class, gender, economy and identity for scholars of cultural life. In the past generation, growing attention to the body, the senses, health and gender has combined with scholarship on globalization, ethnicity and identity to elevate foodways studies’ place in the humanities, Ownby said.

Individuals and organizations interested in providing private gifts to a permanent endowment for the faculty position in foodways studies should contact development officer Nikki Neely at nlneely@olemiss.edu or 662-915-6678.

The Chisholm Foundation is a charitable organization founded in 1960 by Alexander F. Chisholm, a businessman, philanthropist and churchman of Laurel. The foundation’s mission focuses on nurturing and supporting meaningful endeavors in education, the arts and religion. Since the 1974 death of Alexander F. Chisholm, three generations of his family have carried out his mission and continue to provide grants to worthy organizations.

The Southern Foodways Alliance documents, studies and interprets the diverse food cultures of the changing American South. An institute of the UM Center for the Study of Southern Culture, the SFA has been a leading force in foodways studies since its founding in 1999. A membership-supported institute, the SFA directs an annual Southern Foodways Symposium, as well as numerous lecture series, film screenings and other events. The SFA’s oral history program, widely recognized as the most innovative in its field, has collected nearly 600 interviews, while the SFA film initiative has produced more than 30 films. SFA is expanding its work into UM classrooms. The UM Center for the Study of Southern Culture investigates, documents, interprets and teaches about the American South. CSSC emphasizes academic programming as the foundation of its work, offering both undergraduate and graduate programs in Southern Studies through more than 60 courses taught by faculty in 10 departments. CSSC houses two institutes, the Southern Foodways Alliance and the Media and Documentary Projects Center. By teaching classes in foodways, the CSSC seeks to expand on the academic and educational strengths developed since its founding in 1977.

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Filed Under: Center for The Study of Southern Culture, Latest News, Southern Foodways Alliance

As Tasty Morsels, Pig Wings Take Flight

November 30, 2011 By Leave a Comment

TRISHA ROBERTS set aside her knowledge of animal anatomy and bit into a deep-fried Pig Wing. One recent evening, at a bar near here, she dunked that crisp, juicy knob of pork in sweet chile sauce, then reached for another.

But Ms. Roberts, a college student and part-time bartender, frowned when she learned that these wings were actually two-ounce bits of pork cut from the fibula of a ham shank.

“My relatives, my old uncles, they eat foods like shanks,” she said. “They eat brains and other stuff, too. I like these, but shanks sound like those kind of old-fashioned foods.”

Hearing Ms. Roberts’s critique, Bob File took a swig from his beer. Mr. File, a former pig farmer and the president of Pioneer Meats, which contracts with a local processing company to make the wings, understands that nomenclature can be as important as cooking.

“Let’s face it,” Mr. File said. “Shank is not a pretty word.” [Read more...]

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Filed Under: Center for The Study of Southern Culture, Featured Content, Southern Foodways Alliance

Yale Historian to Examine Civil War in Civil Rights Era

November 2, 2011 By Leave a Comment

. . . Public lecture set for November 16 in Nutt Auditorium

A Yale historian will visit the University of Mississippi Nov. 16 to share his insights on Civil War remembrance as part of the Gilder-Jordan Lecture in
Southern History.

David Blight will discuss his latest book, “American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era,” (Harvard University Press, 2011) in a free, public
lecture at 7:30 p.m. in Nutt Auditorium. He plans to focus on the hold that the Civil War still has on American imagination, with his lecture, “American Oracle:
The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era in Our Own Time.”

“I’ll do this in part by focusing on some or all of the writers I delve into in-depth in this new book: Robert Penn Warren, Bruce Catton, Edmund Wilson and
James Baldwin,” Blight said. “Each of these important writers, who worked in very different forms and all came from very different backgrounds, were major
voices of how Americans remembered the Civil War during the era of the civil rights movement.

“Above all, I will discuss the connections and conflicts between the Civil War centennial commemoration of the 1950s and 1960s and the
civil rights movement, which as everyone knows, was so deeply and famously pivotal in Mississippi.”

Blight is a Class of 1954 Professor of American History at Yale University. Before joining the Yale faculty in 2003, he taught at Amherst College for 13
years. In 2010-11, he was the Rogers Distinguished Fellow in Nineteenth Century American History at the Huntington Library in San Marino, Calif.

As director of Yale’s Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition, Blight has written and edited works about Frederick
Douglass, W.E.B. DuBois and the underground railroad. In 2013, his biography, “Frederick Douglass: A Life,” will be published by Simon and Shuster.

Blight is a leading historian writing on the subjects of emancipation, the Civil War, Reconstruction and how people remembered and interpreted all three.
His 2002 book, “Race and Reunion,” is a crucial work on Civil War memory, said Ted Ownby, director of the UM Center for the Study of Southern Culture.

“It traces three ways different groups of Americans remembered the Civil War – some thought primarily about emancipation, some about North-South
reconciliation, some about white supremacy. It’s part social history, studying parades and organizations and the like; part intellectual history, studying the
thought of historians and social theorists; and part political history, studying how memory mattered as parts of the political disputes of the late 1800s and
early 1900s.”

That book was the winner of the Bancroft Prize and Merle Curti Prize, among several others.

Blight also has been active in writing about and editing the work of abolition leader Frederick Douglass.

“His latest book, ‘American Oracle,’ addresses two topics the University of Mississippi is making particularly strong efforts to study in 2011 and 2012, the
Civil War and the civil rights movement,” Ownby said. “We’re delighted he can discuss that book as part of the Gilder-Jordan Lecture.”

In a review of “American Oracle,” filmmaker Ken Burns said, “The ghosts of the Civil War never leave us, as David Blight knows perhaps better than anyone,
and in this superb book he masterfully unites two distant but inextricably bound events with insightful dissection of the works of our best writers, writers
obsessed with coming to terms with our original sin.”

Blight, who has visited UM twice, said that he loves Oxford and Square Books.

The Gilder-Jordan lecture series, organized through the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, the African American Studies Program, the Center for Civil
War Research and the Department of History, honors the support of Richard Gilder and Lois Chiles, and Dan and Lou Jordan. Gilder, one of America’s leading
philanthropists, has supported the study of American history through the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History in New York, Yale University’s Gilder
Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition, and other organizations. The Jordans are UM alumni living in Charlottesville, Va., where
Dan Jordan is the former president of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation.

Gilder, Chiles and the Jordans will all be in attendance at the event.

For assistance related to a disability, call 662-915-5993.

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Filed Under: African American Studies, Center for Civil War Research, Center for The Study of Southern Culture, History

Soul Food Meets High Art in UM Student’s Collard Greens Opera

October 25, 2011 By

Price Walden

… Performance set Oct. 30, during Southern Foodways Symposium OXFORD, Miss. – Black-eyed peas and cornbread. Rice and gravy. Collard greens and opera. The third group might seem to be an unlikely combination, but University of Mississippi students have been working hard to pair the leafy vegetable with high art. The “cultivated South” is the theme for the 14th annual Southern Foodways Symposium, set for Oct. 28-30. The Southern Foodways Alliance, an institute of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, hosts the symposium, and this year decided to commission an opera. Price Walden, a junior music major from Booneville, was intrigued by the idea of elevating the status of collard greens through music and spent his summer composing “Leaves of Greens,” a Southern oratorio in three parts. The opera, which is free and open to the public, will be performed by Ole Miss Opera Theatre at the Lyric Hall, 1109 Van Buren, at 10 a.m. Sunday (Oct. 30). “It struck me while I was eating at my grandmother’s house one Sunday that as we Southerners eat food, it’s never just about eating food, it’s about other aspects that we don’t even realize are important to us,” Walden said. The bulk of the text for the “Leaves of Greens” comes from a collection of poems titled “Leaves of Greens: The Collard Poems,” published in the 1980s by the annual Collard Green Festival in North Carolina, supplemented with other poems and traditional hymns. Walden structured his piece in three parts, each dealing with an aspect of Southern life. The music is scored for soloists, a choir, piano and percussion, and lasts 30 minutes. “Each of the three parts has to do with a different aspect of how we eat food, and it has turned out to be rather touching,” Walden said. “I hope the audience thinks about collard greens and the food we eat in a different way, and realizes the social aspects of food. I hope somehow they can relate to at least one of the singers or some of the music, or one of the pieces in some kind of way.” Amanda Johnston, UM assistant professor of music, first recommended that Walden compose the opera. “When the SFA initially approached me, they had a very broad idea, and at first it seemed overwhelming,” said Johnston, who has served as music director and will play piano for the performance. “I knew Price as a very talented percussionist who also did composing, so I recommended him, and he has been very positive. It has been really special for the Ole Miss Opera Theatre to be able to work with the composer, and it has been a terrific opportunity for our department, and for Price to have such support so early in his career.” Working with the music department has been a boon for the Southern Foodways Alliance. “The Center for the Study of Southern Culture has long been a national leader in interdisciplinary scholarship and outreach,” said John T. Edge, SFA director. “The SFA, inspired by that work, tells stories about the South through food. In the last few years, we’ve worked to use multiple modes of storytelling. A couple years back, we staged a ballet performance. This year, with support from the Lafayette-Oxford Foundation for Tomorrow, an opera seemed a logical next step. The expectations for “Leaves of Greens” have been surpassed, Edge said. “Sometimes it’s difficult for academic departments to find ways to work together,” he said. “But Amanda Johnston was so open, so generous, and her students have risen to the occasion. What Price Walden has composed is a very intellectually engaged and emotionally mature look at how foodways matter and how they are enmeshed in our daily lives.” For more information about the sold-out symposium, visit the Southern Foodways Alliance Symposium website. You can also follow the symposium on Twitter by following the hashtag #foodways.
Filed Under: Center for The Study of Southern Culture, Southern Foodways Alliance

Soul Food Meets High Art in UM Student’s Collard Greens Opera

October 25, 2011 By
Add to calendar   … Performance set Oct. 30, during Southern Foodways Symposium OXFORD, Miss. – Black-eyed peas and cornbread. Rice and gravy. Collard greens and opera. The third group might seem to be an unlikely combination, but University of Mississippi students have been working hard to pair the leafy vegetable with high art. The [...]
Filed Under: Center for The Study of Southern Culture, John T. Edge, Liberal Arts, News Releases, Southern Foodways Alliance, Syndicated News From Zing
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