February 2024
“The Creative Legacy of the Unusual Artist Ms. L.V. Hull”
Yaphet Smith and Annalise Flynn
Tuesday, February 6, 2024
4:00 p.m.
Barnard Observatory
Stories infuse our lives with meaning, but whose stories get told? From whose point of view? For what purpose? Join filmmaker Yaphet Smith and independent arts administrator Annalise Flynn as they discuss the role of storytelling, particularly the need for new narratives, in the various efforts to share L.V. Hull’s artful life. These efforts include a documentary film, preserving her home, which was listed as one of America’s 11 Most Endangered Places by the National Trust in 2023, and repurposing structures on Ms. Hull’s street in Kosciusko, Mississippi, to create the L.V. Hull Legacy Center, which will open in November 2024 in conjunction with an exhibit of her work at the Mississippi Museum of Art.
Yaphet Smith is a screenwriter, lawyer, and documentary filmmaker based in Austin, Texas. He is dedicated to enriching life through story, with an emphasis on stories that reflect Black people’s full humanity. Annalise Flynn is an independent curator and arts administrator based in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University and a master’s degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Sponsored by The Center for the Study of Southern Culture
If you require special assistance relating to a disability, please contact Afton Thomas at amthoma4@olemiss.edu or call 662-915-5993.
“Into the ‘Glades: Zora Neale Hurston and African American Indigenization”
DeLisa Hawkes
Wednesday, February 7, 2024
12:00 PM
Barnard Observatory
Jamaican writer and philosopher Sylvia Wynter defines indigenization as the process that happens when a displaced Indigenous person’s return to their homeland is no longer possible. Be
that as it may, the displaced Indigenous person develops an Indigenous relationship with the new land rooted in “spiritual, cosmological, and sacred relationships.” In this talk, Hawkes will discuss how Zora Neale Hurston presents African Americans’ indigenization within the United States through literary reflections on their relationships with the land and its peoples. Through an analysis of her creative and ethnographic work, Hawkes argues that Hurston presents African American and Native futures as inextricably intersecting based on their respective experiences with colonialist violence, thus broadening notions of indigenization within the discourse of Black Americanness and Indigeneity.
DeLisa D. Hawkes is an assistant professor of Africana Studies and an affiliate faculty of the Department of English and the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Program at the University of Tennessee, specializing in nineteenth to twenty-first-century African American literature. Her current book project, Separate Yet Intertwined: Rediscovering Black Indigeneity in the New Negro Renaissance, examines literary representations of Black Indigeneity and relational sovereignty in New Negro Renaissance-era literature.
Sponsored by The Center for the Study of Southern Culture
If you require special assistance relating to a disability, please contact Afton Thomas at amthoma4@olemiss.edu or call 662-915-5993.
Black History Month Keynote feat. B.Brian Foster, Ph.D.
Tuesday, February 13, 2024
6:00 PM
Johnson Commons Ballroom
Drawing from his new book, Ghosts of Segregation: American Racism, Hidden in Plain Sight, University of Virginia professor B. Brian Foster tells a collection of stories that together show the importance of seeing the environment—the buildings we enter, the roads we travel, the things we are surrounded by—as part of the nation’s collective biography and as a signifier of what our future might be. From this perspective, Foster talks about his life’s work as a storyteller, sociologist, and archivist of Black life in the Mississippi South.
This event is free and open to the public. To register, please click here.
For questions, contact the Center for Inclusion and Cross Cultural Engagement, inclusion@olemiss.edu or 662-915-1689.
The Tacky South
Katharine A. Burnett and Monica Carol Miller
Wednesday, February 14
12:00 PM
Barnard Observatory
As a way to comment on a person’s style or taste, the word “tacky” has distinctly southern origins. Its roots trace to the so-called “tackies” who tacked horses on South Carolina farms before the Civil War. Coeditors of The Tacky South, Katie Burnett, and Monica Miller, will discuss tackiness and its various permutations, as well as the term’s connections to the US South. They will highlight the essays featured in their collection, which range from discussions of nineteenth-century local-color fiction and the television series Murder, She Wrote to red velvet cake and the ubiquitous influence of Dolly Parton.
Katharine A. Burnett is an associate professor of English at Fisk University in Nashville and the author of Cavaliers and Economists: Global Capitalism and the Development of Southern Literature, 1820–1860. Monica Carol Miller is an associate professor of English at Middle Georgia College in Macon, Georgia. She is the author of Being Ugly: Southern Women Writers and Social Rebellion.
Sponsored by The Center for the Study of Southern Culture
If you require special assistance relating to a disability, please contact Afton Thomas at amthoma4@olemiss.edu or call 662-915-5993.
27 Demands: The Legacy of the 1970 Fulton Chapel Protests
Thursday, February 15, 2024
6:00 PM
Fulton Chapel
Join Dr. Ralph Eubanks, Dr. Donald Cole, and student leaders on Feb. 15th at 6:00 in Fulton Chapel to commemorate the 52nd anniversary of a pivotal moment in history – the 1970 Fulton Chapel Protests. On February 25, 1970, 90 black student protestors were arrested for their courageous stand against racism within the walls of Fulton Chapel. Their unwavering commitment to justice and equality echoes through the years.
If you require special assistance relating to a disability, please contact Dr. Ellie Moore at emmoore5@olemiss.edu.
The Civil Rights Movement & The Gibbs-Green Tragedy: A Northeast Mississippi Martyr Display and Presentation
Tuesday, February 20
4:30 PM
Barnard Observatory
A Decade of Action: Jackson State, Lynch Street, and the Civil Rights Movement
Reception & Presentation by Robert Luckett, PhD describing the events that led to the death of Phillip Gibbs and James Green in the Gibbs/Green Tragedy.
Sponsored by Ronald E. McNair Scholars Achievement Program, Division of Diversity and Community Engagement, Center for the Study of Southern Culture
If you require special assistance relating to a disability, please contact Dr. Barbara Howard at howardbl@olemiss.edu.
The Warehouses
Ivette Spradlin
Monday, February 26, 2024
5:00 PM
Gammill Gallery in Barnard Observatory
Ivette Spradlin is a Cuban American artist whose work centers on the emotional aspects of transition, adaptation, and communal ties. She holds an MFA from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University and a BFA from the University of Georgia.
Spradlin’s project Wild Wild West End Oral History was originally developed from the fall of 1999 to the spring of 2000. Tenants of four warehouses in the West End of Atlanta, Georgia—punks, artists, dreamers—agreed to be photographed. Each subject was also asked to give a quote to accompany their image. Their likeness, their musings, and the warehouse itself were then turned into a handmade book called The Warehouses. The book is coptic-bound and filled with screen-printed collages from photographs of their living environs and silver gelatin prints of the tenants. All text was letterpressed with handset type. Only one complete copy of the artist’s book was ever made.
The video of these oral histories offers a new perspective and accounting of this unique warehouse living experience. While the book documents Atlanta’s DIY scene at the turn of the last century, the oral histories offer memories of a specific place and time in a subculture. If the book is the facts, the videos are the feeling. Former warehouse tenants tell stories about the freedom they felt and the friendships and bonds created there.
Ivette Spradlin’s photography project, titled The Warehouses and based on her Wild Wild West End Oral History, will exhibit in the Gammill Gallery in Barnard Observatory from January 17 to February 23. A walk-through exhibition talk with Spradlin will take place on February 22.
Sponsored by The Center for the Study of Southern Culture
If you require special assistance relating to a disability, please contact Afton Thomas at amthoma4@olemiss.edu or call 662-915-5993.
IDEAS Forum: Keeping Our Eyes on the Prize: What If We Filmed A Landmark Civil Rights Documentary in 2024?
Featuring Dr. Kirk Johnson, Associate Professor Sociology and African American Studies
Tuesday, February 27, 2024
4:00 PM
Gertrude C. Ford Student Union Ballroom
In 1989, PBS aired “Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, 1954-1985” a 14-part documentary that blended long-forgotten archival footage with contemporary interviews of eyewitnesses to history. The series was hugely popular, winning nearly a dozen major film prizes, including six Emmy Awards. But Eyes stopped in 1985. What if it were filmed today? Prof. Kirk Johnson, who worked on the Eyes production team, nominates the most important civil rights events in recent history for inclusion in an updated series, and gives a sociologist’s perspective on how to think about them.
This event is sponsored by the College of Liberal Arts and the Office of the Dean. For questions, please contact Valeria Ross at vross@olemiss.edu.
Black History Month Concert
Tuesday, February 27, 2024
7:30 PM
Ford Center for the Performing Arts
The concert will feature Kirk Whalum, a jazz saxophonist from Memphis, as the guest artist. the UM Mississippians Jazz Ensemble, UM Gospel Choir, UMISSO (Steel Band), and the Ole Miss African Drum and Dance Ensemble. Admission is free and is open to the public.
Sponsored by the Department of Music, Office of the Chancellor, Office of the Provost, College of Liberal Arts, Office of the Vice Chancellor for Diversity and Community Engagement, Global Engagement, Ford Center, Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College, School of New Media and Journalism, Center for the Study of Southern Culture, African American Studies
For questions, please contact Dr. George Dor at gwkdor1@olemiss.edu.