Contact: Maridith Geuder
Beginning Monday [Jan. 29], a new Mississippi State speaker series will feature rising young scholars in Southern literature and culture.
Sponsored jointly by the Mississippi Quarterly, the university's Southern literature and culture journal, and the Mississippi Humanities Council, the monthly programs are scheduled throughout the spring semester.
Open to all, the 7 p.m. presentations will take place in the John Grisham Room of Mitchell Memorial Library. A question-and-answer period will conclude each session.
Kathyrn McKee, McMullan Assistant Professor of Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi, is the inaugural speaker. Her topic next week: "Talking Back to Literary Regionalism: 19th Century Southern Women and Feminist Patterns of Reinterpretation."
"This series brings several of the field's most exciting thinkers to present their most recent discoveries to students, faculty and the general public," said Jonathan R. Smith, quarterly managing editor and series coordinator. "We are encouraging as widespread a participation as possible by interested campus, community and area residents."
Other presenters, appearance dates and topics this semester include:
--Leigh Anne Duck of the University of Memphis, Feb. 26, the Southern sense of time and the region's distinct culture.
--Scott Romine of the University of North Carolina-Greensboro, March 26, the stylistics of fate in the works of selected contemporary Southern writers, including MSU visiting professor James Wilcox.
--Deborah Cohn of Vanderbilt University's Robert Penn Warren Center for the Humanities, April 30, Mississippi novelist William Faulkner and Latin America.
Established in 1948, the Mississippi Quarterly is an MSU College of Arts and Sciences publication devoted to the humanities and social sciences of the past and present South.
For more information about the journal or the lecture series, contact Smith at (662) 325-2378 or visit http://www.msstate.edu/archives/mq/.