Assistant Director's Message | |
The Humanities Are Essential for Our National Success | |
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When I think about the work of the Mississippi Humanities Council, I’m proud of the number of ways we support thoughtful and informed reflection on the history and culture of our state. But the humanities do much more than encourage thoughtful discourse. I would argue the humanities are essential for a democratic society to flourish and advance, now more than ever as we navigate an especially tumultuous period in the life of the nation.
A few years back, the Mississippi Humanities Council joined five other state councils in a three-year study, coordinated by the Kettering Foundation and recently featured in the Foundation’s annual journal, to consider how we are uniquely positioned to bring people together around ideas and questions. We were tasked with considering how our work can bridge social, cultural and political differences and strengthen our capacity to live and work well together, critical factors for a healthy democracy. In Mississippi, we explored humanities-based methods for understanding how historical racial divisions still shape our communities and our state.
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The idea was that if we can honestly acknowledge the effect of past and current inequalities, our communities can work together to make thoughtful decisions about how to address our common challenges.
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It was a fruitful exercise in that we saw it work: We saw the citizens of Tupelo come together with their local school leadership to identify the cause of race-related disparities in Advanced Placement course enrollment, which led to action steps informed by Council-facilitated dialogues that used philosophy, literature and history to understand the disparity. At one of our state universities, we saw the exercise produce a deeper understanding among administrators of the challenges faced by Black students on their campus, and a commitment to addressing those challenges.
The exercise worked, but then, we went into it already quite certain it would. Encouraging thoughtful, civil dialogue in order to understand our past so we can advance together as a society is the heart of our work—it’s literally written into our Council’s mission statement. The Kettering Foundation exercise illustrated the essential value of the humanities for our quality of life as a democratic society. President Lyndon Johnson, who signed the legislation that created the National Endowment for the Humanities into law in 1965, stated in a speech at Brown University in 1964, “There just simply must be no neglect of humanities. The values of our free and compassionate society are as vital to our national success as the skills of our technical and scientific age.”
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As for the Mississippi Humanities Council, we will continue to create and support programs that foster civil, face-to-face engagement and that bring people together across backgrounds and races. Our “Mississippi Founders” exhibit is currently traveling the state, highlighting the lives and legacies of 12 Black Mississippians who challenged the state and nation to become a truer democracy and encouraging audiences to acknowledge the diversity of patriots who built our nation. Through our grants, we cultivate and sponsor a range of public programs that engage Mississippians in meaningful dialogue, attract diverse audiences, encourage participation and that apply the humanities to our everyday lives. These are the ways the humanities can help advance our democracy. | | |
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Join us at the 2023 Public Humanities Awards
On March 24, people from across the state will gather in Jackson at the Two Mississippi Museums to celebrate outstanding achievements in the public humanities and the work of the Mississippi Humanities Council. We hope all of the MHC’s friends and supporters will join us for a special evening.
At the 2023 Public Humanities Awards, we will honor:
· Dr. Rebecca Tuuri, associate professor of history at the University of Southern Mississippi, Humanities Scholar Award.
· Dr. Ebony Lumumba, associate professor of English at Jackson State University, Humanities Educator Award.
· The Utica Institute Museum, Reflecting Mississippi Award.
· Dr. Roscoe Barnes, of Visit Natchez, Humanities Partner Award
· Jeanne Luckett, Cora Norman Award for her lifetime achievement in the public humanities.
The MHC will also will recognize 30 recipients of the 2023 Humanities Teacher Awards, which pay tribute to outstanding faculty in traditional humanities fields at each of our state’s institutions of higher learning.
This year’s awards event begins at 5:30 pm with a reception featuring music, small plates, and drinks. The formal awards ceremony starts at 7 pm.
Tickets for the Mississippi Humanities Council Public Humanities Awards ceremony and reception are $50 each and may be purchased through the MHC website or by sending a check to the Mississippi Humanities Council, 3825 Ridgewood Road, Room 317, Jackson, MS 39211. Individuals and organizations may also purchase sponsorships to the event at the $500, $300, and $150 levels.
The Mississippi Humanities Council would like to thank our corporate sponsors for the event: Mississippi Power, Cadence Bank, Trustmark, and the Mississippi Department of Archives and History.
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Bring a Mississippi Freedom Trail Marker to Your Community
The MHC is calling for new applications for the Mississippi Freedom Trail. If you feel your community has a significant story to share about a place, person, or event relevant to the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement, we encourage you to apply for a Freedom Trail marker. If you are unsure if your marker proposal meets the criteria, please refer to the guidelines on the MHC website. From now until the end of 2024, all approved Freedom Trail markers will be free of charge, made possible by the financial contributions of Visit Mississippi. The next deadline for applications is March 31, 2023, and can be found here. For more information about the Mississippi Freedom Trail, contact MHC Program & Outreach Officer John Spann.
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2023 Oxford Conference for the Book
The Mississippi Humanities Council will once again sponsor the Oxford Conference for the Book at the University of Mississippi. The 2023 conference, hosted by the University’s Center for the Study of Southern Culture, will take place March 29-31 and features a distinguished lineup of fiction and nonfiction writers, journalists and poets.
Among the presenters at this year’s conference will be Mahogany Browne, poet and executive director of JustMedia, a media literacy initiative to support the groundwork of criminal justice leaders and community members. Browne will join a panel of poets that includes Tarfia Faizullah, recipient of a Fulbright fellowship and three Pushcart prizes, and James Hoch, professor of creative writing at Ramapo College, NJ, whose work was included in Best American Poetry 2019, in conversation with Mississippi’s recent Poet Laureate Beth Ann Fennelly.
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The conference will open with a keynote event featuring Celia E. Naylor discussing her recent book, Unsilencing Slavery: Telling Truths about Rose Hall Plantation, Jamaica, with University of Mississippi assistant professor of Southern Studies Jodi Skipper, who recently published her own book, Behind the Big House: Reconciling Slavery, Race and Heritage in the U.S. South.
Other conference sessions supported by the MHC include a panel discussion titled “Church-ish: On Literature, Blackness and Christianity,” featuring award-winning poet, author, activist and culture journalist Khalisa Rae and Chantal James, author of the novel None But the Righteous exploring the dual “storms” of Black history and hurricanes, in conversation with Deesha Philyaw, whose debut short story collection, The Secret Lives of Church Ladies, was a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award in fiction and won The Story Prize.
The annual event brings together standouts from the literary community with readers, writers, teachers, students, librarians and literacy advocates to broaden understanding of the history and role of books in American culture, particularly but not exclusively in the South.
For the full conference schedule, visit http://oxfordconferenceforthebook.com/schedule/
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'Mississippi Founders' Programs Uplift Traveling Exhibit
The More Perfect Union: Mississippi Founders Exhibition is on tour throughout the state. The two sets of the exhibits are currently on display at the Quitman County Arts Council in Marks and at Mississippi College.
Host sites have developed programming around the exhibit, which features 12 prominent Mississippians who helped shape our state into “a more perfect union.” While Delta State University was hosting the exhibition, the history department placed the exhibit panels throughout campus and created a scavenger hunt for students. Mississippi College was awarded a major grant from the MHC to create a powerful program that brought awareness to the exhibit. The grant helped to bring in scholar Dr. Kellie Carter Jackson, professor of history at Wellesley College, (pictured above with MHC staff members John Spann and Stuart Rockoff) to discuss her book Force and Freedom: Black Abolitionists.
The MHC Speakers Bureau also has a number of presenters and topics that relate to the Mississippi Founders exhibition, free to host sites. To learn more about the Speakers Bureau, please visit our website or contact MHC Program Officer Molly McMillan. To learn more about the More Perfect Union: Mississippi Founders exhibition and how to become a host site, visit our website or contact John Spann.
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Behind the Big House Program and Tour
Preserve Marshall County and Holly Springs, Inc. (PMCHS) will partner for the first time with the ROSA Foundation to present its annual “Behind the Big House Program and Tour” April 20-22 in Holly Springs.
Behind the Big House programming began in 2012 when PMCHS president Chelius Carter and his wife, Jenifer Eggleston, discovered that a structure near their historic antebellum home in Holly Springs was a former slave dwelling. They created the tour and related programming to expand the narrative of the city’s Annual Pilgrimage Tour of Homes and Churches to include the personal lives and experiences of those enslaved in Holly Springs.
Carter and Eggleston sold their historic home in 2022 to the ROSA Foundation whose founders, Sally Godard and Ron Olisar, are also committed to presenting a fuller history of Holly Springs and Marshall County for pilgrimage visitors, other tourists, and local Marshall County students who tour the site each year.
The 2023 program and tour will feature Joseph McGill with the nationally recognized Slave Dwelling Project; Michael Twitty, culinary historian and the author of The Cooking Gene which won the 2018 James Beard Foundation Book Award for Book of the Year; and Tammy Gibson, storyteller and travel historian who wrote Honoring the Legacy: A Guide of African-American Monuments and Statues, winner of the 2021 Independent Author Network Book of the Year for Outstanding Non-Fiction Travel/Nature.
For more information about the Behind the Big House project in Holly Springs, visit https://preservemarshallcounty.org/behind-the-big-house
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Humanities Teacher Award Lectures Around the State
Humanities Teacher Award lectures continue throughout the state. One outstanding humanities educator at each of the state's institutions for higher learning is selected each year for this award. Each winner presents a public lecture on a humanities topic of their choice, and will receive recognition at the MHC's Public Humanities Awards. These lectures offer Mississippians a unique experience to hear scholarly presentations on a wide range of humanities subjects.
Upcoming lectures include:
Feb. 28: Dr. Lemondra V. Hamilton, Mississippi Valley State University, "Blues in Conversation with Gospel: Two Sides of the Same Musical Coin"
Mar. 1: Dr. Jay Sarver, Northwest Mississippi Community College, "Reflections on Teaching the Human Experience through Poetry"
Mar. 2: Dr. Pete Smith, Mississippi State University, "Birddogs and Tough Old Broads: Women Journalists of Mississippi and a Century of State Politics, 1880s-1980s"
Mar. 2: Ms. Rosemary Davis, Pearl River Community College, "English is a Necessary Evil: Helping the At-Risk Student Succeed"
Mar. 2: Mr. Eddie L. Buggs, Jr., Coahoma Community College, "Urban Folk Music: Incorporating Jazz and Hip-Hop into Music Education"
Mar. 3: Mr. John Reeves, Meridian Community College, "Don't Throw Out the Baby with the Bathwater: Teaching Historical Truth in the Age of Wokeness"
Mar. 6: Dr. Jeff Brannon, Belhaven University, "Resurrection and Reign"
Mar. 7: Ms. Natalie McMahon, Southwest Mississippi Community College," Libraries in a Digital Age"
Mar. 7: Mr. Eric Smith, Northeast Mississippi Community College, "The Humanities ARE for Everyone: Reducing Recidivism through Prison Education"
Mar. 7: Ms. Marilyn Y. Ford, East Mississippi Community College, "'My Hideous Progeny': Isolation in Frankenstein and during the Pandemic"
Mar. 7: Dr. David Wood, Millsaps College, "Loving Spain Bitterly: Illness as Satire in Firecrackers by José Martínez Ruiz (Azorín)”
Mar. 9: Dr. Leah Parker, University of Southern Mississippi, "Disability and the Medieval Apocalypse: Body and Soul"
For more information on these and other upcoming lectures, please visit our website calendar.
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Upcoming MHC-Sponsored Events
Natchez Literary & Cinema Celebration
February 24 & 25
Natchez Convention Center, Natchez, MS
This annual celebration, which began in 1990, is a theme-based lecture series enhanced by films, workshops, exhibitions, book signings, concerts, discussions and more.
Learn More
Meridian History Walk
February 25, 12:00pm
Meridian, MS
From the Civil War burning of Meridian to a tornado wiping out the city’s business district 1906, the history of the Queen City will come alive for area residents Saturday during the second annual Meridian Downtown History Walk.
Learn More
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Mississippi Banned Books Festival
March 25
Millsaps College, Jackson, MS
Hear from author Angie Thomas, whose book, "The Hate U Give," is one of the most banned books in the nation. Investigative reporter Julie K. Brown, who exposed the truth about Jeffrey Epstein, will talk about "Erasing Truth." And the festival will kick off with Mississippi cartoonist Marshall Ramsey interviewing author Rick Bragg, whose book, "All Over But the Shoutin'" was banned in some circles.
Learn More
Mississippi Founders Exhibit
February 1-28
Mississippi College, Clinton, MS
Mississippi Founders, sponsored by the Mississippi Humanities Council and the National Endowment for the Humanities “A More Perfect Union” grant, will be hosted at Mississippi College for the month of February. The exhibit highlights twelve Mississippians who challenged America to be a more perfect union.
Learn More
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Oxford Conference for the Book
March 29-31
University of Mississippi, Oxford
Founded by the Center for the Study of Southern Culture and Square Books, the Oxford Conference for the Book brings together fiction and nonfiction writers, journalists, artists, poets, publishers, teachers, students, and literacy advocates for three days of conversation in the literary town of Oxford, Mississippi.
Learn More
"Behind The Big House" Program & Tour
April 20-22
Holly Springs
The Behind the Big House program in Holly Springs, Mississippi interprets the lives of enslaved persons through the structures in which they lived and worked. It is run through Preserve Marshall County and Holly Springs, Inc., a local historic preservation institution. The program’s major components are preservation, interpretation, and education.
Learn More
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