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Food Retailing In Mississippi, 1895-2000, James R. Gulley Jan 2023

Food Retailing In Mississippi, 1895-2000, James R. Gulley

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a history of the evolution of the grocery industry in Mississippi in the twentieth century. I used primary source interviews, analysis of newspaper articles and advertisements, U.S. Census data, archival materials, and secondary sources to inform the thesis. The research focuses on an urban market in Jackson, Mississippi, and a rural market in Philadelphia, Mississippi. This history also concentrates on two Mississippi-based supermarket chains, Jitney-Jungle and Sunflower, and the families that founded them. The thesis argued that the innovations in grocery retailing during this era improved the lives of all Mississippians by lowering the cost of food, …


The Crisis Of White Supremacy In The Antebellum South: Poor Whites, Slavery, And The Coming Of The Civil War, Jeffrey Glossner Jan 2023

The Crisis Of White Supremacy In The Antebellum South: Poor Whites, Slavery, And The Coming Of The Civil War, Jeffrey Glossner

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The so-called “poor whites” of the antebellum South have often been overlooked by historians due to their perceived insignificance to the political and cultural development of the South. However, within the context of the sectional debate over slavery, poor whites represented a disturbing presence for elite southerners who sought to defend slavery on the basis of white supremacy, a political platform built on the promise of universal white superiority. In order to defend the slave labor system from northern promises of white supremacy under free labor and to justify widespread southern white poverty, the architects of the antebellum southern cultural …


A War Of Ideas: L.Q.C. Lamar And American Political Thought, Ashley Steenson Jan 2020

A War Of Ideas: L.Q.C. Lamar And American Political Thought, Ashley Steenson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis connects late nineteenth-century southern Democrat and former Confederate L.Q.C. Lamar to the status politics of the Northeastern “small imperialist elite.” Moreover, this work traces Senator, Secretary of the Interior, and Associate Justice Lamar’s legacies in American political thought, such as a regional memorialization and the example of his national influence through the policies of President Theodore Roosevelt specifically. Though he inspired generations of politicians with varying views, Lamar himself maintained a strict constructionist political philosophy and worked for home rule throughout his career. Scholars argue for Lamar as a moderate symbol of national reconciliation due to his eulogy …


Down Under Punks And Dixie Rock: Reflections On Making The Documentary Film Chinese Whispers - Southern Roots In The Australian Swampy Sound, Gretchen Labudde Wood Jan 2018

Down Under Punks And Dixie Rock: Reflections On Making The Documentary Film Chinese Whispers - Southern Roots In The Australian Swampy Sound, Gretchen Labudde Wood

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

No abstract provided.


Southern Discomfort: Performing Femininity In The Deep South, Rachel Whitney Turnipseed Jan 2017

Southern Discomfort: Performing Femininity In The Deep South, Rachel Whitney Turnipseed

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The “performance” of gender is variable and multifarious, fabricated in reaction to audience, mood, and previous experiences. Starting in childhood, people “police” our gender performances, and profoundly shape our self-presentation and sense of personal identity. We gradually learn to self-edit our performances of gender, after countless critiques by others, which often negatively impact our body image as they preserve “norms,” marginalizing anyone who does not conform. The mixed-media installation, Southern Discomfort: Performing Femininity in the Deep South, examines this process and its impact on young girls. The young, blonde, female figure who appears multiple times in my installation reveal girls …


William Eggleston's Guide To The Suburban South, Amanda Katherine Malloy Jan 2016

William Eggleston's Guide To The Suburban South, Amanda Katherine Malloy

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In 1976, Memphis, Tennessee, photographer, William Eggleston, had his first solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. This exhibition was the first dedicated to a single photographer working in color. While Eggleston’s use of color was groundbreaking, his depictions of contemporary southern life were similarly exceptional. Working against previous photographic representations of the South, Eggleston presented a region succumbing to national homogenization through land development, commercialization, and suburbanization. Eggleston’s monograph resulting from his debut exhibition at MoMA, William Eggleston’s Guide, tells the story of this changing region, from the outdoor spaces that were once agriculturally …


Thin Bodies, Elizabeth Meliza Tran Jan 2015

Thin Bodies, Elizabeth Meliza Tran

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Thin Bodies, is a fictional thriller revolving around a retrospective, female voice. It is a short novel-length view into the insular community of the sorority, specifically in the U.S. Deep South. The town and university are both fictional, as are the characters, sororities, and events, but they are based in realistic institutions of socialization and community. Sarah Beth, our protagonist and narrator, considers her coming-of-age through her recruitment, initiation, ensuing leadership, and eventual fall from grace in her sorority, Theta Kappa. The group of women that this novel intends to characterize struggle with identity and how they are perceived against …


In A Foreign Land: Stories Of African Immigrants And Their Children In Jackson, Ms, Renee N. Ombaba Jan 2014

In A Foreign Land: Stories Of African Immigrants And Their Children In Jackson, Ms, Renee N. Ombaba

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

My research focuses on the characteristics of African community in Jackson, MS and the factors that contribute to the development and continued existence of African community in the U.S. South. I specifically look at African community as a subregion of the South and draw conclusions about African community and its connections to the larger Southern region of the United States. African community in Jackson, MS develops through the shared experiences of African immigrants who now share the geographical space of the Jackson metropolitan area. This research will show how African members identify their communities and how their children identify and …


The Darker Angels Of Our Nature: The South In American Horror Film, Steven Clayton Saunders Jan 2013

The Darker Angels Of Our Nature: The South In American Horror Film, Steven Clayton Saunders

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

How does one make a region horrific? For well over half of a century, the American South has functioned as a site for national anxieties over race and modernization. This study uses an inter-disciplinary approach in order to understand the various forces involved in the construction of the South in American horror cinema. Particular attention is paid to the influence that images of the civil rights movement have had on the development and evolution of the South as a horrific and terrifying space for the rest of the nation. It focuses on four main subcategories of the genre: the white …


Outings In The Queer South: Representations Of Male Homosexuality In The Short Fiction Of Eudora Welty, Ramona Wanlass Jan 2012

Outings In The Queer South: Representations Of Male Homosexuality In The Short Fiction Of Eudora Welty, Ramona Wanlass

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis investigates Welty's four short story collections and treats the stories as separate entities that are intimately connected to each other by a theme that evolves over and yet transcends the forty odd years that seem to separate them--namely Welty's theme of male homosexual desire. I will examine Welty's story collections using a theoretical framework that incorporates a history of homosexuality in the South and investigates such themes as travel, identity, reactions to heterosexual coupling, and traces Welty's own experiences through the experiences of her fictional male characters. Welty's work spans several decades but in a discussion of her …


Place, Race, And Religion In The Local Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Community And Movement Of Memphis, Tennessee, Amy Catherine Ulmer Jan 2012

Place, Race, And Religion In The Local Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender Community And Movement Of Memphis, Tennessee, Amy Catherine Ulmer

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study observes the role of place in the local LGBT community and movement of Memphis, Tennessee. I gathered information from fifteen interviews, including LGBT Memphians, activists, preachers, and public figures to show what aspects of place have been the most significant in shaping the nature of the local movement, which has been growing since the early 2000s. I suggest that the conservatism, race, and religiosity of Memphis have played the most significant role. The first chapter demonstrates how LGBTs operate within a city that maintains pockets of openness, but remains largely LGBT-unfriendly according to interviewees. The second chapter observes …


Y'All Eat: Foodways, Performative Regional Identity, And The South In The Twenty-First Century, Kirsten Schofield Jan 2012

Y'All Eat: Foodways, Performative Regional Identity, And The South In The Twenty-First Century, Kirsten Schofield

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

"Y'all Eat: Foodways, Performative Regional Identity, and the South in the Twenty-first Century" examines the ways in which iconic Southerners--Jim Beam and his ilk, Colonel Harland Sanders, and Paula Deen--create and sustain the hypercontemporary South. Because of their media exposure and place in the popular imagination, these characters force a specific kind of performance in both an intergroup and intragroup context. Close readings of individual appearances and selected portions of these characters' output help to shed light on how these identities are formed, upon what they rely for structure and support, and what this means for modern consumers around the …


The Crescent And The Cross: Islamic Influence In Southern Culture, Jesse Wright Jan 2010

The Crescent And The Cross: Islamic Influence In Southern Culture, Jesse Wright

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

To a large degree, America has adopted African American culture as its own. One may hear and see African American influence in popular music, grammar, fashion and art, but rarely are the sources of these influences divined, in no small part to difficulties inherent in interdisciplinary studies. This thesis will examine the Islamic aesthetics in African American quilts. This work focuses on design and color elements and I trace Islamic influence from West Africa to the U.S. South by way of the slave trade. The original scholarship comes from in the Mississippi Delta, although this thesis also uses quilt books …