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American Studies

University of Mississippi

Study the South

2020

Articles 1 - 3 of 3

Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

Vanishing Acts: Civil Rights Reform And Dramatic Inversion In Douglas Turner Ward's Day Of Absence, Gershun Avilez Sep 2020

Vanishing Acts: Civil Rights Reform And Dramatic Inversion In Douglas Turner Ward's Day Of Absence, Gershun Avilez

Study the South

Dramatist Douglas Turner Ward's innovative play Day of Absence first premiered in November 1965 in New York City and has seen a recent national revival, having been staged by theatre companies in Berkeley, New York, Washington, D. C., Omaha, and Chicago, as well as the Maitisong Festival in Gaborone, Botswana. It stands as a creative response to the African American civil rights situation after the 1964 act. Ward explores questions of Black labor and mobility and, in doing so, creates opportunities to invert the dynamics that have historically characterized U. S. society.


Toward Freedom: A Reading Of The National Memorial For Peace And Justice, Margaret Pless Jun 2020

Toward Freedom: A Reading Of The National Memorial For Peace And Justice, Margaret Pless

Study the South

The National Memorial for Peace and Justice opened in Montgomery, Alabama in 2018 to commemorate the black victims of lynching in the United States. The memorial’s monuments are unique because they resist the static, status quo understandings of history that so many of our monuments perpetuate. The memorial invites visitors to face disturbing truths in the hope of fostering reconciliation. Will it help us remember and reconcile as a nation? Montgomery is home to other monuments that undermine the history the memorial presents.


More Pricks Than Kicks: The Southern Economy In The Long Twentieth Century, Peter A. Coclanis May 2020

More Pricks Than Kicks: The Southern Economy In The Long Twentieth Century, Peter A. Coclanis

Study the South

Most scholars and journalists working on the South would likely agree that over the past fifty or sixty years southern states on balance benefitted from a diverse, but generally reasonable and reasonably successful portfolio of policies and programs in the “economic development” space. The fact that the region is still the poorest, the unhealthiest, and the least educated in the United States, a half century or more after the beginning of the “Sunbelt boom” says a lot about the difficulty of extricating a region once it is headed down a pernicious economic path.