Böcker utgivna av University Press of Mississippi

Writing as a newspaper reporter for nearly forty years, Curtis Wilkie covered eight presidential campaigns, spent years in the Middle East, and traveled to a number of conflicts abroad. However, his memory keeps turning home and many of his most treasured stories transpire in the Deep South. He called his native Mississippi, "e;the gift that keeps on giving."e; For Wilkie, it represented a trove of rogues and racists, colorful personalities and outlandish politicians who managed to thrive among people otherwise kind and generous.Assassins, Eccentrics, Politicians, and Other Persons of Interest collects news dispatches and feature stories from the author during a journalism career that began in 1963 and lasted until 2000. As a young reporter for the Clarksdale Press Register, he wrote many articles that dealt with the civil rights movement, which dominated the news in the Mississippi Delta during the 1960s.Wilkie spent twenty-six years as a national and foreign correspondent for the Boston Globe. One of the original "e;Boys on the Bus"e; (the title of a best-selling book about journalists covering the 1972 presidential campaign), he later wrote extensively about the winning races of two southern Presidents, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.Wilkie is known for stories reported deeply, rife with anecdotes, physical descriptions, and important background details. He writes about the notorious, such as the late Hunter S. Thompson, as well as more anonymous subjects whose stories, in his hands, have enduring interest. The anthology collects pieces about several notable southerners: Ross Barnett; Byron De La Beckwith and Sam Bowers; Billy Carter; Edwin Edwards and David Duke; Trent Lott; and Charles Evers. Wilkie brings a perceptive eye to people and events, and his eloquent storytelling represents some of the best journalistic writing.

The comic book has become an essential icon of the American Century, an era defined by optimism in the face of change and by recognition of the intrinsic value of democracy and modernization. For many, the Middle Ages stand as an antithesis to these ideals, and yet medievalist comics have emerged and endured, even thrived alongside their superhero counterparts. Chris Bishop presents a reception history of medievalist comics, setting them against a greater backdrop of modern American history.From its genesis in the 1930s to the present, Bishop surveys the medievalist comic, its stories, characters, settings, and themes drawn from the European Middle Ages. Hal Foster's Prince Valiant emerged from an America at odds with monarchy, but still in love with King Arthur. Green Arrow remains the continuation of a long fascination with Robin Hood that has become as central to the American identity as it was to the British. The Mighty Thor reflects the legacy of Germanic migration into the United States. The rugged individualism of Conan the Barbarian owes more to the western cowboy than it does to the continental knight-errant. In the narrative of Red Sonja, we can trace a parallel history of feminism. Bishop regards these comics as not merely happenchance, but each success (Prince Valiant and The Mighty Thor) or failure (Beowulf: Dragon Slayer) as a result and an indicator of certain American preoccupations amid a larger cultural context.Intrinsically modernist paragons of pop-culture ephemera, American comics have ironically continued to engage with the European Middle Ages. Bishop illuminates some of the ways in which we use an imagined past to navigate the present and plots some possible futures as we valiantly shape a new century.

During the civil rights era, Mississippi was caught in the hateful embrace of a white caste system that enforced segregation. Rather than troubling the Closed Society, state news media, on the whole, marched in lockstep or, worse, promoted the continued subservience of blacks. Surprisingly, challenges from Mississippi's college basketball courts questioned segregation's validity and its gentleman's agreement that prevented college teams in the Magnolia State from playing against integrated foes.Mississippi State University stood at the forefront of this battle for equality in the state with the school's successful college basketball program. From 1959 through 1963, the Maroons won four Southeastern Conference basketball championships and created a dynasty in the South's preeminent college athletic conference. However, in all four title-winning seasons, the press feverishly debated the merits of a National Collegiate Athletic Association appearance for the Maroons, culminating in Mississippi State University's participation in the integrated 1963 NCAA Championship.Full Court Press examines news articles, editorials, and columns published in Mississippi's newspapers during the eight-year existence of the gentleman's agreement that barred black participation, the challenges posed by Mississippi State University, and the subsequent integration of college basketball. While the majority of reporters opposed any effort to integrate, a segment of sports journalists, led by the charismatic Jimmie McDowell of the Jackson State Times, emerged as bold advocates for equality. Full Court Presshighlights an ideological metamorphosis within the press during the civil rights movement. The media, which had long minimized the struggle of blacks, slowly transformed into an industry that considered the plight of black Mississippians on equal footing with whites.

Maurice Sendak (1928-2012) stands out as one of the most respected, influential authors of the twentieth century. The interviews collected here, many of which are hard to find or previously unpublished, span from 1966 to 2011. They show not only Sendak's shifting artistic interests, but also changes in how he understood himself and his craft.

At once familiar and hard to place, the work of acclaimed Canadian cartoonist Seth evokes a world that no longer exists--and perhaps never existed, except in the panels of long-forgotten comics. Seth's distinctive drawing style strikingly recalls a bygone era of cartooning, an apt vehicle for melancholy, gently ironic narratives that depict the grip of the past on the present. Even when he appears to look to the past, however, Seth (born Gregory Gallant) is constantly pushing the medium of comics forward with sophisticated work that often incorporates metafiction, parody, and formal experimentation.Forging the Past offers a comprehensive account of this work and the complex interventions it makes into the past. Moving beyond common notions of nostalgia, Daniel Marrone explores the various ways in which Seth's comics induce readers to participate in forging histories and memories. Marrone discusses collecting, Canadian identity, New Yorker cartoons, authenticity, artifice, and ambiguity--all within the context of comics' unique structure and texture. Seth's comics are suffused with longing for the past, but on close examination this longing is revealed to be deeply ambivalent, ironic, and self-aware.Marrone undertakes the most thorough, sustained investigation of Seth's work to date, while advancing a broader argument about how comics operate as a literary medium. Included as an appendix is a substantial interview, conducted by the author, in which Seth candidly discusses his work, his peers, and his influences.

In 1964, sociologist William McCord began a study of Mississippi's Freedom Summer. Published in 1965 by W.W. Norton, his book, Mississippi, is one of the first examinations of the events of 1964 by a scholar. It provides a compelling, detailed account of Mississippi people and places, including the thousands of student workers who found in the state both opportunities and challenges.

Southerners love to talk food, quickly revealing likes and dislikes, regional preferences, and their own delicious stories. Because the topic often crosses lines of race, class, gender, and region, food supplies a common fuel to launch discussion. Consuming Identity sifts through the self-definitions, allegiances, and bonds made possible and strengthened through the theme of southern foodways. The book focuses on the role food plays in building identities, accounting for the messages food sends about who we are, how we see ourselves, and how we see others. While many volumes examine southern food, this one is the first to focus on food's rhetorical qualities and the effect that it can have on culture.The volume examines southern food stories that speak to the identity of the region, explain how food helps to build identities, and explore how it enables cultural exchange. Food acts rhetorically, with what we choose to eat and serve sending distinct messages. It also serves a vital identity-building function, factoring heavily into our memories, narratives, and understanding of who we are. Finally, because food and the tales surrounding it are so important to southerners, the rhetoric of food offers a significant and meaningful way to open up dialogue in the region. By sharing and celebrating both foodways and the food itself, southerners are able to revel in shared histories and traditions. In this way individuals find a common language despite the divisions of race and class that continue to plague the South. The rich subject of southern fare serves up a significant starting point for understanding the powerful rhetorical potential of all food.

Winner of the 2017 Diamond Anniversary Book Award and the African American Communication and Culture Division's 2017 Outstanding Book Award, both from the National Communication AssociationIn the black liberation movement, imprisonment emerged as a key rhetorical, theoretical, and media resource. Imprisoned activists developed tactics and ideology to counter white supremacy. Lisa M. Corrigan underscores how imprisonment--a site for both political and personal transformation--shaped movement leaders by influencing their political analysis and organizational strategies. Prison became the critical space for the transformation from civil rights to Black Power, especially as southern civil rights activists faced setbacks.Black Power activists produced autobiographical writings, essays, and letters about and from prison beginning with the early sit-in movement. Examining the iconic prison autobiographies of H. Rap Brown, Mumia Abu-Jamal, and Assata Shakur, Corrigan conducts rhetorical analyses of these extremely popular though understudied accounts of the Black Power movement. She introduces the notion of the "e;Black Power vernacular"e; as a term for the prison memoirists' rhetorical innovations, to explain how the movement adapted to an increasingly hostile environment in both the Johnson and Nixon administrations.Through prison writings, these activists deployed narrative features supporting certain tenets of Black Power, pride in blackness, disavowal of nonviolence, identification with the Third World, and identity strategies focused on black masculinity. Corrigan fills gaps between Black Power historiography and prison studies by scrutinizing the rhetorical forms and strategies of the Black Power ideology that arose from prison politics. These discourses demonstrate how Black Power activism shifted its tactics to regenerate, even after the FBI sought to disrupt, discredit, and destroy the movement.

Although the last three decades have offered a growing body of scholarship on images of fantastic women in popular culture, these studies either tend to focus on one particular variety of fantastic female (the action or sci-fi heroine), or on her role in a specific genre (villain, hero, temptress). This edited collection strives to define the "Woman Fantastic" more fully.

Syndicated cartoonist and illustrator Tim Jackson offers an unprecedented look at the rich yet largely untold story of African American cartoon artists. This book provides a historical record of the men and women who created seventy-plus comic strips, many editorial cartoons, and illustrations for articles. The volume covers the mid-1880s, the early years of the self-proclaimed black press, to 1968, when African American cartoon artists were accepted in the so-called mainstream.When the cartoon world was preparing to celebrate the one hundredth anniversary of the American comic strip, Jackson anticipated that books and articles published upon the anniversary would either exclude African American artists or feature only the three whose work appeared in mainstream newspapers after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination in 1968. Jackson was determined to make it impossible for critics and scholars to plead an ignorance of black cartoonists or to claim that there is no information on them. He began in 1997 cataloging biographies of African American cartoonists, illustrators, and graphic designers, and showing samples of their work. His research involved searching historic newspapers and magazines as well as books and "e;Who's Who"e; directories.This project strives not only to record the contributions of African American artists, but also to place them in full historical context. Revealed chronologically, these cartoons offer an invaluable perspective on American history of the black community during pivotal moments, including the Great Migration, race riots, the Great Depression, and both World Wars. Many of the greatest creators have already died, so Jackson recognizes the stakes in remembering them before this hidden yet vivid history is irretrievably lost.

American filmmaker John Cassavetes (1929-1989) made only nine independent films during a quarter century, but those films have affected the cinema culture of the 1960s to the 1980s in unprecedented ways. John Cassavetes: Interviews captures the "maverick" streak of an intensely personal filmmaker who was passionate about his art.

Despite Puerto Rico being the hub of the United States' naval response to the German blockade of the Caribbean, there is very little published scholarship on the island's heavy involvement in the global conflict of World War II. Island at War brings together outstanding new research on Puerto Rico and makes it accessible in English.

Acclaim, success, and controversy follow every one of Salman Rushdie's writings. This first collection of interviews with Rushdie, brings together the best and some of the rarest of the interviews the author has granted.

Across two decades of intense creativity, David Foster Wallace (1962-2008) crafted a remarkable body of work that ranged from unclassifiable essays, to a book about transfinite mathematics, to vertiginous fictions. Conversations with David Foster Wallace gathers twenty-two interviews and profiles that trace the arc of Wallace's career, shedding light on his omnivorous talent.

The untold story of escaped slaves, their battle against colonial overlords, and the lasting impact in the Caribbean

Looks at the world of professional wrestling from a fan's-eye-view high in the stands and from ringside in the wrestlers' gym. Sharon Mazer investigates how performances are constructed and sold to spectators, and a close-up view of a group of wrestlers as they work out and dream of stardom.

Presents letters, speeches, contemporary nineteenth-century newspaper articles, and reports written by and about Martin Robison Delany. These vital primary sources cover his Civil War and Reconstruction career in South Carolina and include key critical reactions to Delany's ideas and writings from his contemporaries.

Across fiction, journalism, ethnography, and history, William T. Vollmann's oeuvre is ambitious as it is dazzling. Conversations with William T. Vollmann collects twenty-nine interviews, from early press coverage in Britain where his career first took flight, to in-depth visits to his writing and art studio in Sacramento, California.

Featuring both reprinted and original essays, this collection reveals why we are so fascinated with the villain. This innovative collection brings together essays, book excerpts, and original content from a wide variety of scholars and writers, weaving a rich tapestry of thought regarding villains in all their manifestations.

Featuring both reprinted and original essays, this collection reveals why we are so fascinated with the villain. This innovative collection brings together essays, book excerpts, and original content from a wide variety of scholars and writers, weaving a rich tapestry of thought regarding villains in all their manifestations.

These interviews trace Wes Craven's life and career, from his upbringing in a strict religious family and his life as an academic to his years toiling in exploitation cinema. The volume also chronicles Craven's ascendancy as an independent director, his work within the studio system, and his eventual triumph in mainstream cinema.

Considers such topics as Welty's uses of African American signifying in her short stories and her attention to public street performances interacting with Jim Crow rules in her unpublished photographs. Contributors also discuss her adaptations of gothic plots, haunted houses, Civil War stories, and film noir.

The Francophone Caribbean boasts a trove of literary gems. Distinguished by innovative, elegant writing and thought-provoking questions of history and identity, this exciting body of work demands scholarly attention. Its authors treat the traumatic legacies of shared and personal histories pervading Caribbean experience in striking ways, delineating a path towards reconciliation and healing. The creation of diverse personal narratives-encompassing autobiography, autofiction (heavily autobiographical fiction), travel writing, and reflective essay-remains characteristic of many Caribbean writers and offers poignant illustrations of the complex interchange between shared and personal pasts and how they affect individual lives. Through their historically informed autobiography, the authors in this study-Maryse Conde, Gisele Pineau, Patrick Chamoiseau, Edwidge Danticat, and Dany Laferriere-offer compelling insights into confronting, coming to terms with, and reconciling their past. The employment of personal narratives as the vehicle to carry out this investigation points to a tension evident in these writers' reflections, which constantly move between the collective and the personal. As an inescapably complex network, their past extends beyond the notion of a single, private life. These contemporary authors from Martinique, Guadeloupe, and Haiti intertwine their personal memories with reflections on the histories of their homelands and on the European and North American countries they adopt through choice or necessity. They reveal a multitude of deep connections that illuminate distinct Francophone Caribbean experiences.

Often called a ""writer-rock star"" and a ""cult icon"", Dorothy Allison is a true performer of the written word. In the absence of a biography of Allison's life, Conversations with Dorothy Allison presents Allison's perspectives on her life, literature, and her conflicted role as a public figure.

Women are performing an ever-growing role in Caribbean Carnival. Through a feminist perspective, this volume examines the presence of women in contemporary Carnival by demonstrating not only their strength in numbers, but also the ways in which women participate in the event.

Engaging with Romanticism and the many monsters created by Romantic writers and artists such as Mary Shelley, Victor Hugo, and Goya, Maaheen Ahmed maps the heritage, functions, and effects of monsters in contemporary comics and graphic novels.

Adrian Rollini, an American jazz multi-instrumentalist, played the bass saxophone, piano, vibraphone, and an array of other instruments. This book draws on oral history, vintage articles, and family archives to trace Rollini's life, from his family's arrival in the US to his development and career as a musician, to his retirement and death.

Brings insights from urban theory to bear on specific comics. The works selected comprise a variety of international, alternative, and independent small-press comics artists, from engravings and early comics to single-panel work, graphic novels, manga, and trading cards.

Cuban debates about freedom and selfhood were never the exclusive domain of the white Creole elite. Pettway argues black Latin American authors did not abandon their African religious heritage to assimilate wholesale to the Catholic Church. By recognising the wisdom of African ancestors, they procured power in the struggle for black liberation.

Though texts within dystopian literature and science fiction may share similar settings, plot devices, and characters, each genre's value is different because they do distinctively different sociocritical work. This book distinguishes the two genres, explains the function of each, and outlines the impact each has on readers.