Books published by University Press of Mississippi

In this state-level history of the war on poverty, Emma Folwell traces the attempts of white and black Mississippians to address the state's dire economic circumstances through antipoverty programs.

A unique volume that is the only book solely about antebellum American fiddling. It includes more than 250 easy-to-read and clearly notated fiddle tunes alongside biographies of fiddlers and careful analysis of their personal tune collections.

Both runaways and castaways formed new societies in the wilderness. But true maroons, escaped slaves, were not cast away; they chose to fly towards the uncertainties of the wild in pursuit of freedom. In effect, this volume gives these maroons proper credit, at the very heart of American history.

While critical and popular attention afforded to twenty-first-century young adult literature has increased in recent years, classroom materials and scholarship have remained static in focus and slight in scope. This volume offers a remedy, bringing together essays about the many subgenres, themes, and character types that have been overlooked.

Brings together scholars from a range of disciplines including literature, cultural studies, religious studies, pedagogy, and communications to engage with a single character, exploring Ms. Marvel's significance for a broad readership.

Mississippi: The WPA Guide to the Magnolia State was part of a nationwide series of guides in the 1930s that created work during the Depression for artists, writers, teachers, librarians, and other professionals. This classic book is a lively collaborative project that covers a distinct era in Mississippi from the hills to the Delta to the Gulf Coast.

By 1860 the South ranked high among the developed countries of the world in per capita income and life expectancy and in the number of railroad miles, telegraph lines, and institutions of higher learning. This book examines the Confederate military's program to govern this prosperous industrial base by a quartermaster system.

Almost a century ago, Annette McConnell Anderson, a New Orleans society woman, vowed that her three sons would become artists. Backed by his mother's passion for art, her oldest son Peter Anderson founded Shearwater Pottery. Drawn by the exquisite work of Shearwater Pottery, the authors discover that painting, poetry, and storytelling are still an essential part of the family's daily life.

For almost a decade Peter Quezada, a prolific self-taught artist, painted murals and lettering on buildings and retaining walls in neighborhoods northeast of downtown Los Angeles. He refers to his work as a "graffiti deterrent" or a "substitute for graffiti," and he targets sites that are favorites of taggers and gang graffiti writers. Often he enlists their assistance and designs his murals to appeal to these youths as well as to discourage them from participating in antisocial behavior.Highlighting the interplay of contemporary life, mass-media images that confront the public, and the use of physical space in the city landscape, "Chicano Graffiti and Murals" shows how such art as Quezada's has become the signature of modern urban culture.

This startling novel depicts the compelling and poignant story of a young woman's obsession with her looks. Defining herself by the reactions of the various and unforgettable men in her life, Martha becomes more an more absorbed in the demands of being physically attractive.

Readers captivated by this book will be happy that Bill Ferris found Ray Lum and that he thought to turn on a tape recorder. This delightful book, first published in 1992 as You Live and Learn. Then You Die and Forget It All, preserves Lum's colourful folk dialect and captures the essence of this one-of-a-kind figure.

For the past forty years the content of comic books has been governed by an industry self-regulatory code adopted by publishers in 1954 in response to public and governmental pressure. This book examines why comic books were the subject of controversy, beginning with objections that surfaced in the mid-1930s.

The history of Carnival is so intertwined with the history of New Orleans that the story cannot be told without a social, economic, and political context. Lords of Misrule examines the often bloody history of segregation and documents the role of the Carnival fraternity and the controversy aroused by attempts to desegregate Mardi Gras.

Among America's garden cities, one of the most remarkably beautiful is New Orleans. Whether in the Vieux Carre or in the humid hinterlands, anyone hoping to recreate such a romantic spot in the climes of the Gulf Coast region should consult Charlotte Seidenberg's essential handbook.

Mystic meanings behind the flourishing art of modern-day pagans and witches

Jarret Ruminski examines ordinary lives in Confederate-controlled Mississippi to show how military occupation and the ravages of war tested the meaning of loyalty during America's greatest rift. The extent of southern loyalty to the Confederate States of America has remained a subject of historical contention that has resulted in two conflicting conclusions: one, southern patriotism was either strong enough to carry the Confederacy to the brink of victory, or two, it was so weak that the Confederacy was doomed to crumble from internal discord. Mississippi, the home state of Confederate President Jefferson Davis, should have been a hotbed of Confederate patriotism. The reality was much more complicated.Ruminski breaks the weak/strong loyalty impasse by looking at how people from different backgrounds--women and men, white and black, enslaved and free, rich and poor--negotiated the shifting contours of loyalty in a state where Union occupation turned everyday activities into potential tests of patriotism. While the Confederate government demanded total national loyalty from its citizenry, this study focuses on wartime activities such as swearing the Union oath, illegally trading with the Union army, and deserting from the Confederate army to show how Mississippians acted on multiple loyalties to self, family, and nation. Ruminski also probes the relationship between race and loyalty to indicate how an internal war between slaves and slaveholders defined Mississippi's social development well into the twentieth century.

Contributions by Allison Margaret Bigelow, Denise I. Bossy, Alejandra Dubcovsky, Alexandre Dube, Kathleen DuVal, Jonathan Eacott, Travis Glasson, Christopher Morris, Robert Olwell, Joshua Piker, and Joseph P. WardEuropean Empires in the American South examines the process of European expansion into a region that has come to be known as the American South. After Europeans began to cross the Atlantic with confidence, they interacted for three hundred years with one another, with the native people of the region, and with enslaved Africans in ways that made the South a significant arena of imperial ambition. As such, it was one of several similarly contested regions around the Atlantic basin. Without claiming that the South was unique during the colonial era, these essays make clear the region's integral importance for anyone seeking to shed new light on the long-term process of global social, cultural, and economic integration.For those who are curious about how the broad processes of historical change influenced particular people and places, the contributors offer key examples of colonial encounter. This volume includes essays on all three imperial powers, Spain, Britain, and France, and their imperial projects in the American South. Engaging profitably--from the European perspective at least--with Native Americans proved key to these colonial schemes. While the consequences of Indian encounters with European invaders have long remained a principal feature of historical research, this volume advances and expands knowledge of Native Americans in the South amid the Atlantic World.

Contributors to this volume explore several prominent intellectuals, from left-leaning leaders such as W.E.B. Du Bois to conservative intellectuals like Thomas Sowell, from well-known black feminists such as Patricia Hill Collins to Marxists like Claudia Jones, to underscore the variety of black intellectual thought in the United States.

Every winter a handful of Cajun Louisiana folk artists assembles unlikely mixtures of material to shape masks for their Cajun Mardi Gras celebrations. They use window screens, chicken feathers, yarn, hair, Magic Markers, and hot glue as they create fanciful, even bizarre masks that will be worn just one day in the year.Such creations transform their wearers into wild revelers who move through the countryside singing, dancing, and begging for money and food. As they generate merriment, they climb trees, chase chickens, and create a general and playful havoc.Cajun Mardi Gras celebrants are unlike their counterparts in New Orleans, where masked revelers ride through the streets on floats or parade serenely through ballrooms. The masked country Cajuns engage in rousing, physically energetic performances as they cavort through the countryside. Out of necessity their captivating masks combine the ingredients of durability, shock value, and allure with age-old folk patterns and innovations from contemporary culture.Here is a study of the Cajun Mardi Gras tradition and its manifestation in the work of six of the most creative and popular folk artists in two rural communities. Potic Rider and the Moreau and LeBlue families represent the male maskmaking traditions of Basile, Louisiana. Suson Launey, Renee Fruge, and Jackie Miller portray the female role in festivities held in the rural region of Tee Mamou. As the communities celebrate, their masks become an intrinsic component of the annual rites. This book introduces the artists, the performances, and processes of creating the fantastical masks.Carl Lindahl, co-editor of Swapping Stories: Folktales from Louisiana (University Press of Mississippi), is a professor of English at the University of Houston.Carolyn Ware is Coordinator of the Pine Hills Culture Program at the University of Southern Mississippi in Hattiesburg

From Walla Walla to Daytona quirky mannikins constructed from discarded automobile mufflers are popping up across America. This colourful book documents the widespread appeal of muffler men as a form of occupational art that enriches the workplace, the local environment, and now the art gallery.

Florencio Morales (1949-1992), a Mexican immigrant and Los Angeles artist, was known as "el hombre de las banderas" because he always flew American, Mexican, and California flags over his home. Illustrated with colour photographs, this vibrant book explores and documents Morale's creative expression as he commemorated a profusion of Mexican and American holidays throughout the year.

A paean to the vanishing family cotton farm