Books published by University Press of Mississippi

With this new collection of interviews, readers will recognise the themes that motivate Steven Spielberg, the cinematic techniques he employs to create his feature films, and the emotional connection he has to his movies. The result is a nuanced and engaging portrait of the most popular director in American cinema history.

Presents the state of languages and of linguistic research on topics such as indigenous language documentation and revival; variation in educational opportunities in Louisiana's French varieties; current research on rural and urban dialects of English; and the struggles more recent immigrants face to use their heritage languages.

Examines six unique, offbeat, Downtown celebrations. Using ethnography, folklore, cultural, and performance studies, the authors analyse new Mardi Gras's connection to traditional Mardi Gras. The narrative of each krewe's development is fascinating and unique, illustrating participants' shared desire to contribute to New Orleans's vibrant culture.

Based on new research and combining multiple scholarly approaches, these essays tell new stories about the civil rights movement in Mississippi. As a group, the essays introduce numerous new characters and conundrums into civil rights scholarship and encourage historians to pull civil rights scholarship closer toward the present.

Probes the complex issues of identity confronting free blacks who attempted to meaningfully engage in colonization efforts. From a peculiarly voiced ""Counter Memorial"" against the ACS to the letters of wealthy black merchant Louis Sheridan, Stillion Southard brings to light the intricate rhetoric of blacks who addressed colonization to Africa.

Explores the role of folklore, folklore archives, and folklore studies in the contemporary history of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Sadhana Naithani combines the study of written works, archival documents, life-stories, and conversations with folklorists, ethnologists, archivists, and historians in Tartu, Riga, and Vilnius.

Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997) was one of the most famous American poets of the twentieth century. Yet, his career is distinguished by not only his strong contributions to literature but also social justice. Conversations with Allen Ginsberg collects interviews from 1962 to 1997 that chart Ginsberg's intellectual, spiritual, and political evolution.

Over twenty years after the publication of her groundbreaking work, Waking Sleeping Beauty: Feminist Voices in Children's Novels, Roberta Seelinger Trites returns to analyse how literature for the young still provides one outlet in which feminists can offer girls an alternative to sexism.

Features seventeen interviews with Joan Didion, spanning decades, continents, and genres. Didion reflects on her childhood in Sacramento; her time at Berkeley, in New York, and in Hollywood; her marriage to John Gregory Dunne; and of course her writing.

In The Gaithers and Southern Gospel, Ryan P. Harper examines songwriters Bill and Gloria Gaither's Homecoming video and concert series--a gospel music franchise that, since its beginning in 1991, has outperformed all Christian and much secular popular music on the American music market.The Homecomings represent "e;southern gospel."e; Typically that means a musical style popular among white evangelical Christians in the American South and Midwest, and it sometimes overlaps in style, theme, and audience with country music. The Homecomings' nostalgic orientation--their celebration of "e;traditional"e; kinds of American Christian life--harmonize well with southern gospel music, past and present. But amidst the backward gazes, the Homecomings also portend and manifest change. The Gaithers' deliberate racial integration of their stages, their careful articulation of a relatively inclusive evangelical theology, and their experiments with an array of musical forms demonstrate that the Homecoming is neither simplistically nostalgic, nor solely "e;southern."e;Harper reveals how the Gaithers negotiate a tension between traditional and changing community norms as they seek simultaneously to maintain and expand their audience as well as to initiate and respond to shifts within their fan base. Pulling from his field work at Homecoming concerts, behind the scenes with the Gaithers, and with numerous Homecoming fans, Harper reveals the Homecoming world to be a dynamic, complicated constellation in the formation of American religious identity.

This overview of the history of Canadian comics explores acclaimed as well as unfamiliar artists. Contributors look at the myriad ways that English-language, Francophone, Indigenous, and queer Canadian comics and cartoonists pose alternatives to American comics, to dominant perceptions, even to gender and racial categories.

Exploring the US experience of war in the twenty-first century, this book argues that wherever and whenever there is war, there will be imaginative responses to it, especially the recent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Collects eight of Stan Brakhage's most important interviews in which the filmmaker describes his conceptual frameworks; his theories of vision and sound; the importance of poetry, music, and the visual arts in relation to his work; his concept of the muse; and the key influences on his art-making.

Examines how Martin Luther King's life and work had a profound, if unpredictable, impact on the course of the United States since the civil rights era. Collectively, these pieces explore wide-ranging issues and contemporary social developments through the lens of Dr. King's perceptions, analysis, and prescriptions.

Eleanor Cameron (1912-1996) was an innovative and genre-defying author of children's fiction and children's literature criticism. From her beginnings as a librarian, Cameron went on to become a prominent and respected voice in children's literature, writing one of the most beloved children's science fiction novels of all time, The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet, and later winning the National Book Award for her time fantasy The Court of the Stone Children.In addition, Eleanor Cameron played an often vocal role in critical debates about children's literature. She was one of the first authors to take up literary criticism of children's novels and published two influential books of criticism, including The Green and Burning Tree. One of Cameron's most notable acts of criticism came in 1973, when she wrote a scathing critique of Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Dahl responded in kind, and the result was a fiery imbroglio within the pages of the Horn Book Magazine. Yet despite her many accomplishments, most of Cameron's books went out of print by the end of her life, and her star faded.This biography aims to reinsert Cameron into the conversation by taking an in-depth look at her tumultuous early life in Ohio and California, her unforgettably forceful personality and criticism, and her graceful, heartfelt novels. The biography includes detailed analysis of the creative process behind each of her published works and how Cameron's feminism, environmentalism, and strong sense of ethics are reflected in and represented by her writings. Drawn from over twenty interviews, thousands of letters, and several unpublished manuscripts in her personal papers, Eleanor Cameron is a tour of the most exciting and creative periods of American children's literature through the experience of one of its valiant purveyors and champions.

In this volume, Lynn Abbott and Doug Seroff complete their groundbreaking trilogy on the development of African American popular music, authoritatively connecting the black vaudeville movement with the explosion of blues that followed.