Welcome to Southern Studies: The AUM Liberal Arts Conference 2013
Our event this year offers a broad sampling of Southern culture, with panels dedicated to
literature and journalism, history and geography, music and art. You will also find two
areas of closer investigation highlighted by our distinguished guest speakers: James C.
Cobb of the University of Georgia will discuss the elusive idea of “the South” in a global
context and Pearl A. McHaney of Georgia State University will present fresh insights on
the photography and non-fiction of Eudora Welty. The menu of our Southern Studies
conference is enriched further by an exhibition, gallery talk, and cyanotype workshop by
Scott Stephens of the University of Montevallo.
On behalf of AUM, the School of Liberal Arts, and the hard-working AUMLAC
Committee, best wishes for an edifying and entertaining two days.
Ben H. Severance
Director
AUMLAC Committee
Andrew Hairstans
Brian E. Johnson
Joyce Kelley
Keri Watson
Val Winkelman
Janice Wood
Ben H. Severance, Director
Michael Burger, Dean, School of Liberal Arts
Schedule of Events
Thursday, February 7
7:30 p.m.-9:00 p.m.
Meàllo Trio, a special pre-conference promenade concert featuring vocalist Melanie
Williams, guitarist Alan Goldspiel, and clarinetist Lori Ardovino, all three from the
University of Montevallo
Goodwyn Hall 109
Friday, February 8
9 a.m.-noon
Registration and Light Breakfast
Goodwyn Hall Lobby
10 a.m.-11 a.m.
Opening remarks by Dean Michael Burger
Voices of the South: Fiction and Poetry Readings
Barbara Wiedemann (Auburn University Montgomery)
Kavon Franklin (Alabama State University)
Jim Hilgartner (Huntingdon College)
Rusty Spell (Auburn University)
Goodwyn Hall 109
11 a.m.-noon (concurrent)
Gallery Talk by Scott Stephens (University of Montevallo)
Goodwyn Hall Gallery-Goodwyn Hall 101
11 a.m.-noon (concurrent)
Leslie Harper Worthington (Gainesville State College)
“Cormac McCarthy and the Ghost of Huck Finn”
Goodwyn Hall 109
Noon-1 p.m.
Lunch (provided to registrants)
Goodwyn Hall Lobby
SESSION 1 (1 p.m.-2:30 p.m.)
A. New Perspectives on the Civil Rights Movement in the South (Goodwyn Hall 110)
Chair: Keith T. Krawczynski (Auburn University Montgomery)
Rebecca Brueckmann (Free University of Berlin)
“‘I’ve been here from the start, and I’m staying to the finish’: Women in Massive
Resistance”
Scotty E. Kirkland (History Museum of Mobile)
“The Mendacity of the Genteel: Competing Narratives of Mobile’s Contested Racial
History”
Kasey J. Mosely (Mississippi State University)
“Letting the People Speak: A Comparative Study of Freedom Summer Coverage”
B. Contact Zones of People and Place in the Works of William Faulkner (Goodwyn
Hall 111)
Chair: Joyce Kelley (Auburn University Montgomery)
Moira Bradford (Middlebury College)
“The Injunction Not to Touch: Incest and Miscegenation in William Faulkner’s Absalom,
Absalom!”
April Kathleen Lenoir (University of Memphis)
“‘Why Do You Hate the South?’ The American “Other” in William Faulkner’s Absalom,
Absalom!”
Kristi Rowan Humphreys (Alabama State University)
“‘For the Good of my Soul’: French Postwar Sentiment and Faulkner’s Staged South”
C. Urban Revitalization and Population Redistribution (Goodwyn Hall 112)
Chair: Brian E. Johnson (Auburn University Montgomery)
Brian E. Johnson (Auburn University at Montgomery)
“The Geography of In-Migration to Birmingham, Alabama’s Revitalized City Center”
Jennifer Speights-Binet (Samford University)
“Birmingham Reimagined: The Process of Downtown Revitalization in a Post-Industrial
City”
David Dorrell (Georgia Gwinnett College)
“Southern Depopulation”
Break (2:30 p.m.-2:45 p.m.)
SESSION 2 (2:45 p.m.-4:15 p.m.)
A. An Eclectic Look at the Civil War Era (Goodwyn Hall 111)
Chair: Ben H. Severance (Auburn University Montgomery)
Kenneth A. Deitreich (West Virginia University)
“Lives in Collision: the Sumner-Brooks Affair and the Struggle for Male Identity in
Antebellum America”
Melissa Farah (University of Alabama, Huntsville)
“What It Meant to Be a Soldier in the 21st Ohio: Examining Language, Food
Deprivation, and Masculinity in the Diary of Samuel A. Linton”
Leslie Stratyner (Mississippi University for Women)
“Lost ‘Cause’: Vengeance, Justice, and the Legacy of the Civil War in Portis’s True Grit”
Joseph M. Thompson (University of Mississippi)
“The Color of Civil War Memory: Exploring the Legacy of Slavery in Civil War Reenacting and Heritage Tourism”
B. Southern Journalism, Past to Present (Goodwyn Hall 114)
Chair: Janice Wood (Auburn University Montgomery)
Michael Fuhlhage (Auburn University)
“A Tale of Two Hostages: E. A. Pollard, A. D. Richardson, and the Media Construction
of Civil War Prisons”
Scott A. Merriman (Troy University)
“Not Charlie Brown: Examining Cartoons in the World War I Era”
John Carvalho and Michael Milford (Auburn University)
“When the Game Changed: Newspaper Coverage of the 1926 Rose Bowl”
Beth Garfrerick (University of North Alabama)
“The Small-Town Southern Newspaper: As in Politics, Everything is Local”
C. Crossing Boundaries: Identity, Transformation, and Revision in the American
South (Goodwyn Hall 112)
Chair: Paul Mahaffey (University of Montevallo)
Paul Mahaffey (University of Montevallo)
“‘Back During Slavery When the World Made Sense’: Ishmael Reed’s Flight to Canada,
Aaron McGruder’s The Story of Catcher Freeman and the Revision of Southern History”
Rebeca Cordero Sánchez (Universidad Complutense de Madrid)
“A Southerner into the World: Zelda Fitzgerald on Stage”
Nichole Peacock (University of Montevallo)
“Artist and Avatars: An Examination of the Artist Figure as Manifest in William
Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury and Absalom, Absalom!”
Todd Gray (McNeese State University)
“Barry Hannah's The Tennis Handsome: A Postmodern Search for Masculinity through
Sport”
D. Photographers on Imaging the South (Goodwyn Hall 110)
Chair: Keri Watson (Auburn University Montgomery)
Raymond Smith (New Haven, CT)
“Cecil, Alabama, on the Road to Montgomery, 1974”
Chuck Hemard (Auburn University)
“Flat Top Crowns: Remnant Old-Growth Longleaf in the American South”
Ansley Simmons (Florida State University)
“A Good Place to be From: Images of the Rural South”
Will Fenn (Auburn University Montgomery)
“(Why) You Are Here: Picturing Tallassee”
Break (4:15 p.m.-4:30 p.m.)
Keynote Speaker (4:30 p.m.-5:30 p.m.)
James C. Cobb (University of Georgia)
“Southern Identity and Global Reality”
Goodwyn Hall 109
5:30 p.m.-6:30 p.m.
Reception (provided to registrants and invited guests)
Goodwyn Hall Lobby
Saturday, February 9
8 a.m.-9 a.m.
Registration and Light Breakfast
Goodwyn Hall Lobby
SESSION 3 (9:00 a.m.-10:30 a.m.)
A. Race and War through the Lens of Southern-Style Christianity (Goodwyn Hall
110)
Chair: William R. Glass (University of Warsaw)
Samantha Futrell (Liberty University)
“Compatible Christianity: Understanding George Whitefield, Slavery, and Hegemony in
Colonial South Carolina, 1738-1747”
Christopher M. Peters (University of Alabama)
“From Frontier Revivalism to Institutionalized Evangelism: The Baptist Ministry of
James H. DeVotie”
John Laaman (Auburn University)
“For God or Country: The Experience of the Church of God in the Great War”
William R. Glass (University of Warsaw)
“Southern Fundamentalism and British Evangelicalism: Southerners in London’s Pulpits
during World War I”
B. Southern Living (Goodwyn Hall 111)
Chair: Silvia Giagnoni (Auburn University Montgomery)
Burt Buchanan (Auburn University Montgomery)
“Hee Haw: America was Pickin’ and Grinnin’ in the Kornfield”
Janice Wood (Auburn University Montgomery)
“John S. Thrasher: Journalistic Revolutionary and Reformer”
Mike Winkelman (Auburn University Montgomery)
“Lillian Hellman: Creation of a Heroine”
C. Space and the Built Environment (Goodwyn Hall 112)
Chair: Willie Thompson (Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum)
Michael Steinberg (University of Alabama)
“Audubon’s South: Landscape Reflections and Environmental Change”
Michael W. Panhorst (Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts)
“Vicksburg National Military Park: An Oasis in the ‘Sahara of the Beaux Arts’”
Willie Thompson (Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald Museum)
“The Fitzgerald Museum and the Southern Literary Trail”
Break (10-30 a.m.-10:45 a.m.)
SESSION 4 (10:45 a.m- 12:15 p.m.)
A. The Quest for Gender and Racial Equality in Southern Schools (Goodwyn Hall
110)
Chair: Charles H. Wilson III (North Georgia College and State University)
Charles H. Wilson III (North Georgia College and State University)
“Smoking, ‘Night Riding’, and other Serious Offenses: Negotiating the Evolution of
Rules and Discipline at a Southern Women’s College from 1878-2012”
Kristal L. Enter (University of Cambridge)
“‘We’re up against the wall, and we don’t have anywhere to go’: The Black Student
Movement and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill”
Logan B. Edwards (Florida State University)
“The Southern Masquerade: Exposing the History of Rural Private Academies”
B. Shaping Boundaries: Re-examining Early American Southern Explorers
(Goodwyn Hall 111)
Chair: John P. Craig (Alabama State University)
Jesseca Cornelson (Alabama State University)
“Exploring Alabama: Accounts from De Soto and Iberville in the Colonial Imagination”
John P. Craig (Alabama State University)
“William Bartram’s Exemplary Natives”
William Harrison Taylor (Alabama State University)
“‘To Hazard the Peace and Union’: David Rice, Presbyterians and Slavery on the
Kentucky Frontier”
C. Changing Southern Landscapes (Goodwyn Hall 112)
Chair: Donald J. Zeigler (Old Dominion University)
Meghan McCollum (Samford University)
“More than Ordinary: Sloss Furnaces and the Evolution of the Industrial Landscape in
Birmingham”
Donald J. Zeigler (Old Dominion University)
“Contemporary Grave-Marking in the Southern Cemetery”
Todd Lindley (Georgia Gwinnett College)
“Salvadorans in the Bible Belt: Ethnic Church Building in Suburbia”
Lunch (12:15 p.m.-1 p.m.)
Lunch (provided to registrants)
Goodwyn Hall Lobby
Keynote Speaker (1 p.m.-2 p.m.)
Pearl A. McHaney (Georgia State University)
“Eudora Welty’s Tyrannous Eye: Nonfiction and Photography”
Goodwyn Hall 109
Break (2:00 p.m-2:15 p.m.)
SESSION 5 (2:15 p.m.-3:45 p.m.)
A. Unusual Aspects of the American South and Beyond (Goodwyn Hall 110)
Chair: Jennifer Jensen Wallach (University of North Texas)
Robert C. Poister (University of Georgia)
“Canines in the Cotton: Dogs in the Antebellum South”
Jennifer Jensen Wallach (University of North Texas)
“African-Americans, Southern Foodways, and Racial Uplift”
Tammy L. Ingram (College of Charleston)
“From Rural Roads to Peacock Alleys: Culture Clashes Along the Dixie Highway”
Ram Alagan and Robert White (Alabama State University)
“Comparative Analysis of Plantation Laborers and Social Struggles in the American
South and the Hill Country of Sri Lanka”
B. Garden, Landscape, and Environment in Southern Drama and Fiction (Goodwyn
Hall 111)
Chair: Robert Klevay (Auburn University Montgomery)
Jared O’Connor (New College of Florida)
“Zora Neale Hurston: Progression, Personification, and Place”
Alan Belsches (Troy University, Dothan)
“When the Campbell’s Soup and Early Times Run Out: A Rejection of the Garden in
Walker Percy’s The Last Gentleman and Love in the Ruins”
Matthew Bastnagel (Purdue University)
“At Home in the Swamp: Masculinity, Domesticity, and the Environment in William
Gilmore Simms’s The Partisan”
C. On Memory and the Instrumental Past (Goodwyn Hall 112)
Chair: Kathryn Floyd (Auburn University)
James Peck (University of Oklahoma)
“Invoking Nat Turner: Thomas Moran’s Slave Hunt, Dismal Swamp, Virginia as
Displaced Memory/Premonition”
Cybèle Gontar (City University of New York)
“Mythos and Memory at Green Leaves of Natchez”
Evie Terrono (Randolph-Macon College)
“Not so Humorous: The Political Cartoons of H. Ben Johnson in Jim Crow Richmond,
VA”
Paper Referees
The AUM Liberal Arts Committee
Kay Colley (Texas Wesleyan University)
John P. Craig (Alabama State University)
Joel Ebarb (Purdue University)
Kathryn Floyd (Auburn University)
Jon Marcoux (Auburn University Montgomery)
Jeffrey Melton (University of Alabama)
Lewie Reece (Anderson University)
Terry Winemiller (Auburn University Montgomery)
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to the following for their work in making AUMLAC possible:
Daryl Morris, Housing and Residence Life
Erica Proveaux, Chartwell’s Catering
Lori Lamberth, AUM Payments and Procurements
AUM Campus Police
Kevin Garner, webmaster
Mark Benson, AUM Department of Fine Arts
Dana Bice, AUM School of Liberal Arts
Paul Earnest, Student Worker
AUM Speaker’s Committee
Office of the Dean, School of Liberal Arts
AUMLAC 2014
Save the date: Friday and Saturday, 7-8 February 2014.
Questions or Comments
Please feel free to contact us at aumlac@aum.edu.