Southern Studies (SSTU)

SSTU 406:   Southern Lit. & the Oral Trad.  
Sermons, folk tales, ballads, blues, and other oral forms in works of writers such as A.B. Longstreet, Mark Twain, William Faulkner, Richard Wright, Eudora Welty, and Ernest Gaines.  
3 credits  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Lecture  
SSTU 1010:   Intro. to Southern Studies I  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
Defines the Southern region by studying its people, environment, and culture.  
3 credits  
Prerequisites
WRIT 0940 OR 0970 if required.  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Lecture  
SSTU 1030:   S. Mythologies & Popular Cult.  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
This course will explore multiple mythic visions of the American South, using popular writing, advertising, music and music videos, film, and other visual media to identify stereotypes and mythologies and to analyze how those representations have been constructed and circulated.  
3 credits  
Prerequisites
WRIT 0940 OR 0970 if required.  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Lecture  
SSTU 1040:   The South and Race  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
This course examines historical and contemporary dimensions of racial and ethnic relations in the U.S. South. Students will think through their own identities, experiences, and beliefs as they learn how to approach the subject of race and ethnicity from a critical perspective.  
3 credits  
Prerequisites
WRIT 0940 OR 0970 if required.  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Lecture  
SSTU 1050:   Intro. to the South and Food  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
This course will explore Southern culture and identity through the lens of foodways - what people eat (or do not eat), why and how they eat what they eat, and what it means. Studying foodways offers insight into everyday life, ritual, social interactions, and other cultural phenomena.  
3 credits  
Prerequisites
WRIT 0940 OR 0970 if required.  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Lecture  
SSTU 1060:   Intro. to Southern Documentary  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
This course will survey documentary practice in the American South. Students will explore the history of documentary treatments of the region from the late 1800s; the use of various documentary methods, tools, and media; and contemporary efforts to document life in the South.  
3 credits  
Prerequisites
WRIT 0940 OR 0970 if required.  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Lecture  
SSTU 1070:   Intro to Gndr. & Sex in the So  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
This course will explore the history and meanings of Southern masculinities and femininities, manhood and womanhood, that appear in popular culture, media, and historical memory. Students will critically look at the history of these images and the purposes they have served across time and in the present.  
3 credits  
Prerequisites
WRIT 0940 OR 0970 if required.  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Lecture  
SSTU 1080:   Music and Southern Society  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
This course explores the role of music in society in the American South, both in the past and present.  
3 credits  
Prerequisites
WRIT 0940 OR 0970 if required.  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Lecture  
SSTU 1090:   Rights and Southern Activism  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
This course focuses on the South, past and present, through the lens of civil rights, human rights, and forms of activism. Students analyze the region through its activists, understanding the problems they addressed, the language and strategies they used, the opposition they faced, and the connections among activists.  
3 credits  
Prerequisites
WRIT 0940 OR 0970 if required.  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Lecture  
SSTU 1100:   Slavery and the University  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
This course will analyze how university histories intertwine with the history of slavery, will use the University of Mississippi as its primary site of research and inquiry, and will examine the legacy of slavery at this and other universities.  
3 credits  
Prerequisites
WRIT 0940 OR 0970 if required.  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Lecture  
SSTU 1180:   Intry. Top. in Southern Music  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
This course surveys a particular genre of music that will vary depending on instructor. The class will ask students to engage with a wide variety of course materials, including audio recordings, music videos, feature films, documentary footage, and a sampling of literary, folkloristic, and critical/historical texts that demonstrate how music is both shaped by and shapes the context out of which it comes.  
3 credits  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Lecture  
SSTU 3140:   Race, Place, and Space  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
This course explores the significance of race, place, and space to modern identity formation. Through a multiple-disciplinary exploration, we will analyze the influence of social, political, cultural, and historical factors on the development of real and perceived "racialized places and spaces," identities, and experiences in America, with special emphasis on gender and the American South.  
3 credits  
Prerequisites
24 Earned Credits.  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Lecture  
SSTU 3330:   Intro to Documentary Fieldwork  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
This course provides students with not only a broad overview of documentary methods but also an opportunity to create their own documentary work. We will focus on the technical aspects of documentary storytelling through film, photography, and audio, applying each medium to individual students' fieldwork.  
3 credits  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Seminar  
SSTU 3340:   Intro. to Fld. Work Techniques  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
Examination of the theory, practice, and tradition of documentary field research, including the use of photography, film and video, and tape recorders. Special emphasis on documentary study of the American South.  
3 credits  
Prerequisites
24 Earned Credits.  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Lecture  
SSTU 3360:   Gulf South Environ Challenges  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
This seminar introduces students to the social, ecological, economic, and political complexity of solving environmental challenges typical of the Gulf South region. The transdisciplinary course content is achieved through weekly guest speakers and class readings and discussions that provide expert academic and organizational perspectives on environmental problem solving, with an emphasis on sustainable natural resource use, especially water, in environmental, historical, and cultural contexts.  
1 credit  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Seminar  
SSTU 3500:   The South and Sexuality  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
Students will study the ways in which the South has been constructed through depictions of sexuality, especially forms of sexuality deemed marginal, perverse, and dangerous.  
3 credits  
Prerequisites
24 Earned Credits.  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Lecture  
SSTU 3550:   Feeding the South  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
This course examines intersections of food and labor in Southern history and Southern studies. Together, we will study the complex and often opaque processes of food production that precede public and home consumption with a focus on the individuals and communities working to these ends. Applying a food systems approach leads us to look at agriculture, industry, supply chains, retail, and service.  
3 credits  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Seminar  
SSTU 4010:   Southern Studies Seminar  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
An interdisciplinary seminar that examines the South through a close study of social groups, social structures, and social forces.  
3 credits  
Prerequisites
SSTU 1010 and 24 Earned Credits.  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Seminar  
SSTU 4030:   Internship  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
This course provides students a structured format to integrate academic learning with practical experience during or following a supervised internship relevant to Southern studies. May be repeated once for credit, but only 3 credit hours may count toward the Southern studies major or minor.  
3 credits  
Prerequisites
24 Earned Credits.  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Internship  
SSTU 5050:   Foodways and Southern Culture  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
Interdisciplinary study of foodways as part of Southern cultural life.  
3 credits  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Seminar  
SSTU 5060:   Heritage Tourism in the South  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
A multidisciplinary seminar for students who wish to employ theoretical and practical approaches to examining the movements of heritage site tourists within Southern regional spaces. The class gives special attention to issues of power and politics.  
3 credits  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Seminar  
SSTU 5100:   Oral Hist. of S. Soc. Movement  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
This course focuses on the history of American social movements (with an emphasis on the South), oral history methodology, and the uses of oral history interviews in historical research. Throughout the semester, students will create and use in depth, oral history interviews as well as survey scholarship that has effectively used oral history research.  
3 credits  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Seminar  
SSTU 5330:   Fieldwork & Oral History  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
Analysis of fieldwork techniques and examination of the contemporary South through oral history.  
3 credits  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Seminar  
SSTU 5340:   Documentary Photography  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
An exploration of the contemporary South through documentary photography.  
3 credits  
Prerequisites
SSTU 5330.  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Lecture/Lab  
SSTU 5350:   Anthropological Films  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
This course introduces students to visual and virtual anthropology, subfields that bridge the humanities and social sciences to document and analyze social interactions, human behavior, and cultural life through audiovisual arts and media production. Graduate work will emphasize study of the American South.  
3 credits  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Seminar  
SSTU 5360:   The Southern Environment  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
This course examines the ways people have discussed the U.S. Southern environment in scholarship, literature, film, music, art, and other forms of expression.  
3 credits  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Seminar  
SSTU 5370:   Documenting the South in Film  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
This course is an analysis of recent and past documentary films on the South. Students will also produce films.  
3 credits  
Prerequisites
SSTU 5330.  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Seminar  
SSTU 5380:   Advanced Doc. Film/South  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
This course is a one-semester production workshop building on skills learned in S St 537 Documenting the South in Film. Goals include developing advanced documentary practices and completing several assignments intended to illustrate these practices in Southern documentary filmmaking.  
3 credits  
Prerequisites
SSTU 5370.  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Seminar  
SSTU 5390:   Techniques of Doc. Production  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
This advanced-level course surveys different approaches to capturing stories across mediums, with an emphasis on audio and video production. Coursework will give students practical exposure to techniques in lighting, audio recording, lensing, camera movement, and composition, and will be balanced between viewing and discussing nonfiction stylistic choices and hands-on production exercises. Students will produce two major projects, a short audio or video portrait, a  
3 credits  
Prerequisites
SSTU 5330.  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Seminar  
SSTU 5400:   Photographing Place in the US  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
Using the medium of still photography, this course will focus on the relationship between local cultures and the physical world(s) such cultures create. Students will examine the idea of "place," review the visual landscape tradition, consider various examples of "cultural landscape" photography, and discuss student-made photographs, culminating in an exhibit.  
3 credits  
Prerequisites
SSTU 5330.  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Seminar  
SSTU 5440:   Advanced Doc. Photography  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
This course is an advanced survey of documentary photography’s evolution. Topics discussed include media, form, and technological innovations that have informed and forced change in the medium over the historical arc of documentary photography.  
3 credits  
Prerequisites
SSTU 5340 or SSTU 5400.  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Seminar  
SSTU 5460:   Queer Mississippi  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
This interdisciplinary course focuses on Queer Mississippi lives, communities, and movements from a historical and sociological perspective. It trains students how to conduct qualitative research on LGBTQ+ individuals, analyze materials from the Queer Mississippi archive, and execute public-facing scholarship.  
3 credits  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Seminar  
SSTU 5499A:   Special Topics I  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
Interdisciplinary study of specialized topics in Southern culture.  
3 credits  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Seminar  
SSTU 5499B:   Special Topics II  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
Interdisciplinary study of specialized topics in Southern culture. May be repeated.  
3 credits  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Seminar  
SSTU 5499C:   Special Topics III  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
Interdisciplinary study of specialized topics in Southern culture.  
3 credits  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Seminar  
SSTU 5550:   Foodways and Southern Culture  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
Interdisciplinary study of foodways as part of Southern cultural life.  
3 credits  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Seminar  
SSTU 5560:   Heritage Tourism in the South  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
A multidisciplinary seminar for students who wish to employ theoretical and practical approaches to examining the movements of heritage site tourists within Southern regional spaces. The class gives special attention to issues of power and politics.  
3 credits  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Seminar  
SSTU 5600:   Oral Hist. of S. Soc. Movement  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
This course focuses on the history of American social movements (with an emphasis on the South), oral history methodology, and the uses of oral history interviews in historical research. Throughout the semester, students will create and use in depth, oral history interviews as well as survey scholarship that has effectively used oral history research.  
3 credits  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Seminar  
SSTU 5830:   Fieldwork & Oral History  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
Analysis of fieldwork techniques and examination of the contemporary South through oral history.  
3 credits  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Seminar  
SSTU 5840:   Documentary Photography  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
An exploration of the contemporary South through documentary photography.  
3 credits  
Prerequisites
SSTU 5330 or SSTU 5830.  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Lecture/Lab  
SSTU 5850:   Anthropological Films  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
This course introduces students to visual and virtual anthropology, subfields that bridge the humanities and social sciences to document and analyze social interactions, human behavior, and cultural life through audiovisual arts and media production. Graduate work will emphasize study of the American South.  
3 credits  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Seminar  
SSTU 5860:   The Southern Environment  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
This course examines the ways people have discussed the U.S. Southern environment in scholarship, literature, film, music, art, and other forms of expression.  
3 credits  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Seminar  
SSTU 5870:   Documenting the South in Film  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
This course is an analysis of recent and past documentary films on the South. Students will also produce films.  
3 credits  
Prerequisites
SSTU 5330 or SSTU 5830.  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Seminar  
SSTU 5880:   Advanced Doc. Film/South  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
This course is a one-semester production workshop building on skills learned in S St 537 Documenting the South in Film. Goals include developing advanced documentary practices and completing several assignments intended to illustrate these practices in Southern documentary filmmaking.  
3 credits  
Prerequisites
SSTU 5370 or SSTU 5870.  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Seminar  
SSTU 5890:   Techniques of Doc. Production  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
This advanced-level course surveys different approaches to capturing stories across mediums, with an emphasis on audio and video production. Coursework will give students practical exposure to techniques in lighting, audio recording, lensing, camera movement, and composition, and will be balanced between viewing and discussing nonfiction stylistic choices and hands-on production exercises. Students will produce two major projects, a short audio or video portrait, a  
3 credits  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Seminar  
SSTU 5900:   Photographing Place in the US  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
Using the medium of still photography, this course will focus on the relationship between local cultures and the physical world(s) such cultures create. Students will examine the idea of "place," review the visual landscape tradition, consider various examples of "cultural landscape" photography, and discuss student-made photographs, culminating in an exhibit.  
3 credits  
Prerequisites
SSTU 5330 or SSTU 5830.  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Seminar  
SSTU 5940:   Advanced Doc. Photography  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
This course is an advanced survey of documentary photography’s evolution. Topics discussed include media, form, and technological innovations that have informed and forced change in the medium over the historical arc of documentary photography.  
3 credits  
Prerequisites
SSTU 5340 or SSTU 5400 or SSTU 5840 or SSTU 5900.  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Seminar  
SSTU 5960:   Queer Mississippi  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
This interdisciplinary course focuses on Queer Mississippi lives, communities, and movements from a historical and sociological perspective. It trains students how to conduct qualitative research on LGBTQ+ individuals, analyze materials from the Queer Mississippi archive, and execute public-facing scholarship.  
3 credits  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Lecture  
SSTU 5999A:   Special Topics I  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
Interdisciplinary study of specialized topics in Southern culture.  
3 credits  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Seminar  
SSTU 5999B:   Special Topics II  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
Interdisciplinary study of specialized topics in Southern culture. May be repeated.  
3 credits  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Seminar  
SSTU 5999C:   Special Topics III  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
Interdisciplinary study of specialized topics in Southern culture.  
3 credits  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Seminar  
SSTU 6011:   Southern St. Graduate Sem I  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
Multidisciplinary reading and research seminar in Southern studies. Students will read and discuss a common core of readings while pursuing research in their individual areas of interest.  
3 credits  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Seminar  
SSTU 6012:   Southern St. Graduate Sem II  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
Reading, discussion, and research and writing course focused on exploring various perspectives on Southern society, its development and its institutions, social classes, and ethnic and racial groups.  
3 credits  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Seminar  
SSTU 6030:   Internship  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
Supervised research and work at off-campus cultural institutions. A journal relating the fieldwork experiences of the intern is required of every student. Students receiving 9 hours of credit must submit a final research paper and devote full time to the internship; students receiving 6 hours of credit must devote full time to the internship, but no final research paper is required; students receiving 3 hours of credit may undertake a half-time internship. Z grade  
3 - 9 credits  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Internship  
SSTU 6050:   Advanced Individual Study  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
Readings for individual students under the direction of the instructor.  
3 credits  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Independent Study  
SSTU 6100:   MFA Seminar  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
This course is an advanced survey of the innovations and shifts across the historical arc of documentary storytelling. Students examine how those shifts continue to redefine the medium and make room for new genres under the "documentary" umbrella. They will study the formal and theoretical evolutions of documentary through history, as well as an exploration of the media, materials, and technologies that informed those changes.  
3 credits  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Seminar  
SSTU 6110:   Regionalism  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
Concepts of regionalism, with emphasis on the American South.  
3 credits  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Seminar  
SSTU 6120:   Globalization and the US South  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
This course is an analysis of the U.S. South within a global context.  
3 credits  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Seminar  
SSTU 6330:   MFA Fieldwork  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
This class exposes students to multiple forms of fieldwork (video, audio, and printed photography) and to practitioners of various kinds of documentary work, encouraging them to produce by semester’s end a project that utilizes skills in at least one of the approaches to which they have been exposed.  
3 credits  
Prerequisites
SSTU 5330 or SSTU 5830.  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Internship  
SSTU 6380:   MFA Doc. Post-Production  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
This course is designed to move Southern studies M.F.A. students toward the completion of their thesis films. Students will focus on interpreting raw footage and materials gathered over the summer prior to their last year in the M.F.A. with the goal of creating two rough cuts of their films.  
3 credits  
Prerequisites
SSTU 5380 or SSTU 5880.  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Seminar  
SSTU 6989:   Documentary Workshop  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
This class functions as a workshop in which students share documentary works in progress and receive feedback from their cohort and from faculty. Students present ongoing projects at multiple points in the semester and reflect on both the content of their work and the process involved in its production. May be repeated for credit.  
1 credit  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Seminar  
SSTU 6997A:   Thesis  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
No grade  
1 - 12 credits  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Thesis  
SSTU 6997B:   MFA Thesis Hours  
Ctr Study of Southern Culture  
Thesis hours for graduate students enrolled in M.F.A. in documentary expression.  
3 credits  
Potentially offered with the following Instruction Type(s):
Thesis