erabadie, Author at Department of History

Author Archive

UM Alumnus Appointed to Civil Rights Advisory Committee

Posted on: February 1st, 2022 by

University of Mississippi alumnus Charles E. Cowan (BA history and political science 10, JD 13)

JANUARY 19, 2022

A shareholder attorney at Wise Carter in Jackson, University of Mississippi alumnus Charles E. Cowen (BA history and political science 10, JD 13) was appointed by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights to a four-year term on Mississippi’s Advisory Committee to the Commission on November 19, 2021.

The Commission maintains the United States Territory Advisory Committees, which comprise statutorily mandated Advisory Committees from each state. Committee members have four-year appointments and offer a broad perspective on civil rights concerns at state and local levels.

Cowan, along with other members of the Advisory Committee, serve as the Commission’s “eyes and ears” on the ground and advise the Commission about civil rights matters in Mississippi.

The United States Commission was established by the Civil Rights Act of 1957. Its mission is to represent and serve the community as an independent, bipartisan fact-finding federal agency. The Commission is charged with advising the President and Congress on civil rights issues and is meant to inform the development of national civil rights policy and enhance enforcement of federal civil rights laws.

Cowan began practicing with Wise Carter in 2014 following the completion of his clerkship with the Honorable E. Grady Jolly on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. His practice focuses on litigation in the areas of business, healthcare, insurance, railroad, and civil rights. Additionally, Cowen’s practice focuses heavily on handling appeals in Mississippi appellate courts as well as the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.

Wise Carter is one of Mississippi’s leading law firms with a legacy of providing legal expertise for over a century. Wise Carter has offices located in Jackson, Hattiesburg, Gulfport, in Mississippi, and recently opened an office in Detroit, Michigan.

Robbie Ethridge

Posted on: July 21st, 2020 by

Biography | Research | Publications | CV

Robbie Ethridge

Professor of Anthropology
Ph.D., University of Georgia
Ethnohistory, Environment, the American South and Southeastern Indians
Leavell Hall 107 | 662-915-7317
rethridg@olemiss.edu

Office Hours
By appointment

Courses

Anth 101 Introduction to Anthropology
Anth 316 Rise & Fall of the Mississippian World
Anth 317 Indians on the Southern Frontier
Anth 319 Environmental History of the South
Anth 330 Environmental Anthropology
Anth 331 American Indians and the Natural World
Anth 333 The Mississippian Shatterzone
Anth 406 Methods in Ethnohistory
Anth 409 Anthropological Theory
Anth 506 Methods in Ethnohistory
Anth 609 Seminar in Research Design & Methodology
Anth 610 The Mississippian Shatterzone
Anth 621 Readings in Anthropology I
Anth 622 Readings in Anthropology II

Biography

I received my Ph.D. from the University of Georgia in 1996 and took a position at the University of Mississippi the following year. My areas of expertise are historical anthropology and environmental anthropology, with an area focus on the Indians of the Southern United States. I have been interested in American Indians for most of my life, but I did not discover anthropology until my freshman undergraduate year. From that moment, I have been devoted to the study of American Indians and other indigenous people, and especially to the study of their colonial experiences. After receiving my B.S. and M.A. in anthropology, I worked as a field archeologist for many years. It was during this time that I began to understand the full importance of interdisciplinary work, and especially the need to combine archaeology, history, and anthropology in researching and writing histories of the American Indians.

Research

My primary area of interest is the ethnohistory of the Southern Indians. In particular, I am interested in the intersections between Native peoples and capitalist economics within the colonial context. In addition to several articles and chapters in books, I have co-edited three collections of essays (see below) and two monographs: a 2003 publication entitled Creek Country: The Creek Indians and Their World, which is a social, environmental, and economic history of the Creek Indians during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and a 2010 publication entitled From Chicaza to Chickasaw: The European Invasion and the Transformation of the Mississippian World, 1540-1715, which is a case study of the Chickasaws during the first 150 years of colonization set within a broad regional framework and the collapse of the pre-contact Mississippian world and the subsequent restructuring of Native life. I am currently engaged in researching more closely the contours of the collapse of the pre-contact Mississippian chiefdoms following the European invasion by working to reconstruct the late Mississippian world and then following each instance of collapse and restructuring across the American South.

I am a founding editor the journal Native South, and I am currently the North American associate editor for the journal Ethnohistory. For submissions to Ethnohistory, please email me at ethnohistory@olemiss.edu.

Selected Publications

The Historical Turn in Southeastern Archaeology

Robbie Ethridge & Eric Bowne, eds., University Press of Florida
2020

From Chicaza to Chickasaw: The European Invasion and the Transformation of the Mississippian World, 1540-1715

University of North Carolina Press
2010 cloth / 2013 paperback
Winner of the 2011 James Mooney Award, Southern Anthropological Society

Mapping the Mississippian Shatter Zone: The Colonial Indian Slave Trade and Regional Instability in the American South

University of Nebraska Press
2009

Light on the Path: The Anthropology and History of the Southeastern Indians

University of Alabama Press
2006

Creek Country: The Creek Indians and Their World

University of North Carolina Press
2003

The Transformation of the Southeastern Indians, 1540-1760

Robbie Ethridge & Charles Hudson, eds., University Press of Mississippi
2002

Robbie Ethridge CV

History Professor’s Online Teaching Wins Award

Posted on: March 24th, 2020 by

Shennette Garrett-Scott uses interactive tools to bring history to life

Shennette Garrett-Scott, an associate professor of history and African American studies at the University of Mississippi, has been honored with the UM Paragon Award for her standout work in the realm of online teaching. Scott’s online course, ‘African American History Since 1865’ was honored for the innovative uses of technology and interactive components used to keep students engaged. Photo by Kevin Bain/Ole Miss Digital Imaging Services

MARCH 23, 2020 BY PAM STARLING

At universities across the country, thousands of faculty members are working overtime to convert their classes to online courses in response to the COVID-10 pandemic. Shennette Garrett-Scott knows firsthand exactly what that process is like; the University of Mississippi history and African American studies professor has been teaching her classes online since last summer.

In fact, she’s adapted so well to the medium that she has an online teaching award to show for her efforts.

Each year, Ole Miss Online, housed in the UM Office of Academic Outreach, recognizes innovation in online teaching through the annual Paragon Award for Excellence in Distance Teaching. Garrett-Scott was chosen for this year’s award because of her uses of technology and interactive ways to keep online students engaged, said April Thompson, UM director of academic outreach.

Online classes tend to lend themselves to a more student-centered approach to learning, Garrett-Scott said.

“Student-centered learning encourages students to conceptualize problems, find solutions and reflect on the process,” she said. “It develops student autonomy and independence, which are the cornerstones of effective critical thinking.”

Last summer, Garrett-Scott taught HST 415: African American History Since 1865 online for the first time. She worked to incorporate a variety of technology and instructional methods into the course to engage different types of learners.

Students learned more about the civil rights era by using the appumentary “The Spies of Mississippi,” developed by the Public Broadcasting Service. An appumentary is a digital application that builds on storytelling presented in books and films to deliver interactive experiences.

“Students could engage, explore and respond to a diverse array of multimedia, such as video, news articles, social media, photos, interactive maps and more through the app,” she said

The appumentary is described as “converting the passive experience of reading a book, or watching a movie into an activity.”

Garrett-Scott’s class stood out among the award committee because of the wide array of learning tools used to enhance student experience, said Mary Lea Moore, assistant director of academic outreach.

“There is no reason history has to be dull,” Moore said. “By bringing in a variety of multimedia aspects into this course, Garrett-Scott enhanced the connection between the student and the material discussed.”

Students in the course participated in a project to investigate further voter suppression tactics that took place in the U.S. during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

“Students examined the voting requirements in their own home state and looked for issues that might exclude people from voting, as well as the past restrictions placed on citizens in their state,” Garrett-Scott explained.

Instead of writing the standard discussion posts online, the class was assigned the task of creating a Pinterest board with this information, as well as sharing information about voting myths and locating the evidence to debunk this misinformation.

“I wanted this to be a more engaging experience for students than just writing a discussion post,” she said. “The goal was to get them to think, research and use their creativity.”

Garrett-Scott says that part of her teaching philosophy includes meeting students where they are to advance them toward diversity, inclusion and social justice.

“As students log in for the first time or look over the syllabus of this class, I imagine the question that flits through most of their minds is ‘What does the past have to do with today?’” she said. “In many ways, students of today are not very different from people in the past. They are more eager to imagine where they are going rather than reflecting on where they have been.

“In our modern society and culture, events that happened last week, let alone a hundred years ago, at best, seem old-fashioned or, at worst, irrelevant and boring. Yet, it is precisely during these moments of change in our present that the past speaks most clearly to us.

“The importance of these moments becomes clearer when students explore intersections of identity and meaning in history.”

In its 10th year, the Paragon Award honors the efforts of online faculty members who exhibit outstanding practice in course design, student engagement and a strong commitment to providing quality education.

“Online course offerings and enrollment at the University of Mississippi have expanded greatly in the past 10 years,” Thompson said. “The one thing that hasn’t changed is the desire to keep improving the online classroom for our students.”

Professor Jessica Wilkerson’s Oral History Work in the Yalobusha Community

Posted on: August 21st, 2019 by

From the North Mississippi Herald, August 22, 2019:

Archives Gains Addition to James Silver Collection

Posted on: December 31st, 2016 by

By Christina Steube | December 21, 2015

The University of Mississippi’s J.D. Williams Library has acquired a unique collection of notes written by author and former UM faculty member James Silver.

Silver began teaching history at the university in 1936 and served as chair of the Department of History from 1946 to 1957. He is perhaps best known for his work on the history of race relations in the state, especially the 1964 publication of Mississippi: The Closed Society. That same year, Silver took a leave of absence from UM and continued to teach at Notre Dame and the University of South Florida.

The collection of notes includes newspaper clippings about race relations as well as handwritten notes, thoughts and underlined sections in the articles relevant to him.

“This gift provides an important glimpse into the research process used by Dr. Silver in conjunction with this seminal work,” said Jennifer Ford, head of Archives and Special Collections and an associate professor. “These notes survive due to the noteworthy efforts of Doris Bain Thompson, and we are deeply indebted to her family for this donation.”

In 1968, Thompson was a teacher working on her master’s degree in American history when she took a course taught by Silver in Innsbruck, Austria. Following a class seminar, Silver discarded his research notes. Thompson gathered and kept what she believed to be 90 pages of research notes for the enlarged edition of Mississippi: The Closed Society, published in 1966.

In a letter to her family while in Austria, Thompson wrote that she was taking a “great course in race relations which I think I have already explained is being taught by James Silver, the author of Mississippi: The Closed Society and Thursday he threw out on the seminar table his research notes on the added 120-page addition that was included in the book. … I picked up all that were left after the others had left since he was leaving them for the janitors to clean up. Must have about 50 or 60 pages on yellow foolscap. Should be great to show a class how a researcher goes about writing such a book.”

Thompson’s daughter, Mary Margaret Hansen, said her mother was a teacher who spent many summers taking courses to gain more knowledge about American history.

Thompson taught American history and English to students at Lago Oil and Transport Co.’s school in Aruba and was also a director of choral music. Hansen said her mother was multitalented and also had an intellectual curiosity that drove her to keep learning.

She added that Thompson was a very visual teacher and likely saw these notes as an opportunity to incorporate an example of original research into her own American history courses.

While looking through family belongings, Hansen came across the notes, and she and her siblings decided to donate them to the university.

“We thought they would be more useful in archives, contributing to the subject matter, than they would be for us to keep them,” Hansen said. “We’re happy the papers are where they may be looked at as a small piece of a larger puzzle.”

This collection is a great asset to faculty, students and researchers studying topics dealing with race relations and Southern history, Ford said.

Professor Douglass Sullivan-González’s New Book

Posted on: January 6th, 2016 by

The Black Christ of Esquipulas: Religion and Identity in Guatemala
University of Nebraska Press, 2016

On the eastern border of Guatemala and Honduras, pilgrims and travelers flock to the Black Christ of Esquipulas, a large statue carved from wood depicting Christ on the cross. The Catholic shrine, built in the late sixteenth century, has become the focal point of admiration and adoration from New Mexico to Panama. Beyond being a site of popular devotion, however, the Black Christ of Esquipulas was also the scene of important debates about citizenship and identity in the Guatemalan nation throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

In The Black Christ of Esquipulas, Douglass Sullivan-González, professor of history and dean of the Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College, explores the multifaceted appeal of this famous shrine, its mysterious changes in color over the centuries, and its deeper significance in the spiritual and political lives of Guatemalans. Reconstructed from letters buried within the restricted Catholic Church archive in Guatemala City, the debates surrounding the shrine reflect the shifting categories of race and ethnicity throughout the course of the country’s political trajectory. This “biography” of the Black Christ of Esquipulas serves as an alternative history of Guatemala and sheds light on some of the most salient themes in Guatemala’s social and political history: state formation, interethnic dynamics, and church-state tensions. Sullivan-González’s study provides a holistic understanding of the relevance of faith and ritual to the social and political history of this influential region.

Zachary Kagan Guthrie

Posted on: September 10th, 2014 by

Associate Professor of History

Office hours: Tuesdays 1-3 pm, or by appointment

Bishop Hall 306
(662) 915-3314 | zkguthri@olemiss.edu

Education
Ph.D, Princeton University

Research Interests
Labor and Development Studies, Modern Mozambique

Zachary Kagan Guthrie is a historian of modern southern Africa, focusing on Mozambique.

He is the author of Bound for Work: Labor, Mobility, and Colonial Rule in Southern Africa (University of Virginia Press), which examines struggles over the mobility of workers in colonial Mozambique. He has also published articles the Journal of Southern African Studies, African Economic History, International Journal of Labor and Working Class History, and International Journal of African Historical Studies. He is currently working on a history of social debates in Mozambique during the 1960s, examining how readers and writers put forth different visions of Mozambique’s future in the pages of Voz Africana, a newspaper published in the city of Beira. Originally from Washington, DC, he earned a BA from Wesleyan University and a PhD from Princeton University before starting at the University of Mississippi in 2014.

Zack Guthrie CV

UM Professor Jarod Roll Discusses Faith, Powers, and Gambling Spirits

Posted on: February 18th, 2014 by

On April 9th at noon in Barnard Observatory, Jarod Roll, associate professor of history, discusses “Working-Class Belief and the Creation of Pentecostalism at the End of the Gilded Age.”

Roll, a historian of modern America, specializes in labor and working-class history, the history of religion, and the history of the South. He is the author of Spirit of Rebellion: Labor and Religion in the New Cotton South (Illinois, 2010), which won the C. L. R. James Award, the Herbert Gutman Prize, and the Missouri History Book Award. Roll is the coauthor, with Erik S. Gellman, of The Gospel of the Working Class: Labor’s Southern Prophets in New Deal America (Illinois, 2011), which won the H. L. Mitchell Award from the Southern Historical Association.

Environmental Film & Lecture Series

Posted on: February 18th, 2014 by

On February 19 at 7PM in the Overby Center Auditorium, acclaimed photographer James Balog‘s award-winning documentary, Chasing Ice, opens the 2014 Environmental Studies Film and Lecture Series. This film was made by tracking glaciers world-wide through three years of time-lapse photography, and provides vivid evidence of global warming.

The second documentary Last Call at the Oasis, about the world water crisis, will screen on March 19 at 7PM in the Overby Center Auditorium. This powerful documentary opens our eyes to the intensifying, world-wide water shortage.

The Earth Day lecture by University of Wisconsin-Madison Rachel Carson Professor of English Rob Nixon examines Slow Violence, Environmental Activism, and the Arts on April 22 at 7PM in the Overby Center Auditorium.

He writes: “Slow violence is a violence that occurs gradually and out of sight, a violence of delayed destruction that is dispersed across time and space, an attritional violence that is typically not viewed as violence at all. How can we create stories and images adequate to the pervasive but elusive environmental violence of delayed effects?” Rob Nixon will link the emergencies of the long term to artistic efforts to infuse such emergencies with dramatic urgency.

Nixon teaches environmental studies, postcolonial studies, creative nonfiction, African literature, world literature, and twentieth century British literature. He contributes regularly to The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Atlantic Monthly.

The films and lecture are free and open to the public.

Sponsored by the Environmental Studies Minor, College of Liberal Arts, Southern Documentary Project,Office of Sustainability, Croft In stitute for International Studies, Sally McDonnell Barksdale Honors College, and the Departments of English and History.

Darren E. Grem

Posted on: June 12th, 2012 by

Associate Professor of History and Southern Studies

Office Hours: By Appointment

Bishop Hall 307
(662) 915-7734 | degrem@olemiss.edu

Education

Ph.D, University of Georgia

Teaching and Research Interests
20th-century United States, southern history and southern studies, culture, capitalism, religion, politics

Darren E. Grem earned his B.A. from Furman University and M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Georgia. He held postdoctoral fellowships at Yale University and Emory University before joining the faculty at the University of Mississippi.

Grem is the author of The Blessings of Business: How Corporations Shaped Conservative Christianity (Oxford University Press, 2016), a book that details how conservative evangelicals strategically used business leaders, organizations, methods, and money to advance their cultural and political aspirations in twentieth-century America. With John Corrigan and Amanda Porterfield, he is co-editor of The Business Turn in American Religious History (Oxford University Press, 2017), a collection of essays that reconsiders the role of business in American religious culture and politics. Also, with Ted Ownby and James G. Thomas, Jr., he is co-editor of Southern Religion, Southern Culture: Essays Honoring Charles Reagan Wilson (University Press of Mississippi, 2018).

Grem’s second long-term book project, Hard Times, U.S.A.: The Great Depression and New Deal in American Memory, is an expansive study of how Americans after World War II remembered and used the Great Depression in popular culture (memorial sites, music, literature, art, film) and in political activism for and against the New Deal state.

In the Department of History and at the Center for the Study of Southern Culture, he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in twentieth-century U.S. history, southern history and southern studies, and modern politics and culture. For more info, go to: www.darrengrem.com.

Author Archive

Biography

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Shennette Garrett-Scott uses interactive tools to bring history to life

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