2017 – 2018 Personally Speaking Series

From the role of food in shaping our culture to the role of slaves in the abolition movement and from the influence of Asheville’s Thomas Wolfe to defining genocide today, our 2017-2018 Personally Speaking series led audiences to some unusual and unexpected discussions.

The 2017-2018 Series Included:

Consuming Identity: The Role of Food in Redefining the South (University Press of Mississippi, 2016) by Ashli Quesinberry Stokes

Southerners love to talk food, quickly revealing likes and dislikes, regional preferences, and their own delicious stories. Consuming Identity focuses on the role food plays in building identities — accounting for the messages food sends about who we are, how we see ourselves, and how we see others.

Thomas Wolfe and Lost Children in Southern Literature (University of Tennessee Press, 2016) by Paula Gallant Eckard

First published in 1937, Thomas Wolfe’s The Lost Boy gives name to the “lost children” theme that has permeated much of Southern literature. In Thomas Wolfe and Lost Children in Southern Literature, his novel is a starting point for Eckard to trace thematic connections among contemporary Southern novels.

To Kill A People: Genocide in the Twentieth Century (Oxford University Press, 2016) by John Cox

To Kill a People contributes to two key debates within genocide studies: How to define “genocide” in relation to other mass atrocities, and how to detect and analyze the social, historical and cultural forces that produce genocidal violence.

To Plead Our Own Cause: African Americans in Massachusetts and the Making of the Antislavery Movement (Kent State University Press, 2014) by Christopher Cameron

The antislavery movement entered an important new phase when William Lloyd Garrison began publishing the Liberator in 1831. Cameron explores the significant contributions of African Americans in Massachusetts to both local and nationwide antislavery activity before 1831 and demonstrates that their efforts represent the beginning of organized abolitionist activity in America.