Project MUSE®: Mississippi Quarterly - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/753
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Mississippi Quarterly.daily12026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 63 (2010) through current issueLatest Articles: Mississippi QuarterlyTWOProject MUSE®Mississippi Quarterly2689-517X0026-637XLatest articles in Mississippi Quarterly. Feed provided by Project MUSE®New Directions in Southern Studies: A Special Issue by Emerging Scholars
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985094
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This special issue, a collaboration between the 2022–2024 and 2024–2026 Emerging Scholars' Organization (ESO) Executive Councils and Mississippi Quarterly (MQ), begins with a call for action for the field of southern studies to elevate its most vulnerable, institutionally underrepresented voices.1 To this end, the special issue editors2 only included the work of emerging scholars in this issue. One goal for this issue, as reinforced by the outro bibliography that closes it, is to publish and cite the work of those who are undercited or overshadowed. In doing so, this issue aims to showcase how emerging scholars' interdisciplinary work and unique perspectives are expanding and shaping southern studies.In researching
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/753/image/coversmallNew Directions in Southern Studies: A Special Issue by Emerging Scholars2026-03-13text/htmlen-USNew Directions in Southern Studies: A Special Issue by Emerging Scholars2026-03-132026TWOProject MUSE®825292026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-03-13Ten Years of ESO: An Interview with the Founding Executive Council
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985095
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The Emerging Scholars Organization (ESO) was established in 2014 as an affiliate group of the Society for the Study of Southern Literature (SSSL) by Stephanie Rountree, Zackary Vernon, Kelly Vines, Monica Miller, and Matt Dischinger. Anthony Gottlich and Laura Wilson conducted an interview with the founding members of the ESO Executive Council to reflect on more than a decade of the organization's advocacy and activism. The interview has been edited for clarity.What do you consider as your first entrance into southern studies? Is there a piece of southern studies scholarship or southern literature that pulled you into the field?I've been interested in southern literature since high school, but I think the formative
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/753/image/coversmallTen Years of ESO: An Interview with the Founding Executive Council2026-03-13text/htmlen-USTen Years of ESO: An Interview with the Founding Executive Council2026-03-132026TWOProject MUSE®501322026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-03-13The "Underground City" and Invisible Bodies: Coal Mining and the Black Experience in Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing and Robert Armstead's Black Days, Black Dust
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985096
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But I was in strange territory now and someone, for some reason, had removed the manhole cover and I felt myself plunge down, down; a long drop that ended upon a load of coal that sent up a cloud of dust, and I lay in the black dark upon the black coal no longer running, hiding or concerned, hearing the shifting of the coal.In his descent, the titular character in ralph ellison's invisible man (1952) plummets from the streets of Harlem to an "underground city" beneath the pavement. Upon falling onto a "load of coal," the nameless man begins a portion of his life underneath the city,1 revealing for readers a hidden community of "dispossessed" living beneath the coal-powered streets of Harlem (Ellison 565, 340). This
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/753/image/coversmallThe "Underground City" and Invisible Bodies: Coal Mining and the Black Experience in Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing and Robert Armstead's Black Days, Black Dust2026-03-13text/htmlen-USThe "Underground City" and Invisible Bodies: Coal Mining and the Black Experience in Yaa Gyasi's Homegoing and Robert Armstead's Black Days, Black Dust2026-03-132026TWOProject MUSE®551202026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-03-13"One for You, Two for Me": Mills and Consumption in Southern Literature
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985097
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The mill is an unassuming presence in southern literature—so familiar that it is hardly recognized as a technological system, and so connected to the landscape that the human cost of its operation often goes unnoticed. In the plantation novel, the gristmill or sawmill might appear as an addition to the pastoral appeal, as in Caroline Lee Hentz's The Planter's Northern Bride, which is about a white couple who love each other and believe that they are beloved by those they enslave. Additionally, the steel mill could be the opportunity for an enterprising white man, like Phil Stoneman in Thomas Dixon's The Clansman, to restore his family's economic standing after a devastating war. In these examples, mills contribute
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/753/image/coversmall"One for You, Two for Me": Mills and Consumption in Southern Literature2026-03-13text/htmlen-US"One for You, Two for Me": Mills and Consumption in Southern Literature2026-03-132026TWOProject MUSE®501612026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-03-13"The Charm of Plantation Life": Intertextuality, Plantation Fiction, and the South in Kate Chopin's At Fault
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985098
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In the aftermath of the Civil War and Reconstruction, the American public's interest in the country's southern states grew substantially as Americans grappled with how to reincorporate the region into the Union, what role it would play in the reunited nation, and anxiety over Black people's place in society amid the expansion of their civil rights. Throughout the 1870s and 1880s, the nation's leading periodicals and presses published an unprecedented amount of literature about the American south, reflecting the general public's increased curiosity about the region. In much of this literature, the south became synonymous with the plantation, depicting both places as exotic and pastoral. In her first novel, At Fault
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/753/image/coversmall"The Charm of Plantation Life": Intertextuality, Plantation Fiction, and the South in Kate Chopin's At Fault2026-03-13text/htmlen-US"The Charm of Plantation Life": Intertextuality, Plantation Fiction, and the South in Kate Chopin's At Fault2026-03-132026TWOProject MUSE®473412026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-03-13Mycological Cornbread: Sporing Conjure Throughout Ecological Souths in Jesmyn Ward's Let Us Descend
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985099
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In Jesmyn Ward's novel Let Us Descend (2023), a plantation owner sells Annis, a young Black1 enslaved woman, into a torturous southward journey to the slave pens in New Orleans, Louisiana, at "the bottom of the world" (130). Struggling to survive, Annis leans on her mother's teachings; meanwhile, a mysterious spiritual presence sustains her as well. To use Thadious M. Davis's coinage, throughout the novel Ward creates a particular "southscape" which "acknowledges the connection between society and environment as a way of thinking about how raced human beings are impacted by the shape of the land" (2). Furthermore, Ward's positioning of a Black female protagonist within this cosmological, ecological, and historical
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/753/image/coversmallMycological Cornbread: Sporing Conjure Throughout Ecological Souths in Jesmyn Ward's Let Us Descend2026-03-13text/htmlen-USMycological Cornbread: Sporing Conjure Throughout Ecological Souths in Jesmyn Ward's Let Us Descend2026-03-132026TWOProject MUSE®454092026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-03-13Spatial Geographies of Race and Gender: Alice Walker's The Third Life of Grange Copeland
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985100
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In her first novel, The Third Life of Grange Copeland (1970), Alice Walker constructs a layered portrayal of the US South—one marked by both brutal exploitation and moments of ecological beauty. Walker's southern landscapes function not merely as backdrops but as sites of historical trauma and potential healing. Thadious M. Davis calls this reimagining a "new spatial geography," a framework that "call[s] attention to the South as a social, political, cultural, and economic construct" (Southscapes 339, 2). Viewed through ecofeminist and environmental justice lenses, Walker's spatial reconfiguration highlights how ecological spaces—fields, woods, gardens, and farms—are shaped by, and help shape, African American
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/753/image/coversmallSpatial Geographies of Race and Gender: Alice Walker's The Third Life of Grange Copeland2026-03-13text/htmlen-USSpatial Geographies of Race and Gender: Alice Walker's The Third Life of Grange Copeland2026-03-132026TWOProject MUSE®588072026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-03-13Antouène et Françoése: Parody and Linguistic Representation in Reconstruction-Era New Orleans
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985101
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"Louisiana Creole," "créole louisianais," "kouri-vini," "kréyòl lalawiziyan," or sometimes just "français": the language goes by many names. In all its permutations, the French-derived creole language of Louisiana bears witness to the complicated racial, linguistic, and societal history of the state. As Darryl Barthé notes:
Kouri-Vini, the Louisiana Creole language, had always been known by different names. It was often referred to simply as "Creole," but was also known as "broken French," and by outsiders particularly as "gumbo French" or "patois." Louisiana Creole was also called "Francé Nég," vulgarly translated as "nigger French."
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Linguists Albert Valdman and Thomas A. Klingler have noted that even
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/753/image/coversmallAntouène et Françoése: Parody and Linguistic Representation in Reconstruction-Era New Orleans2026-03-13text/htmlen-USAntouène et Françoése: Parody and Linguistic Representation in Reconstruction-Era New Orleans2026-03-132026TWOProject MUSE®581112026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-03-13Freedom : Rebels in the Darkness and the Archive
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985102
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While academia has seen video games as a legitimate art form for some time, there is a recency bias within the current discourse. For example, a quick glance at the March 2025 issue of Game Studies: The International Journal of Computer Game Research, one of the oldest open-access journals focused on video games, reveals that all articles published in that issue are about games released since 2010. Like films from the silent and early sound eras, important video games might be lost to time and indifference. For those with an interest in the history of this art form, it is concerning that many significant works could easily be forgotten.A case in point is a game for the Commodore Amiga titled Freedom: Rebels in the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/753/image/coversmallFreedom : Rebels in the Darkness and the Archive2026-03-13text/htmlen-USFreedom : Rebels in the Darkness and the Archive2026-03-132026TWOProject MUSE®462382026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-03-13Forced Motherhood, Womanhood, and Livelihood: Witchcraft for Wayward Girls
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985103
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What if the feminist-charged slogan "my body, my choice" had been chanted in St. Augustine, Florida, during the 1970s—by a group of pregnant teenage witches? Grady Hendrix's latest novel, Witchcraft for Wayward Girls, attempts to answer this question not through the typical Southern Gothic cautionary tale, but rather through a feminist narrative. Embedded within the story is a spellbook that symbolically offers a means of survival that provides the girls with a temporary sense of agency within a system that works to strip them of all bodily autonomy. As a symbol for feminist power and autonomy, the spellbook is a guide, teaching the girls how to harness their true power in response to a society that punishes girls
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/753/image/coversmallForced Motherhood, Womanhood, and Livelihood: Witchcraft for Wayward Girls2026-03-13text/htmlen-USForced Motherhood, Womanhood, and Livelihood: Witchcraft for Wayward Girls2026-03-132026TWOProject MUSE®112392026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-03-13Lawn by Giovanni Aloi (review)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985104
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In an era of increasing environmental catastrophe, reenvisioning expanses of grasslands is imperative. The rise of monoculture cultivation—a farming practice of growing a single species—on large and small scales directly impacts biological diversity, and therefore environmental well-being and resilience, especially in vulnerable areas within the US south, a region long devastated and depleted by destructive agricultural practices and plantations. Responding to larger questions about monocultures and "rewilding" (restoring ecosystems by restoring biodiversity) the American landscape, Giovanni Aloi's Lawn examines the various iterations of "lawns" in our culture, highlighting the ecological and epistemological
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/753/image/coversmallLawn by Giovanni Aloi (review)2026-03-13text/htmlen-USLawn by Giovanni Aloi (review)2026-03-132026TWOProject MUSE®80512026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-03-13Citation Matters: An Intentional Bibliography of Emerging Scholarship (2023–2025)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/985105
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In response to the special issue's call for a praxis of ethical and radical citation, we offer this bibliography, which curates emerging scholarship in southern studies from 2023–2025.Like all bibliographies, this one is incomplete. Due to space and time, we have chosen only to include peer-reviewed journal articles, thus omitting book manuscripts—many of which are cited in this issue. The decision about who qualifies as "emerging" was also challenging. Ultimately, our determination of "emerging" status was based on whether an author satisfied at least three of the following conditions at the time of compiling this bibliography: non-tenured or assistant professor position; a PhD graduation date after 2020; one or
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-13T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/753/image/coversmallCitation Matters: An Intentional Bibliography of Emerging Scholarship (2023–2025)2026-03-13text/htmlen-USCitation Matters: An Intentional Bibliography of Emerging Scholarship (2023–2025)2026-03-132026TWOProject MUSE®982992026-05-13T00:00:00-05:002026-03-13