Noted Southern Historian Karen L. Cox to Deliver Lecture at Clark

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Jeffrey Starr, GoLocalWorcester Contributor

Acclaimed Southern Historian Karen L. Cox will deliver the 2013 Bland-Lee Lecture at Clark University, titled “Dreaming of Dixie: Northern Origins of the Romanticized South,” at 4 p.m. Wednesday, March 20, in the Higgins Lounge at Dana Commons, 950 Main Street.

The lecture is free and open to the public. The visit is supported by the Chester and Shirley Bland History Fund and is part of the Bland-Lee Lecture Program.

"Cox’s public lecture will consider how outsiders of the region -- advertising agencies, musicians, publishers, radio personalities, writers, and filmmakers -- constructed a nostalgic vision of the Old South that played to contemporary anxieties about modernity," says Amy Richter, Associate Professor and Chair of Clark's History Department.

Dr. Richter adds that this lecture is particularly notable as it will be the first time Professor Cox has presented this material to an audience in the North.

Cox founded the graduate program in Public History at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Her most recent project investigates the 1932 murder of Jane Surget Merrill, a descendant of the planter aristocracy in Natchez, Mississippi, popularly known as the "Goat Castle murder." The story provides a unique opportunity to study the development of race relations in the post-Emancipation South, the influence of Jim Crow on southern justice, and of the Old South in the American imagination of the 1930s.

"Professor Cox is the author of two books and numerous essays and articles on the subject of southern history and culture. In addition, she founded the graduate program in Public History at UNC, Charlotte and currently authors the blog Pop South: Reflections on the South in Popular Culture," notes Richter.

"We are particularly excited to have her share her insights on public history with our students," she adds.

Cox is the author, most recently, of the books “Dreaming of Dixie: How The South Was Created In American Popular Culture” and “Dixie's Daughters: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate Culture.” She received a Ph.D. from the University of Southern Mississippi.

In addition to the afternoon public lecture, Cox will also be speaking to two history classes at Clark

The Chester and Shirley Bland History Fund was established in 1969 in honor of Professor Dwight E. Lee. The lecture series supported by the Blands’ gift brings distinguished historians to Clark University to present their scholarship in a free and open public setting.

For more information about this lecture, call the Clark University History Department, at 508-793-7288 or visit the Clark University website. You can visit Karen L. Cox's blog to learn more about her and her work.