Events

On January 28, USM Gulf Park will kick-off the series by hosting a pop-up art exhibition featuring two women artists from the Mississippi Gulf Coast community: Julia Reyes, a local multimedia artist and co-owner of Almost Circle gallery in Biloxi, and Paulette Dove, local artist and former art teacher at Biloxi High School. Critically, this […]

Two workshops with Jonathan Blanchard  that uses hip hop music to teach students more about history, cultural heritage, and language.

This presentation lays out the facts pertinent to what happened during the four occupations of the city by Federal forces during the Civil War. Speakers Expertise: Grady Howell has worked for the Mississippi Department of Archives and History and has written extensively about Mississippi's Civil War history.

In 2018, the Hancock Performing Arts Center received a grant for a series of lectures entitled, "The Struggle and the Music It Created." The purpose of th eproject was to address race in Mississippi and to discuss the relevance of the music that defined the movement. The majority of the audience attending was students. After […]

The Sunflower County Freedom Project youth drama will present Baltimore, a play by Kirsten Greenridge. Baltimore focuses on a group of college students whose lvies are shaken when someone draws an offensive picture of the wall of their residence hall. The play shines light on issues of equality, racism, community, and the question of who gets to […]

The Sunflower County Freedom Project youth drama will present Baltimore, a play by Kirsten Greenridge. Baltimore focuses on a group of college students whose lvies are shaken when someone draws an offensive picture of the wall of their residence hall. The play shines light on issues of equality, racism, community, and the question of who gets to belong […]

Humanities Teacher Award winner Thomas Kris Lee (Mississippi University for Women) will present his public lecture, "The Elephant in the Room Wants a Cup of Coffee: A Brief How-To on the Power of Visualization." Reception to follow.   Lee's presentation, entitled, "The Elephant in the Room Wants a Cup of Coffee," is a good-humored, engaging talk about the impact […]

Humanities Teacher Award winner Dr. Stephanie Rolph (Millsaps College) will present her public lecture, "I'm Here to Tell You Why Those White Supremacists Matter" (Or "Things I Never Thought My Humanities Training Would Prepare Me to Say in Public") Stephanie Rolph, author of Resisting Equality: The Citizens’ Council, 1954-1989, will reflect on her scholarship as well […]

Humanities Teacher Award winner Dr. Shanna Louise Smith (Jackson State University) will present her public lecture titled, "Violence, Victory, and Voice: Millennials and Social Justice in Angie Thomas’ The Hate U Give." Reception to follow Violence, Voice, & Victory: Millennials and Social Justice in Angie Thomas’ The Hate U Give interrogates how millennials come to […]

Humanities Teacher Award winner Kira Arthurs (Pearl River Community College) will present her public lecture, "Gender Stereotypes: Raising Children in the 21st Century." Reception to follow.  

Humanities Teacher Award winner Ryan Schilling (Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College) will present his public lecture "The Dangers of Informing: The Suppression of Journalism from a Historical and Contemporary Perspective." An independent press is essential to a free and open society.  With this in mind, the presentation will explore the ways that authoritarian regimes have […]

Body and Soul: An American Bridge Rating: All Ages Director: Robert Philipson TRT: 58 min. Sunday February 10 2019, 3 pm Oxford Commons Malco Screen 1 Logline: Out of all the cross-cultural encounters that have resulted in the richness of American popular music, none has been so prominent or so fraught with fraternity and conflict as the […]

Humanities Teacher Award winner Dr. Brad L. Cook (University of Mississippi) will present his public lecture, "Documenting Freedom in Ancient Greece, and a Bronze Inscription in Oxford, MS." Freedom in the ancient Mediterranean could be tenuous. In some parts of the Greek world, you could find people setting up public declarations of the freeing of […]

The Sunflower County Freedom Project youth drama will present Baltimore, a play by Kirsten Greenridge. Baltimore focuses on a group of college students whose lvies are shaken when someone draws an offensive picture of the wall of their residence hall. The play shines light on issues of equality, racism, community, and the question of who gets to belong […]

Humanities Teacher Award winner Dr. John Meadors (Mississippi College) presents his public lecture titled, "On Behaving Honestly When the Crowd is Untruth." Reception to follow.

Humanities Teacher Award winner Renee Moore (Mississippi Delta Community College) presents her public lecture, "The Humanity of Teaching (and Learning) English." Reception to follow. Language study represents the heart of the humanities. Any English classroom, face-to-face or digital, knowingly or unwittingly generates powerful interactions of human emotion and intellect. For over two decades, I have […]

Humanities Teacher Award winner Sandra M. Dembly-Davis (Alcorn State University) will present "Global Perspective on Social Work Practice" Global Social Work Practice with individuals, families, and communities around the world that have been impacted after a disaster requires social workers to have a specific set of skills and knowledge to help these individuals, families and communities face many […]

The Sunflower County Freedom Project youth drama will present Baltimore, a play by Kirsten Greenridge. Baltimore focuses on a group of college students whose lives are shaken when someone draws an offensive picture of the wall of their residence hall. The play shines light on issues of equality, racism, community, and the question of who gets to belong […]

Humanities Teacher Award winner Dr. Alisea McLeod (Rust College) will present her public lecture titled, "Sharp Bargainers: John Eaton, Jr's 63rd VSCT." Reception to follow.

For 75 years, children have been captivated by “Curious George.” Much is known about “George,” but little is know about his creators. The lived of Margret and H.A. Rey are as interesting as the little monkey they created-if not more so. This presentation will examine their lived- telling of their lives in Hamburg, Germany, as […]

Miz Bob (known as Bob Hunter to friends and family) learned to cook from her mother and her grandmother. Her mental catalogue includes over 500 recipes and follows the art of cooking from the slave kitchen to her great-grandmother’s table. Miz Bob began teaching her daughter, Kathy Starr, all 500 recipes at about age 5, […]

Humanities Teacher Award winner Sheila Hailey (Hinds Community College) will present her public lecture, "The Interesting Question that History Can Answer." Reception to follow. "This presentation will focus on  unusual and off-beat questions that students have asked me in my years as a teacher. These questions range from when did we start using forks to […]

"Democratic Faith in Dark Times" will be a meditation on piety, faith, and the transformative potential of self and society. Melvin Rogers grew up in the Bronx and was educated at Amherst College, Cambridge, and Yale University. After holding professorships at University of Virginia in Political Science, Emory University in Philosophy, and the UCLA in […]

Humanities Teacher Award winner Rev. Dr. Jo Baldwin (Mississippi Valley State University) will present her public lecture, "Introductions and the Social Trinity." Reception to follow "Introductions and My Social Trinity" shows how Dr. Baldwin connects with students the first day of class and inspire them to learn the art of maintaining good relationships, doing intentional […]

Humanities Teacher Award winner Jay Wilson (Holmes Community College) will present his public lecture, "Mississippi's Monumental Men: Jefferson Davis and J.Z. George." Reception to follow For the last several years there has been much discussion of many of the public monuments raised early in the last century.  A common refrain from the defenders of these […]

Reenactment of an enslaved African named Abdul-Rahman ibn Ibrahim Sori, of his life as a free African and as an enslaved man in Natchez, MS. Art exhibit and discussion panel.

Diane uses the art of storytelling to uncover folktales from the south, oral history from Mississippi, often paralleling these story motifs with folktales from around the world. Presentation will take place in the Lorena Smith building. Speakers Expertise: Diane Williams is a neo-griot, along the lines of the story­tellers from times gone by when oral […]

Humanities Teacher Award winner Morgan Boothe presents her public lecture, "Coffee Spoons and Cell Phones: Isolation and Loneliness in T.S. Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" Boothe will be discussing Prufrock's lack of social interaction as a means of control. In trying to control his life, he has lost all means of communication, and […]

Humanities Teacher Award winner Kyle Britt (Copiah-Lincoln Community College) will present his public lecture, "History of Wesson and Copiah-Lincoln Community College." Reception to follow. This presentation will be on the history of Wesson, Mississippi and Copiah-Lincoln Community College from mills to modern times. It will examine the boom times of the late 1800’s Mississippi Mills […]

This event will feature three key parts: An activism workshop, panels featuring guest speakers, and a film screening.   3:00-3:35 PM  "Social Justice Writing and Activism in the Arts" featuring Clinnesha D. Sibley 3:40-4:20PM   Speaker Dr. Daphne Chamberlain Freedom Riders Q&A Panel Discussion: "George Raymond: Thirst for Freedom." 4:30-6:00PM Film screening of "Respect Our […]

Humanities Teacher Award winner Phoenix Savage (Tougaloo College) will present her public lecture titled, "Making as a Revolutionary Act: Black women Artist and the Forging of New Societies." Reception to follow. The lecture will look at the lives and works of Edmonia Lewis, Augusta Savage, and Clementine Hunter. Each woman in her own right selected the […]

The University of Southern Mississippi Gulf Park Campus premieres its spring 2019 Cultural Arts Series, "Representing the Experiences of Women, From the English Renaissance to Right Now." On February 25th, Atlanta-based Resurgens Theatre Company returns to the Gulf Park campus to present Rowley and Middleton’s The Changeling, an English Renaissance tragedy of profound contemporary relevance.  

Former Rhode Island Supreme Court Chief Justice Frank Williams will present "Ulysses S. Grant, Reconstruction, and Civil Rights" at the Old Capitol Museum. Williams is the longtime president of the Ulysses S. Grant Association and was instrumental in the creation of the U.S. Grant Presidential Library at Mississippi State University. In 2017, Williams and his […]

With the flexibility to address multiple basin areas (including the Yazoo, Tennessee-Tombigbee, Big Black, Pearl, South Independent Streams, Pascagoula, and Coastal Streams), this presentation can be tailored to the particular interests of the audience. The talk will give a brief introduction on the past and current governance of water resources in the state and the […]

This presentation will give the listener a glimpse of the Mande Culture of West Africa. In the tradition of the Mande, the history and culture is orally preserved in the minds and through the music of the Djeli (oral librarian/mandenka hereditary professional musicians). The establishment of the Mali Empire can be recalled and retold in […]

The 1878 yellow fever epidemic in Mississippi resulted in an expansion of nursing care and the recognition of the importance of nurses in disaster care. Much nursing care was provided by family members, but those victims who did not have the advantage of home care often received nursing care from others. Many of the nurses […]

Annual ecumenical Black History Celebration. 2019 event features Dr. Darius D. Prier of Duquesne University, presenting "Who Got Next: Holding Hostage Hope in the Imagination of Next Generation Leadership."