In 1852, a young woman in Macon, Mississippi wrote in her diary, “Had the blues. Bought me a dress.” Surveying Mississippi history since the 1830s the speaker will explore different experiences of shopping at general stores, through cotton factors, at plantation and lumber mill commissaries, at department stores and “Super Stores,” and at antique and secondhand stores, to ask if, how, and for whom shopping might have relieved the blues–or caused them.
Speakers Expertise:
Dr. Ted Ownby has had a joint appointment in Southern Studies and History since 1988. In history, he teaches courses in southern history since 1900, southern religious history, Mississippi history, and graduate courses in a range of topics. In Southern Studies, he has taught undergraduate survey and seminar courses, graduate courses, and special topics courses such as “Southern Autobiography” and “Peace in Southern Culture.”
Ownby has written three books,
Subduing Satan: Religion, Recreation, and Manhood in the Rural South, 1865–1920,
American Dreams in Mississippi: Consumers, Poverty, and Culture, 1830–1998, and
Hurtin’ Words: Debating Family Problems in the Twentieth Century South. With Nancy Bercaw, he coedited the
Gender volume of the
New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture and with Charles Reagan Wilson, he coedited the recently released
Mississippi Encyclopedia. With John T. Edge and Elizabeth Engelhardt, he coedited
The Larder. His specialties include gender, religion, family life, consumers, and the twentieth-century South.