Greensboro, NC
W: 336-334-5673
megibson@uncg.edu
Travel Regions: Statewide
Mary Ellis Gibson received her Ph.D. in English Language and Literature from the University of Chicago. Director of Women's and Gender Studies and a professor of English at UNC Greensboro, she has served as a Humanities Scholar for the Touring Theater Ensemble of North Carolina. She has edited three books of short stories by women and is also the author of books on Robert Browning and Ezra Pound.
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Southern Writing as Historical Preservation?
Reflections on Landscape, Tourism, and Culture
How do southern writers help us reflect on the way we see and understand our surroundings? Tremendous changes in the southern landscape in recent years--urbanization, the growth of tourism, and changes in agriculture--have created new surroundings that shape our daily lives. Yet, it is sometimes difficult to see what surrounds us. We may or may not want to remember how things once were. Dr. Gibson focuses on the fiction of Josephine Humphreys, essays of Alice Walker, and poems by North Carolina poets to examine what is preserved, what is lost, and what is worth seeing in the contemporary South.
Still Cookin': Food and Memory in Southern Literature
Some people say southern culture won't disappear until southern food is unrecognizable
as distinct from that of other regions. Some say southern cooking
won't disappear until we quit talking about it. From Mary Randolph's
Virginia Housewife, written in 1824, to the twentieth century,
Southerners have written, argued, and reminisced about food. Dr.
Gibson traces the history of southern foodtalk in cookbooks and
in fiction asking why Southerners are so obsessed with eating together
and why they find it even more important to remember and talk about
the meals they've shared.
Requirements for Program: lectern, microphone
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