Welcome, students, to HONR 1110-101, Honors Inquiry. This semester, we will be examining Memphis, City as Text--which means that we will be looking at our hometown with new, analytical eyes. What stories can be gleaned from a visit to Elmwood Cemetery? Stax Museum? Beale Street? We have all grown familiar with these sites around our town--many of us have visited these sites once or many times, but have we taken the time to think about what stories these places have to tell? How do they contribute (or do they) to a general sense of regional identity? In a town that at once retains the pastoral, rural landscapes of Shelby Farms Park, but features 'big city' metropolitan aspects like downtown Memphis--yet meanwhile reigns as the country's premiere distribution center and medical mecca, how does one carve out regional identity?
These are some of the questions we will be engaging this semester. To enrich our investigation, we will be reading from Wanda Rushing's insightful text, Memphis and the Paradox of Place: Globalization in the American South. This text offers a rich history of Memphis with a focus on the paradoxes--the contradictions that exist in that history that often give way to a kind of ambivalence concerning identity. What does it mean to be a "Memphian"?
Also, we will be structuring our lessons around visits to various sites around town. Some of these sites include the Victorian Village, Elmwood Cemetery, Sun Studios, and the National Civil Rights Museum to serve as a virtual classroom away from the classroom. While it is enriching to discuss these places, to describe them and their histories, it is quite another to visit these sites and interact with them in real time. We will meet as a class at these various places, and as we tour and explore them, think about how each contributes to the themes we are discussing: regional identities and their corresponding contradictions.
As part of your coursework, you will begin with a preliminary essay, "Reading Memphis," in which you will visit a site of your choosing on your own. Here you are performing as cultural historian and scholar, acting independently to seek out information about the site you choose. The only exception to your selection of place to investigate is that it cannot be on our list of treks. addition, you will prepare a much more hands-on, sustained, semester-long project that you will present during the Honors Academy Fellows Presentation Day activities in April of this year.
Finally, as Honors class, we will be involved in the many activities arranged by the Honors Academy, including the smArt auction at Burke's Bookstore, the Carter G. Woodson Celebration and African American Read-In, and the Honors Convocation. There are many exciting and rewarding activities ahead of us this semester, so prepare yourself and let's get started!
I want to let all of you know how much I have enjoyed this semester with you. Each of you is very special to me, and I hope that we can keep the communication lines open as time moves forward.
I was especially proud of all of you yesterday as you presented your projects! I joked with Doug Branch that you all had duped us into thinking you were students, because each of you presented so expertly.
Incidentally, the size of the crowd was, I believe, one of the largest we've had in some time. And, as you might expect, I have pictures to share with you! I will share some samples of the event, and there are more if you would like to see them.
And as a final, technical note, you may send along your Power Points, notes, materials to me via my email at jllester@southwest.tn.edu through the Dashboard rather than through PAWS. I will also be receiving your final reflection papers on the day we would ordinarily have our exam--and I will get those back to you as soon as I am able. I have a deadline to get my grades in (May 9th), so if you have questions about specific grades, best to postpone them until after that deadline.
Having that out of the way, here are the photos of the Honors Fellows Presentations on April 27th 2016. As I said, there are more, but I chose these especially because of the composition, the light, the aura that was brought out in the moment, the way each shot captures the personality and individuality of the subject. They were taken and selected with love, and I hope you enjoy them. Goodnight, all.
Chante Dobson
Kara Marr
Alex Barnes
Nyssia Ruston
William Drees
Aly Pyfrom and Brenda Walls
Last but not least: Our fearless leader and Director of the Honors Academy, Doug Branch.
Where has this semester gone? It seems like only yesterday we were introducing ourselves across a long conference table. Time flies!
Of course I am anxious to hear about your visit to the National Civil Rights Museum. I have not been there in some time--well before the renovations--so I am eager to hear about what has changed.
Since I missed out, I thought I'd share with you some photos I took four years ago, when I took my African American Literature class there.
After twenty-some odd years have gone by since the case came to national attention, the murders of the three little boys in West Memphis Arkansas has almost faded into obscurity. But at the time of the murders, I was a young mother, deeply sensitized to the topic of children, and shocked that something so horrifying had happened so close to home. When I first saw the three men accused of the crimes, I remember thinking of Damien Echols as a cocky little wise ass, scoffing at the lawyers, the police officers, the press, and figuring himself far too sophisticated to be concerned with the hillbilly soap opera playing out around him. Since I've gotten older, I look back at those clips of him schlepping into the courtroom with the bad Prince Valiant haircut and wide, bored eyes, and think, "he was just a kid himself."
In the years that ensued, I watched each successive documentary that one filmmaker after another cranked out about the trial and all of its players. "Paradise Lost," then "Paradise Lost: Revelations," then finally, "Paradise Lost: Purgatory." When I thought that was the end of it, another surfaced called "West of Memphis." In the first two documentaries of the original trilogy, Mark Byers, the stepfather of one of the murdered boys, raved and ranted in a forest clearing, bellowing out plans for the demise of all three of the young men accused. His anger certainly matched the viciousness of the attacks on the three children, and illustrated, beyond a doubt, of the "eye-for-an-eye" religious mentality of the community in the little village of West Memphis, AR. Meanwhile, attorneys eager for a career-boosting victory, showboated and swaggered, a man with a mail-order Ph.D. in "Occult Studies" gave testimony based on information presumably gathered from reading sensationalist novels and tabloids in the local checkout aisle. A child with an I.Q. of 75 was berated for hours by police officers who planted confessions in the boy until the boy himself grew too weary resist and confessed to playing a role in a crime he didn't fully understand. His attorney tells the story of Jessie Misskelley pointing to the word "Satan" written on a slip of paper and asking, "What is satin?"
There was no material evidence that linked these teenagers to the murder of Stevie Branch, Michael Moore, and Chris Byers. All they had were rumors, hearsay, and the assumption of guilt for a boy in a black trench coat and a notebook full of symbols representing nothing more than typical, adolescent curiosity in beliefs other than the fundamentalism he'd been inculcated with since birth. Then a smug police detective is at a press conference. When a journalist asks, him, on a "scale of one to ten, how sure are you that you have the right men?" Gitchell stopped jawing his gum long enough to say, '"leven.'"
"The West Memphis Three" L-R: Jessie Misskelly, Damien Echols, and Jason Baldwin
I was embarrassed to be a Memphian. Even though this circus was playing out on the other side of the bridge, I could hear the nation laughing. For the last several decades, the South has been regarded as the cradle of ignorance, and this event, with all its players, had cemented that image in the nation's imagination permanently. Then, Damien Echols is elevated as the sacrificial lamb. Hollywood, the music industry, and every prominent member of left-wing society flocked to Arkansas in support of the "West Memphis Three." However, the center of their focus was always Echols. While they bleated and moaned over the injustice that had been wrought, Jessie and Jason suddenly began to fade into the background. While they denounced the fact that the legal forces at work had made Damien their scapegoat, the real murderer got away--and three little boys were dead.
Yet, while Damien is steadily achieving celebrity status with the help of the Dixie Chicks, Eddie Vedder, Johnny Depp, Hank Rollins and Margaret Cho--and a nonprofit group that rushed to his aid, the murderer is still out there, and three little boys are dead. The very fact of their deaths eclipsed by the efforts to secure the freedom of one young man.
Damien Echols (www.spin.com)
I have since changed my attitude (some) about Echols. I heard him admit that his actions in the courtroom twenty odd years ago were inappropriate, arrogant, and self-annihilating. He's grown into a rather well-spoken, respectable man with a wife and a new life in NYC. I am actually glad--or at least feel some satisfaction and forgiveness for the guy, and I never believed he was guilty of anything other than childish arrogance. Still. Three little boys are dead. Three little boys who would, had they lived, been in their thirties now with families, careers, homes in manicured cul-de-sacs and two-car garages, if it hadn't been for someone evil who walks free to this day.
Hello All! I hope you are enjoying this beautiful spring weather. I know some are suffering with the hay fever and allergy flare-ups that this season ushers in, so I hope everyone can get some relief and take advantage of the sunshine before it gets deathly hot--as Memphis summers tend to do.
From left to right: Jerry Lee ("The Killer") Lewis, Carl Perkins, Elvis Presley, and Johnny Cash. (www.salon.com)
As promised, this post is your opportunity to share a little of what you experienced at Sun Studios on March 25th. If I may start the discussion, I couldn't help but kick myself because I've been working at Union campus, right across the street from Sun Studios, for almost five years. Not once in those five years did I stop in and nose around. I took pictures of the exterior, but...that's not the same.
Mostly I was impressed by the crowd, the energy of our bubbly little tour guide, and the sheer volume of memorabilia that they have there--covering every inch of space, it seems. I was also reminded of my brother, who is now a country session musician (and guitar virtuoso) who, in the eighties, belonged to a band called "The Beat Cowboys." See, back then when most of you were still either very young or not even a glimmer yet, there was an upsurge of popularity in 'rockabilly' music, mostly spearheaded by a little trio called The Stray Cats. They were awesome. Headed by Brian Setzer, they brought back the jumping, jiving, and wailing sounds of the 1950s with an eighties flair. The 'teddy boy' was back in fashion, as were baggy pants and oversized jackets, piled-high hair, and crepe-soled shoes; only, more tattoos this time 'round. Bands emerged like the Del Fuegos, the Del Lords, Beat Rodeo...basically anything with "beat" or "del" in the name took off in those days. Even today there are rockabilly descendants in the Hillbilly Hellcats, The Chop Tops, Jackslacks, Hotrod Lincoln, and countless others.
The Stray Cats (www.metrolyrics.com)
Not to get too far afield, but I think it is important to think about the impact that the Memphis sound--and the rockabilly artists of the 1950s had on Memphis, the nation, and even the globe. Since the eighties saw the comeback of rockabilly (which, incidentally was a portmanteau word for "hillbilly rock," the genre took off in different, sometimes dark, sometimes unheard of directions. Acts like the Cramps and The Meteors spread the sound from the U.S. to Britain and a new substratum was born, "psychobilly." There is also "punkabilly," and its sound--and style has turned up in California and even Mexico, becoming a phenomenon unto itself. Punkabilly and psychobilly both draw from not only the Memphis rockabilly sound of the 1950s, but also from Screamin' Jay Hawkins, and the cheesy science fiction films, horror films, and the dragrace, diner, and bowling alley scenes of that era as well.
A modern day "Rockabilly Chick." (www.thebestofhairstylesandtattoos.com)
If you thought Mexico only had mariachi music, think again: there is a conspicuous and fun retro-fifties rockabilly scene there, as evidenced by estas mujeres bonitas asi:
The clothing styles of that era still retains its popularity among men as well as women, who don the Betty Page hairstyles (jet black with blunt bangs over red, red lips), stacked heels, tight skirts, and now, tattoos. Many celebrities sport the "victory rolls" and "pompadour" hairstyles of the fifties, such as Gwen Stefani, Janelle Monae, and burlesque star Dita Von Teese. If you'd like to sample the generic musical prodigy of the Elvis Rockabilly era, take a listen below to The Meteors' "Psycho for Your Love."
Question: What similarities do you hear between their sound and the samples you heard at Sun? What consistencies do you hear in the music, and the titles of the bands? What attitudes and moods do they convey?
Okay, it's your turn now. Let me hear about some of the things that stood out to you most during our tour of Sun Studios. How did you feel as you stepped into that crowded front room? Was there an infectious sense of Memphis pride? Maybe just a little?
I want to take a moment to apologize for my absence Saturday night at the art auction. Please know that if it hadn't been for a 14-year-old, money-sucking clunker who ran a fever, I would have been there. I missed you all, and I missed seeing Doug and my colleagues. In any event...
We will be visiting Sun Studios next! In keeping with our modification to the schedule, we will tour Sun Studios on Saturday, March 26th, which is why no actual class meeting was scheduled for this Tuesday. In lieu of that, I am asking all of you to please comment to this post with an update on your projects. Let us know how things are going, what discoveries you've made, what roadblocks you've hit, and so on. I know this has been a hectic semester and we all have so many things going on, but I hope you will keep the faith and don't despair if and when you have difficulty. I am always here for you (even when I'm not physically around). If you need to talk with me about your project, just text or call and I am at your service.
I look forward to hearing of your progress, and to seeing you next Saturday.
Hello, All. I hope that all of you are enjoying a relaxing (if rainy and wet) break from classes this week.
I thought I would take a moment to thank you for making this Honors Symposium such a fun and successful one! I am really thrilled with the way the course is going, and so delighted to have the chance to meet and get to know each one of you. Teaching this course this semester has truly been a treat!
I also know that the last thing you want right now is to be hassled about classwork, so I will be gentle. I would really, really love to know what you thought of Elmwood last Saturday. The weather was certainly on our side, as it was a cool, sunny, gorgeous day. I hope you found the trek insightful and interesting--and the grounds at Elmwood as beautiful as I do.
We'll mark the deadline March 15th for you to say something about your experience there. What did you learn? How did you find the place? Was it a bit creepy? A bit beautiful? A bit beauti-creepy? You tell me what your thoughts are!
In the interim, please be reminded that our next venture is the smART auction on the 19th of this month. Doug Branch puts a lot of heart, soul, and energy into this event, and it is our duty to support him. I do expect our class to be there early and help with the set-up--this means unpacking the artwork and setting it on display, and perhaps some readying of the snacks and drinks to be served. The event begins properly at seven p.m., so if I could ask all of you to arrive at six, that would be wonderful. I will be there as well.
And again, if you are an artist who would like to donate some artwork, please let me know ASAP, and I will get those donations to Doug; or, if you know someone artistic with a willingness to share his or her work, please let me know right away. I will see you soon!
