COLUMBUS, Miss.— Mississippi University for Women’s spring Forum Series presented by the Gordy Honors College will focus on rural/urban issues and the power of place and will include author John T. Edge discussing his book “The Potlikker Papers: A Food History of the Modern South.”
The series begins Thursday, Jan. 18 with Dr. Alison Collis Greene, associate professor of history at Mississippi State, who will explore the ways the Great Depression remade American religion in Memphis and the Delta. Greene is author of “No Depression in Heaven: The Great, Depression the New Deal and the Transformation of Religion in the Delta,” which was awarded the Charles S. Sydnor Award from the Southern Historical Association.
On Thursday, Feb. 1, Dr. Ashley White, assistant professor of health education at The W, will present “Black Bruthas Voices from the Margin: Race, Health, Poetry,
and the Po-Po,” on barriers to the use of health services among men ages 18-34 in Quitman County. White provides poetic voices to the many men she has interviewed and points to sustainable, culturally appropriate programs to increase African American men’s engagement in the healthcare system.
On Thursday, Feb. 15, Cedric Sturdevant will discuss his long-time work with HIV-positive people in Jackson and throughout the state to gain access to the care they 
need and advocate for themselves and others. Currently with The Spot at the Jackson Medical Mall, Sturdevant has also worked with My Brother’s Keeper and was recently the focus of an in-depth New York Times article on the HIV epidemic in Southern states.
The film “Look and See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry” will be screened Thursday, March 1, co-sponsored by High Hope Farm, The Homestead Education Center and the Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science. Filmed in Henry County, Kentucky, Look and See blends gorgeous cinematography with the words of Berry, one of America’s most eloquent voices defending sustainable farming and local economies against industrial agriculture.
In the Nell Peel Wolfe Lecture Thursday, March 22, Edge will discuss “The Potlikker Papers,” which The New Republic says shows “we aren’t just what we eat; we are where that food was grown, how it was cooked, who cooked it, and who all gets to eat it with us.” Director of the Southern Foodways Alliance, Edge is the author or editor of more than a dozen books, a recipient of the James Beard Foundation’s M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Award, a contributing editor at Garden & Gun and a columnist for the Oxford American.
On Thursday, April 5, Dr. Ann Fletchall, visiting assistant professor of geography at The W, will discuss the importance of craft breweries to community and place. Focusing on breweries in Denver and rural Montana and applying this research to the increasing numbers of breweries across the country, she explores how they help build state and local identity and provide visitors with a sense of connection to place and more authentic experience of community.
All presentations are free and open to the community and begin at 6 p.m. in Nissan Auditorium. For more information, contact Dr. Kim Whitehead at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., (662) 241-6850, or visit http://web.muw.edu/honors/forum.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Jan. 18, 2018