WEST PLAINS, Mo. – “Telling Stories” is the theme of the fourth annual Ozarks Studies Symposium set for Sept. 23-26 at the West Plains Civic Center.
The event celebrates the unique culture of the Ozarks by providing presentations and performances by representatives of the academic world and the public sector that address various aspects of life in the Ozarks. It is being sponsored by the Missouri State University-West Plains academic affairs office and the West Plains Council on the Arts. The event is made possible with generous funding from the Missouri Arts Council, a state agency; the Missouri Humanities Council; and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Admission is free and open to all.
Leigh Adams, assistant professor of English at Missouri State-West Plains and one of the event organizers, said this year’s theme was chosen for several reasons. “First, we knew ‘Journey Stories,’ the Smithsonian/Museum on Main Street exhibit, would be here at the Harlin Museum during this year’s symposium, and we wanted to support that because it connects with what we try to do with the symposium,” she explained. “But we also chose the theme because it also could be interpreted as ‘stories that tell’ – stories the reveal who we are and what we are as a culture. The variety of presentations scheduled reveals this was a good theme for this year’s event.”
The symposium will begin with an opening reception from 5 to 7 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 23, at the Harlin Museum, 505 Worcester St. Sponsored by the West Plains Council on the Arts, the reception will give those attending the opportunity to view the “Journey Stories” exhibit. Beginning at 7, area musicians will gather for a picking circle and jam session at the museum.
The keynote address will be given at 3:50 p.m. Friday, Sept. 24, by Bonnie Stepenoff, professor of history at Southeast Missouri State University in Cape Girardeau, on the topic “History and Story: Big Spring Autumn.” Stepenoff will discuss how the elements of a good story are the same in history and in fiction, although historical accounts have to be factually true, and how, in writing history, authors often discover truths about themselves, as she did while writing about Depression Era workers at Big Spring in the eastern Missouri Ozarks. Stepenoff is a specialist in American social history, women’s history and labor history, and is the author of five books, including Big Spring Autumn: A Journal (Truman State University Press, 2008).
Several other scheduled presentations may be of particular interest to area residents, Adams said.
They include the following:
• “How Forrestina Campbell Became White River Red” by Susan Young, outreach coordinator at Shiloh Museum of Ozark History in Springdale, Ark., from 10:25 to 11 a.m. Friday, Sept. 24. Forrestina Campbell was born in Louisiana in 1891, grew up in Hannibal, Mo., and spent most of her adult life in northwest Arkansas, where she died in 1973. But who she was depended on who was telling her story, according to Young. Campbell was known as a generous woman with mysterious wealth who took a special interest in stray animals and forgotten people, as well as the carnival worker White River Red who cussed a blue streak, dressed like a man and carried a .45 caliber pistol on her hip. The presentation will explore both the folklore and the facts of her story.
• “Stories Through Pictures: Showing Religious Communities’ Commonalities Through Photographs” by Mara W. Cohen Ioannides, an instructor from the English Department at Missouri State University-Springfield, from 12:20 to 12:55 p.m. Friday, Sept. 24. The presentation will examine the impact of the Seeing Traditions photography exhibition, which was displayed in the Meyer Library on the Springfield campus for three months, on its viewers. The exhibit, part of the Telling Traditions Project funded in part by the Missouri Arts Council Folk Arts Program, is designed to document the legacy and preserve the living traditions of the Ozarks’ Jews. The presentation examines the most commented on images in the exhibition, seen with a PowerPoint presentation; what was said about them; and what exhibition visitors learned about Jews in the Ozarks and themselves. Adams pointed out a companion exhibit can be seen on the civic center mezzanine from Sept. 20 through Oct. 3.
• A panel discussion on “A Century of Change in South-Central Missouri Agriculture” from 2 to 3 p.m. Friday, Sept. 24, that will focus on major transformations in agriculture in this region in the past 100 years and their social and economic effects.
• “The Amazing Story of the 1912 Ozark Dawg Song War, with an Account Ranging from Local Skirmishes to Global Conflict” by Dr. Sue Attalla, associate professor of English/developmental studies at Tulsa Community College, Tulsa, Okla., from 9 to 9:35 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 25. The presentation will take a look at the 1912 hit song “They Gotta Quit Kickin’ My Dawg Aroun’,” a silly ditty recounting the tale of a hillbilly and his houn’ dawg abused by “townies,” that sparked a statewide, national and international debate over its true origins.
•“Legends of Our Hillbilly Selves: Outlaw Mistique in Daniel Woodrell’s Give Us a Kiss by Dr. Craig Albin, professor of English at Missouri State-West Plains, from 9:35 to 10:10 a.m. Saturday, Sept. 25. In this examination of Woodrell’s 1996 “country noir” novel, Albin will examine the way the book’s narrator, Doyle Redmond, negotiates between his public self as a writer and his private self as a member of a clan of Ozarks outlaws. The presentation also will examine how Redmond’s narrative reveals the power and influence of storytelling in outlaw psychology and focus on the way certain family stories, or their interpretation, lead to Redmond’s deterministic sense of fate and his willingness to become that fate.
• “Not So Plain Pictures” by Jan Roddy, associate professor in the Department of Cinema and Photography at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, from 3:30 to 4:05 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 25. Combining short poetic prose pieces and visual images, Roddy will show several short digital cinema/video pieces to weave a sense of people and place relative to the Ozark region. The title derives from a saying of Roddy’s aunts that a particular photograph was “a plain picture,” meaning one could clearly see the people and place in the image.
Three of this year’s presenters, Albin, Roddy and Jane Hoogestraat, professor of English at Missouri State University-Springfield, also have had pieces published in the university’s literary journal Elder Mountain: A Journal of Ozarks Studies, Adams pointed out. The symposium served as inspiration for the journal in that it helps preserve some of the information being presented each year, she explained.
Missouri State-West Plains published the first volume of the journal in spring 2009 and the second volume this past summer. Copies of both will be available for purchase for $10 each at the symposium, as well as at Drago College Store on the Missouri State-West Plains campus, she added.
The symposium will conclude with an “informance” (a performance with contextual commentary) on “The Many Sides of Shape Notes” from 4:30 to 6 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 25. The presentation will encompass various branches of and styles within the tradition of shape-note singing.
For more information about the symposium, including a full schedule of presentations, visit the website, http://ozarksymposium.wp.missouristate.edu/, or search Facebook for “Ozarks Studies Symposium.”