WEST PLAINS, Mo. – “Survival in the Ozarks” is the theme of the seventh annual Ozarks Studies Symposium set for Sept. 19-21 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, and the Missouri Humanities Council. Admission is free and open to all.
Dr. Craig Albin, professor of English at Missouri State-West Plains and editor of the university’s literary journal, Elder Mountain: A Journal of Ozarks Studies, said this year’s theme was chosen by the symposium committee “because we thought it would inspire varied perspectives not only on cultural endurance and preservation in the Ozarks, but also the ways in which individuals and groups adapt over time.”
The symposium will begin with an opening reception from 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 19, at the home of 37th Judicial Circuit Court Judge David Evans and his wife, Sandy, 1006 Grave Ave. Sponsored by the West Plains Council on the Arts and Trillium Trust, with support from the Missouri Arts Council, the reception will feature KSMU presenter Jennifer Davidson and a history walk through Oak Lawn Cemetery led by local historian Dorotha Reavis.
The symposium’s keynote address will be given at 4 p.m. Friday, Sept. 20, by author Steve Yates, who will read from his latest collection of short stories, Some Kinds of Love: Stories, published in April by the University of Massachusetts Press. Seven of the book’s 12 stories are set in the Missouri Ozarks, and all reveal that sometimes the opposite of love is not hate, but depravity. Through the stories, Yates charts the dark side of love, the ties the bind families, and the sweet complications of human desire.
A graduate of the creative writing program at the University of Arkansas and winner of the Juniper Prize in Fiction, Yates has published numerous short stories in such journals as TriQuarterly, Southwest Review, Turnstile, Western Humanities Review, Laurel Review, Chariton Review, Missouri Review and Valley Voices. His novella, “Sandy and Wayne,” won the inaugural Knickerbocker Prize and will be published in Big Fiction Magazine. His fiction has won two fellowships from the Mississippi Arts Commission and one from the Arkansas Arts Council. In 2010, Moon City Press published his novel, Morkan’s Quarry, portions of which first appeared in Missouri Review, Ontario Review and South Carolina Review. A novella-length excerpt was a finalist for the Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society William Faulkner/Wisdom Award for Best Novella. He is the assistant director/marketing director at University Press of Mississippi in Jackson and lives with his wife, Tammy, in Flowood.
Other presentations on Sept. 20 include:
• “Katherina Camenzind Post: Surviving Prohibition” by Michael Dougan, Jonesboro, Ark., former history professor at Arkansas State University. In this presentation, Dougan will tell the story of Katherina Camenzind Post, who was arrested and sentenced to serve 18 months in a federal prison for pleading guilty to violating the Volstead Act of 1919 after selling two quarts of homemade whiskey. The mother of 16 and wife of Joseph Post, owner of Post Vineyards in Arkansas, later opened a winery after the 18th Amendment was repealed. During prohibition, the family kept their vineyard alive and solvent by legally producing and selling altar wine for use in religious services.
• “Remembering Yonder Mountain: Storytelling as Cultural Survival” by Brian Hardman, associate professor of English at the University of the Ozarks in Clarksville, Ark. In this presentation, Harman will explain the significance of storytelling in and for the Ozarks region and elaborate on how storytelling preserves cultural history and allows for a marginalized culture and region to maintain traditional values and beliefs while still negotiating the broader world.
• “Survival During the War Years: Reading and Discussion of Slant of Light and This Old World” by Steve Wiegenstein, president of the Missouri Writers’ Guild and associate dean for academic affairs at Columbia College, Columbia, Mo. Wiegenstein will discuss his debut novel, Slant of Light, which tells the story of a fictional group of utopian colonists who settle in the Missouri Ozarks in the 1850s, and its forthcoming sequel, This Old World.
• “Musical Instrument Making in the Ozarks” panel discussion moderated by Dr. Ed McKinney, professor of history at Missouri State-West Plains, and featuring area residents Cecil Carroll, Bryan Spence, Marge Slayton, Jessica Collins and Dean VonAllmen. Each panel member, who makes their own instruments, will discuss why they do it and describe some of the problems they encounter in the process, including sources of good, quality wood, adhesives used, and what they do to enhance sales.
• “Brief Discussion of the Ozarks Association” by Dr. Brooks Blevins, the Noel Boyd Professor of Ozarks Studies at Missouri State University in Springfield. A native of Izard County, Ark., Blevins is the author of five books, including Hill Folks: A History of Arkansas Ozarkers and Their Image (UNC Press, 2002) and Arkansas/Arkansaw: How Bear Hunters, Hillbillies, and Good Ol’ Boys Defined a State (University of Arkansas Press, 2009). His most recent book, Ghost of the Ozarks: Murder and Memory in the Upland South (University of Illinois Press, 2012), received the 2013 John G. Ragsdale Book Award by the Arkansas Historical Association.
• “Survival of Memory in Jewish Springfield” by Mara Cohen Ioannides, senior instructor of English at Missouri State University in Springfield. In this presentation, Ioannides will examine not only the differences between the Jewish community of Springfield’s memory versus the available historical documents, but also to see how immigration to and emigration from this community affects the communal memory.
• “Preserving the Ozarks Folk Heritage in Arkansas: The W.K. McNeil Collection” by Jeffrey Lewellen, archivist at the Arkansas History Commission in Little Rock and expert in Arkansas’ various musical genres. Lewellen will discuss the commission’s recent receipt of the collection of Bill McNeil, folklorist at the Ozark Folk Center in Mtn. View, Ark.
• “Resilience of the Russellites: Religious Repression in the Rural Ozarks 1918-1943” by Dr. Steven Smith, professor of communication at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. In his presentation, Smith will examine more than a dozen instances of legal and extra-legal repression of Jehovah’s Witnesses in the Arkansas Ozarks during a 25-year period and show how this religious sect was repressed by the dominant community, which demonstrated that it valued conformity over the free exercise of religion.
Presentations scheduled for Sept. 21 include:
• “Women Pentecostal Preachers and Two Ozarks Rock Masonry Churches Built for Them” by Barbara Williams, artist and per course art instructor at Missouri State-West Plains. In her presentation, Williams will examine women’s involvement in the Pentecostal movement, compared to men’s and women’s involvement in other Christian denominations, as well as discuss the particular ministries of Zella Green and Islet Oaks and the rock churches built for them in Thayer and Burnham, respectively, by their families. She also will discuss Pentecostal preacher Rosa Hatfield of Mammoth Spring, Ark., who died earlier this year at age 101.
• “L.L. Broadfoot: Ozark Visionary Oral Historian” by Alex Primm, former instructor of international relations at East Central College in Rolla and founding curator of the Ozark Agriculture Museum at Meramec Spring Park near St. James. In addition to teaching, the Vietnam veteran has been a community organizer, newspaper reporter and regional planning commission bureaucrat. In addition to a wide variety of articles, he has published two small books, Short Time, about the Vietnam War, and Hay Journal, about life on an Ozark bottomland farm. He has carried out oral history projects for a variety of public and private clients during much of the last 30 years.
• “The May 2009 Derecho” by Denise Henderson-Vaughn, former award-winning reporter at the West Plains Daily Quill. Vaughn will discuss the derecho’s impact on Ozark forests and its forest industry, focusing on the resulting flood of timber products into the market at a time when they were not in demand and how the industry adapted.
• “Double, Double, Toil and Trouble: Hill Folks – A Resourceful People” by Kim McCully-Mobley, a self-described cowgirl/historian/storyteller from Barry County, Mo., and longtime member of the Ozarks Writers’ Colony. Mobley will take a look at home remedies, which have their roots in science, and the recent trend to find clean, non-toxic items to clean, cure and help families save money and be efficient and effective at the same time.
• “Ozark Moonshiners and Government Authorities: A Look at a Deadly Raid in the Mountains of Pope County, Arkansas, 1897” by J. Blake Perkins, adjunct professor at Williams Baptist College in Walnut Ridge, Ark. In his presentation, Perkins will probe beneath the stereotypes and myths surrounding mountain moonshiners and their interactions with and attitudes toward government authority.
• “Readings” by Dr. Phillip Howerton, associate professor of English at Missouri State-West Plains. Howerton will read, with brief commentary, a selection of his poems from his work in progress, Bloodroot. The poems engage numerous aspects of the theme of survival in the Ozarks, such as urban sprawl, inflated farmland prices, the demise of the small and independent farmer, the inability of outsiders to fully understand native culture, the loss of respect for manual labor, the loss of connection to folkways and traditions, and the diminished sense of place.
• “Village Herbalists of the Ozarks: The Golden Light Herbal Study Group as a Model for Community-Integrated Health Care” by Sasha Daucus, master herbalist and energy healer and owner of the Golden Light Center. Daucus will discuss the herbal study group she helped establish in 1994 to help guide students in applying herbal healing in their own lives, as well as to create a structure in which they could exchange knowledge and support. She will give an overview of her personal experiences in teaching and some educational options being considered by Trillium Trust for future development.
• “Of Parents and Parenting: Family Creation and Survival in the Ozarks of the Progressive Era” by Charles Baclawski, a Ph.D. candidate in heritage studies at Arkansas State University in Jonesboro. His presentation will provide insights into the establishment and maintenance of the family unit in the Ozark and Arkansas River Valley during the late 1800s and early 1900s.
• “30,000 Year View of Marginality in the Ozarks: From the Pleistocene to the Depression” by Lou Wehmer, Willow Springs community historian and archivist. Wehmer, who specializes in Missouri’s Civil War history, will give a fast glimpse at who and how people survived the environmental, social and economic changes of the region.
For more information about the symposium, visit ozarksymposium.wp.missouristate.edu.