Dr. Deborah H. Barnes, associate professor in the Department of English and modern foreign languages,
presents the culminating talk of a three-part series: Murder, Mayhem and Lynching: Constructing, Race, Class and Gender in America. The last of the three-part series remains to be presented:
Written in Blood: Discourses in Lynching
Tuesday, March 31, 2015 at 6:00 p.m.
Gallery1 at One University Place
1100 John R. Lynch Street, Jackson, MS 39203
The first lecture challenged popular narratives about lynching. Why have these narratives crowded out the historical evidence and record in the public mind? Using the study of American lynching as a launching pad, the lecture drew connections between epistemology, problem-based learning and contemporary curricular transformation. The second lecture focused on the ways that African-American agency as evidenced by African-American lynch mobs undermines popular narratives from multiple perspectives about the Jim Crow era.
Sparked by passages in Toni Morrison novels depicting lynchings, Dr. Barnes began searching out historical accounts of lynchings. For more than a decade, she has been compiling and analyzing lynching narratives by witnesses and survivors. Dr. Barnes plans to publish them in an edited volume. During the 2013-2014 academic year, she presented a brown bag research talk about the business of spectacle lynching.