MACON—University of Mississippi (UM) Howry Professor of Faulkner Studies Jay Watson, a native of Athens, will lead a series of lectures on the theme “Ruinate Green: Southern Literatures and Environmental Lost Cause-ism” for Mercer University’s 67th annual Lamar Lecture Series, the most prominent lecture series on Southern history and culture in the U.S.
“We are excited to bring Dr. Jay Watson to Mercer’s Macon campus. He brings a remarkable publication career that covers a broad range of subjects regarding literature in the 20th century American South, but he is also a skilled communicator of complex subjects,” said Dr. Doug Thompson, professor of history and director of the Spencer B. King Jr. Center for Southern Studies. “In these lectures, Watson turns his attention to the ecological costs in the region that writers in the American South have been writing about for decades.”
Dr. Watson’s publications include Forensic Fictions: The Lawyer Figure in Faulkner, Reading for the Body: The Recalcitrant Materiality of Southern Fiction and William Faulkner and the Faces of Modernity. His current book project is titled Fossil-Fuel Faulkner: Energy and Modernity in the U.S. South. He has also edited or co-edited 11 published or forthcoming collections. Dr. Watson has been honored with the UM Faculty Achievement Award, the UM Liberal Arts Professor of the Year Award and the UM Humanities Teacher of the Year Award and was a finalist for the Southeastern Conference Professor of the Year Award. From 2009 to 2012 he served as president of the William Faulkner Society, and since 2011 has directed the annual Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha conference at the University of Mississippi.
The Lamar Lectures are presented by Mercer’s Spencer B. King Jr. Center for Southern Studies and will take place Oct. 7 and 8 in the Presidents Dining Room, located inside the University Center on the Macon campus. They are free and open to the public.
Dr. Jay Watson Lamar Lectures 2024 Schedule:
“Framing the Problem: Environmental Lost Cause-ism”
Monday, Oct. 7, 10:10 a.m.-12:10 p.m.
“Holocene Lost Cause-ism: Ecological Generations and Geographies”
Monday, Oct. 7, 6-8 p.m.
“Ruinate: Caribbean Counterscapes”
Tuesday, Oct. 8 from 6-8 p.m.
The Lamar Lecture Series, made possible through a bequest from the late Eugenia Dorothy Blount Lamar, began in 1957 and promotes the permanent preservation of Southern culture, history and literature. Speakers have included nationally and internationally known scholars, such as Cleanth Brooks, James C. Cobb, Trudier Harris, Fred Hobson, Eugene Genovese and Eric Sundquist. The University of Georgia Press publishes the lectures each year.
About the Spencer B. King Jr. Center for Southern Studies
The Spencer B. King Jr. Center for Southern Studies fosters critical discussions about the many meanings of the South. As the only center for Southern studies in the United States dedicated to the education and enrichment of undergraduate students, the Center’s primary purpose is to examine the region’s complex history and culture through courses, conversations and events that are open, honest and accessible. In addition to private gifts from donors, the Center is supported by a National Endowment for the Humanities Challenge Grant.
