- Friday, March 27, 2015
- 2:00 PM–3:15 PM
- Alumni Board Room (CA 206)
R-E-S-P-E-C-T: Southern Soul Music and Racial Reconciliation
Before the heyday of what we now deem southern soul, Chuck Berry famously told Carl Perkins: “You know Carl, we might be doing as much with our music as our leaders are in Washington to break down the barriers.” In this workshop, we are going to explore the prophetic truth of Berry’s claims as they relate to the surprisingly interracial history of southern soul music from the 1960s. By tracing the formation of Memphis’ Stax records, as well as listening to the work of artists such as Sam Cooke and James Brown, we will see how southern soul music became a rich space of resistance, re-appropriation, reconciliation and redemption.
Presenter Bio:
Mary McCampbell is assistant professor of humanities at Lee University. A native Memphian, she completed a doctorate at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne (UK) where her dissertation focused on the relationship between blank fiction (authors Douglas Coupland, Bret Easton Ellis, Chuck Palahniuk), late capitalist culture, and the religious impulse. She has multiple academic publications on these topics, and is currently working on a book titled “Soft in the Center:” New Irony & Old Sincerity in Contemporary Fiction, Film, and Indie Rock. McCampbell has also written various pieces on film and popular music for Christ and Pop Culture, The Curator, The Other Journal, Relief Journal (where she contributes a monthly post), and Identity Theory. She was the Summer 2014 “Writer in Residence” at L’Abri Fellowship in Greatham, England.
