Editor will talk about The Mississippi Encyclopedia Jan. 23 at State Law Library

Ted Ownby, senior editor of The Mississippi Encyclopedia, will talk about the book on Tuesday, Jan. 23, from 2 to 3 p.m.at the State Law Library in Jackson. The Law Library is on the second floor of the Gartin Justice Building at 450 High Street.

            Ownby is Professor of History and Southern Studies and Director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi.

            The Center for the Study of Southern Culture took on the project in 2003 at the suggestion  of Seetha Srinivasan, then the director of the University Press of Mississippi. The 1,451-page work that includes more than 1,600 entries by more than 700 scholars was  14 years in the making.  Ownby and Charles Reagan Wilson worked as senior editors with associate editors Ann J. Abadie, Odie Lindsey and James G. Thomas Jr.

            The Mississippi Encyclopedia, published in 2017, is the first encyclopedic treatment of the state in 100 years. Promotional material for the book says, “The volume contains entries on every county, every governor, and numerous musicians, writers, artists, and activists. …The Mississippi Encyclopedia also features long essays on agriculture, archaeology, the civil rights movement, the Civil War, drama, education, the environment, ethnicity, fiction, folk life, foodways, geography, industry and industrial workers, law, medicine, music, myths and representations, Native Americans, nonfiction, poetry, politics and government, the press, religion, social and economic history, sports, and visual arts.”