Mississippi as Metaphor
Part 2: The limits of James Silver’s image of Mississippi as “the closed society”
Part 3: The idea of Mississippi as America writ large: did the “Mississippi Plan” become the American way?
Part 4: The role of the scapegoat metaphor of Mississippi as “innocent victim” in segregationist politics
Part 5: How metaphors can function as instruments as well as obstacles for social and political reform
About Joseph Crespino
Joseph Crespino received his PhD in American History from Stanford University in 2002. His research interests focus on the political culture of twentieth-century America, in particular, the US South. Crespino’s first book, In Search of Another Country: Mississippi and the Conservative Counterrevolution (Princeton University Press, 2007), examines segregationist politics in the state generally considered to be the most recalcitrant. He proposes that white Mississippians were key actors in a broad, popular reaction against modern liberalism that reshaped American politics in the closing decades of the twentieth century.
Video of Professor Crespino was taken at “The End of Southern Exceptionalism” conference held at Emory University in March 2006, an event organized by Prof. Crespino of the Emory University History Department and Professor Matt Lassiter of the Department of History at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor.