A public lecture entitled “Mississippi, Past and Present” was delivered by W. Ralph Eubanks, Eudora Welty Professor of Southern Studies at Millsaps College, at the college’s Gertrude C. Ford Academic Center on April 7. Prof. Eubanks discussed how teaching at Millsaps has been a lesson in separating the past from the present as well as seeing connections between Mississippi past and the present.
A reception in the Lewis Art Gallery followed the lecture. The lecture and reception were co-sponsored by the college and the Eudora Welty Foundation.
Hailing from Mount Olive, Mississippi, Eubanks is the author of The House at the End of the Road: The Story of Three Generations of an Interracial Family in the American South (2009) and Ever Is a Long Time: A Journey Into Mississippi’s Dark Past (2003). He has contributed articles to WIRED Magazine, the Washington Post Outlook and Style sections, the Chicago Tribune, Preservation, and National Public Radio.
A graduate of the University of Mississippi (B.A.) and the University of Michigan (M.A., English Language and Literature), he is a recipient of a 2007 Guggenheim Fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and has been a fellow at the New America Foundation. He has served as Director of Publishing at the Library of Congress and as Editor of the Virginia Quarterly Review at the University of Virginia.
Photograph of Ralph Eubanks by Stacey Veath.