The Spencer B. King, Jr., Center for Southern Studies at Mercer University examines the complex history and culture of the U.S. South.
The Center offers an interdisciplinary undergraduate concentration that studies the region from multiple perspectives including courses in African American studies, English, history, political science, and cultural studies. The program hosts the Lamar Memorial Lecture Series, The Laurie Byington Lectures on the Contemporary South, and The Sidney Lanier Prize for Southern Literature. We also host events, films, and lectures open to the public.
01/29/2026
Center for Southern Studies to award 2026 Thomas Robinson Prize to poet, author Kevin Young MACON, Ga. — Mercer University’s Spencer B. King Jr. Center for Southern Studies will award the 2026 Thomas Robinson Prize for Southern Literature to poet and author Kevin Young. The prize will be…
01/28/2025
Center for Southern Studies to award 2025 Thomas Robinson Prize to award-winning author Jill McCorkle - The Den Mercer University’s Spencer B. King Jr. Center for Southern Studies will award the 2025 Thomas Robinson Prize for Southern Literature to award-winning author Jill McCorkle.
04/21/2024
Doug Thompson is doing important work to document Mercer's history and the legacy of slavery.
A path toward reconciling history and slavery cuts through a cemetery Around the country, colleges and universities are beginning to work through their historical relationships to the institution of slavery. Sometimes the history is well documented, even if ignored. In other cases, the connection between higher learning and slavery requires some detective work.
02/21/2024
Rita Dove will be presented the Thomas Robinson Prize for Southern Literature this Friday at 6:00 pm in the Presidents Dining Room.
WATCH: Rita Dove reads her poem ‘Beside the Golden Door’ In her new series of poems, Rita Dove focuses on a “witness” -- the Statue of Liberty -- who “is looking out over the world that we live in, wondering how we...
02/12/2024
I am thrilled to present the Robinson Prize to Rita Dove.
Center for Southern Studies to award Thomas Robinson Prize to former Poet Laureate Rita Dove MACON — Mercer University’s Spencer B. King Jr. Center for Southern Studies will award the 2024 Thomas Robinson Prize for Southern Literature to former Poet Laureate of the United States Rita Dove.
01/16/2024
Sociologist, scholar Dr. Regina Baker to deliver Byington Lecture on the contemporary South MACON — Mercer University’s Spencer B. King Jr. Center for Southern Studies will welcome Dr. Regina Baker for the sixth Laurie Byington Lecture on the Contemporary South on Jan. 18. Dr.
02/15/2023
Center for Southern Studies to award 2023 Thomas Robinson Prize to Percival Everett Mercer University’s Spencer B. King Jr. Center for Southern Studies will award the 2023 Thomas Robinson Prize for Southern Literature to renowned novelist and storyteller Percival Everett.
09/30/2022
https://den.mercer.edu/dartmouth-professor-dr-melanie-taylor-to-deliver-65th-annual-lamar-lectures/
Dartmouth professor Dr. Melanie Taylor to deliver 65th annual Lamar Lectures Dr. Melanie Benson Taylor MACON – Dr. Melanie Benson Taylor, professor of English and Native American studies at Dartmouth College, will deliver three lectures on the theme “The Weird South” for Mercer University’s 65th annual Lamar Lecture Series, the most prominent lecture series on Southe...
Dom Flemons will give a talk on American music on Thursday, October 6, at 5:00 PM in the University Center. The talk is free and open to the public. He will give a concert that evening at 8:00 pm at Capricorn Studios. The concert requires tickets, which are available here.
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Melanie Benson Taylor will deliver the Lamar Lectures next week in Presidents Dining Room on The Weird South.
Her lectures ask what does it mean to do “Southern Studies” in a distinctly post-modern, post-regional, post-human moment? How do we address the urgent contemporary catastrophes of anthropocenic time and human-instigated climate disaster in these newly leveled landscapes? Put simply, how do we parse the levels of human responsibility – both for apocalypse and for deliverance – in contexts where settler colonial and racial capitalist histories dramatically shape our reality? Reading modern and contemporary literary texts from a variety of racial perspectives, these lectures engage the new materialist, object-oriented ontologies that critique and decenter human agency while uncovering the lasting, determinative, haunting realities of humanity’s detention within the “weird” web of our entwined social, racial, economic, and natural ecologies.
Monday, October 3, at 6:00 pm: The Grave
Tuesday, October 4, at 9:30 am: The Trees
Tuesday, October 4, at 6:00 pm: The Forest
Taylor is Professor of English and Native American studies at Dartmouth College and editor of the journal Native South. The lectures are free and open to the public.
Michał Choiński will give a lecture titled “Who Wrote To Kill a Mockingbird and Go Set a Watchman? - A Stylometric Study” on Monday, September 26, at 6:00 pm in Presidents Dining Room. Choiński is Assistant Professor at the Institute of English Studies at Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland, and Senior Fulbright Fellow at Yale University.