"Dope with Lime‪"‬ LES Center

This episode is a recording of "Celebrating Lillian E. Smith," an event that took place on March 20, 2024, at the Mason-Scharfenstein Museum of Art at Piedmont University.

LES Center director Dr. Matthew Teutsch led a panel discussion on Smith's legacy and importance with Rev. Dr. Benjamin Boswell, Dr. Keri Leigh Merritt, and Dr. Jennifer Morrison. They engaged in a wide-ranging conversation about Smith's work, her pedagogy, and her role within the Civil Rights Movement.

In this episode, we speak with Dr. Karen Cox, Professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She is the author of multiple books, including "Dixie’s Daughters: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate Culture" and "Dreaming of Dixie: How the South Was Created in American Popular Culture." Her current book project explores the Rhythm Club fire, which took the lives of more than 200 African Americans in Natchez, Mississippi, in 1940.

Dr. Cox's work has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, TIME magazine, Publishers Weekly, Smithsonian Magazine, and the Huffington Post.

We speak with her about the United Daughters of the Confederacy, monuments, and her latest project on the Rhythm Club fire.

In this episode, we speak with Dr. Michael Dando, Assistant Professor of Communication, Arts, and Literature at St. Cloud State University. Dando is an award-winning author, artist, educator, and scholar with over twenty years of experience in the classroom. His research and pedagogy explores ways that teachers and students collaborate with communities to create collective, civically engaged democratic opportunities for social justice. We speak about the ways that Lillian Smith's work, specifically her thoughts on pedagogy, correspond to Dando's pedagogical approaches, on the role of art in society, and more.

In this episode, we speak with Ravi Howard, Assistant Professor of English at Florida State University. Howard served on the Lillian E. Smith Center's Board. As well, he is an award winning author, receiving the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence for his 2008 novel "Like Trees, Walking." In 2015, he published "Driving the King." His work has appeared in Salon, The New York Times, and elsewhere. We speak about his time working with the LES center, the importance of literature in helping us understand history, and the role of art in society.

You can learn more about him at ravihowardauthor.com

In this episode, we speak with Dr. Meredith McCarroll, an educator, author, and writing coach. Her work focuses on Appalachia, and her publications include "Un-White: Appalachia, Race, and Film" (UGA Press) and "Appalachian Reckoning: A Region Responds to Hillbilly Elegy" (WVU Press). We speak about how McCarroll had to leave Appalachia to learn about it and Lillian Smith, her journey to activism, and the contentious definitions related to region.

You can visit her on her website https://meredithmccarroll.com/

In this episode, we speak with artist and writer Tommye McClure Scanlin. She taught art for decades at the University of North Georgia, and is a world-renowned weaver. We speak with her about the importance of artist institutions on Northeast Georgia, her connection to the Lillian E. Smith Center, and the ways that the center has influenced her own art.

Scanlin supports the McClure-Scanlin Visual Artist Residency Award, one of the four residency awards offered by the LES Center. If you'd like to donate and support these awards, please visit our website: https://www.piedmont.edu/lillian-e-smith-center/giving/

Or, you can email us at lescenter@piedmont.edu