Smith named MSU’s Mississippi Humanities Council Teacher of the Year

Contact: Sarah Nicholas

STARKVILLE, Miss.—Pete Smith, an affiliate professor of communication at Mississippi State College, is MSU’s 2023 Mississippi Humanities Council Instructor of the Yr.

Smith will obtain his award on the MHC’s annual ceremony in Jackson on March 24. Roughly 30 awards will likely be given to Mississippians whose work is acknowledged for bringing insights of the humanities to public audiences.

Smith’s tribute features a $400 honorarium and invitation to ship the MSU School of Arts and Sciences annual humanities lecture—free and open to the general public—March 2 at 2 p.m. in Mitchell Memorial Library’s third-floor John Grisham Room.

A college member within the MSU Division of Communication since 2003, Smith’s presentation will spotlight his new guide “Birddogs and Powerful Outdated Broads: Ladies Journalists of Mississippi and a Century of State Politics, Eighteen Eighties–Nineteen Eighties.” Underneath contract with Lexington Books, an imprint of Rowman and Littlefield projected to be printed later this yr, Smith’s guide highlights ladies who lined the Capitol and state political points.

“It’s exhausting to think about the humanities with out pondering of Mississippi—from the music of Muddy Waters and Jimmy Rodgers to the literary work of Anne Moody and Margaret Walker. This state illustrates the ability and great thing about the humanities greater than some other,” Smith stated. “The humanities outline and mirror who we’re as a state and folks; if you wish to find out about Mississippi—our historical past, challenges and accomplishments—look no additional than the humanities work created by its residents.”

Smith, the coordinator of the division’s communication and media research focus, is a recipient of the 2021 inaugural humanities fellowship award from the college’s Institute for the Humanities. He used the fellowship to finish his “Birddogs” manuscript.

Smith’s printed items have examined the journalism careers of Carolyn Bennett Patterson, a local Mississippian with a distinguished 20-year profession as an editor at Nationwide Geographic journal, and Norma Fields, who lined the state Capitol beat for the Tupelo Every day Journal (now the Northeast Mississippi Every day Journal) within the Seventies and ‘80s. He additionally has studied how native and state media framed the political campaigns of Evelyn Gandy, the primary lady to win election to a number of statewide workplaces, together with lieutenant governor.

Smith authored the guide “One thing on My Personal: Gertrude Berg and American Broadcasting 1929-1956” in 2007. He’s a former president of the American Journalism Historians Affiliation and is a contributing editor to Journalism Historical past, the official educational journal of the Historical past Division of the Affiliation of Educators in Journalism and Mass Communication. He’s on the advisory board of the Mississippi Free Press.

Smith holds an MSU undergraduate diploma in communication research, a grasp’s diploma in communication from Auburn College and a Ph.D. in mass communication with an emphasis on mass communication historical past from the College of Southern Mississippi.

At MSU, Smith’s analysis pursuits embody Southern politics, twentieth century broadcasting and print historical past, American cultural myths and social development of gender.

The MHC, funded by Congress by means of the Nationwide Endowment for the Humanities, gives public applications in conventional liberal arts disciplines to serve nonprofit teams in Mississippi and pays tribute yearly to excellent school in conventional humanities fields at every of Mississippi’s establishments of upper studying.

A part of MSU’s School of Arts and Sciences, the MSU Division of Communication is on-line at www.comm.msstate.edu. For extra particulars concerning the School of Arts and Sciences, go to www.cas.msstate.edu. For added details about the annual humanities lecture, name 662-325-2646.

MSU is Mississippi’s main college, accessible on-line at www.msstate.edu.