Berkley Hudson, associate professor emeritus of media history at the Missouri School of Journalism of the University of Missouri, will discuss his book “O. N. Pruitt's Possum Town,” which tells the story of O.N. Pruitt (1891–1967), a community photographer who documented life for four decades in Mississippi’s Lowndes County and its county seat, Columbus.
During the talk, Hudson will examine interrelations of photography, community, race and historical memory.
Columbus native Hudson was photographed by Pruitt, and for more than three decades he has studied and curated Pruitt’s expansive archive, both as a scholar of media and visual journalism, as well as a community member. The book pairs close to 200 of Pruitt’s images along with short essays written by Hudson that explore subjects such as religion and ethnic identity.
This talk is sponsored by the Carolina Seminar on Free Speech.