Lafayette County Research Articles

Fictions of Capture: William Faulkner in an Era of Fugitive Energy

AbstractThis essay examines a decade-long period of William Faulkner’s career (1938–1948) for its insights into the energy unconscious of the modern US South. This period commenced when Faulkner became an ersatz oil speculator on a 320-acre parcel of land he had acquired in Lafayette County, Mississippi. Simply envisioning his new property, which he named Greenfield Farm, as oil-bearing land would have introduced the author to key imaginative and representational problems associated with petroleum extraction, centering on oil’s geological, economic, and legal elusiveness. Faulkner’s oil fictions, however, rarely deal directly with petroleum, instead engaging oil obliquely, through other charismatic subsoil mineral resources like gold and silver and other energy stocks like horses and, more troublingly, enslaved human beings. “Living oil” (in Stephanie LeMenager’s sense) with particular intensity between 1938 and 1948—as author, as partner to prospectors—Faulkner made a distinctive contribution to US petrofiction by mapping an oil imaginary back onto commodity, energy, and racial regimes from his region’s past. That historical focus enabled the author to develop two conceits with particular resonance for his speculative venture at Greenfield Farm and for the US extractive imagination generally: the notion of the fugitive resource and of the challenges attending its capture.Greenfield Farm was an imaginative palimpsest of African American fugitivity and petroleum fugacity . . . where the work of muscle energy and the promise of fossil energy . . . compounded each other’s value along the margin of the soil.

Monitoring water quality through citizen science while teaching STEM undergraduate courses during a global pandemic.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many universities struggle to engage students while implementing a distance-based teaching/learning approach and to provide hands-on activities to students enrolled in STEM classes. Implementing service-focused activities that can be conducted by the students remotely can overcome these struggles. The goals of this study were to 1) implement citizen science activities focused on water quality using three commercially available low-cost test strips (2:1, 5:1, and 16:1) while teaching four undergraduate engineering courses at the University of Mississippi (UM) during a pandemic event, and 2) evaluate the acceptability and validate the results obtained. Eighty-five undergraduate students (citizen scientists) and five research scientists (control group) collected two water samples (with triplicates) after receiving detailed step-by-step written guidelines and video tutorials. One hundred twenty tap water samples were collected from private households across Lafayette County and its surrounding counties and multiple buildings on campus. Five laboratory fortified blank (LBF) samples were implemented to validate the results. While the academic background of the participants did not impact the results (p > 0.05), the results obtained using the different test strips were statistically different (p < 0.05). In fact, results obtained using the 2:1 and the 5:1 test strips were close to the LFBs, while, except for the higher concentration of Total Alkalinity (40 mg/L CaCO3), results obtained using the 16:1 test strips were significantly different than the LFBs. Results (in terms of pH, Nitrate, and Total Chlorine) obtained by the citizen scientists using the 2:1 and 5:1 test strips were consistent with those reported in the annual drinking water quality reports from UM and municipalities included in the investigated region. Overall, this activity was well received by the students. Approximately 75% of them agreed that this hands-on activity was a positive experience while struggling to attend face-to-face classes.

Sex Education Correlating with STI Rates Througout Counties in Florida

This study’s goal was to discover the impact that varying types of high school sex education curriculums had on the rate of which their alumni ages 19-27 in 2018 contracted bacterial sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) throughout counties in Florida. The study was able to establish results that communicated which programs were most effective in preventing the transmission of STDs in comparison to the ones that were least effective. A meta-analysis of the amount of bacterial STD cases in each of four different counties in Florida as well as their corresponding sex education curriculum was used to discover the paper’s outcome. The different curriculums analyzed in this paper include abstinence-only, abstinence-plus, and comprehensive. Abstinence-only based programs teach students that refraining from all sexual activity until marriage is the sole moral way of preventing STD transmission and generally does not go over other methods of contraceptives. Abstinence-Plus programs teach students about methods of contraception and how to prevent STDs, but still preach that remaining abstinent is the correct and moral route to go down. The results showed that Lafayette County and Martin County had the least amount of bacterial STD cases among their alumni ages 19-27 yet used the most strict program (abstinence-only), Orange County had the most amount of bacterial STD cases among their alumni and used the second most strict program(abstinence-plus), and Polk County’s amount of bacterial STD cases fell under Orange County but above Lafayette County and Martin County; however they used the least strict program (comprehensive).

Aquatic Beetles (Coleoptera) of the University of Mississippi Field Station, Lafayette County, Mississippi, USA

Aquatic beetles in the families Dryopidae, Dytiscidae, Elmidae, Gyrinidae, Haliplidae, Helophoridae, Hydraenidae, Hydrochidae, Hydrophilidae, Noteridae, and Scirtidae were collected from the University of Mississippi Field Station (UMFS) in north-central Mississippi during May 2014 through August 2019. Located in the headwaters of the Little Tallahatchie River, UMFS encompasses 318 ha and includes over 200 ponds, springs, wetlands, and streams. We collected from mesocosms, ponds, and streams to survey the aquatic beetles of UMFS. In total, 103,113 beetles representing 132 species in 55 genera and 11 families were collected. We provide new state records for 24 species of Dytiscidae, three of Gyrinidae, three of Haliplidae, two of Hydraenidae, one of Elmidae, one of Helophoridae, one of Hydrophilidae, and one of Noteridae, with comments on the distribution, abundance, habitats, and life history of other species. Singletons represented 9.8% (13) of species collected. These data were used to estimate the total aquatic beetle species richness at UMFS and assess the effectiveness of mesocosm sampling in assessing a site's aquatic beetle richness.

First Report of Tar Spot on Corn (Zea mays) Caused by Phyllachora maydis in Florida, Iowa, Michigan, and Wisconsin

Leaf lesions typical of those reported for tar spot of corn caused by Phyllachora maydis Maubl. were observed in commercial corn hybrids (Zea mays L.). In 2016, symptoms were observed in Jones County, IA, Palm Beach County, FL, Allegan County, MI, and in Green and Iowa counties, WI. In 2017, symptoms were observed again in Allegan County, MI, and in Grant and Lafayette counties, WI. Leaf signs and symptoms included ascomata, often surrounded by a narrow necrotic halo, on both healthy and senescent leaf material. Disease severity and incidence varied by location. Some fields had few infected plants (<1%), with some infected leaves only exhibiting a single ascoma, whereas in 2017 one field in Michigan had up to 90% infected plants with up to 80% disease severity on individual leaves. Morphological characteristics of the pathogen from all examined leaves from all locations were similar and consistent with the description of P. maydis (Parbery 1967). Ascomata, single or grouped with a clypeus, contained numerous paraphyses, with cylindrical asci containing hyaline, ellipsoid, aseptate ascospores 5.5 to 8 × 9.5 to 14 µm (n = 30). DNA was extracted from ascomata aseptically removed from leaves collected in each state. Voucher samples from each state were deposited in the U.S. National Fungus Collections (BPI). The internal transcribed spacer (ITS) regions of the ribosomal RNA gene were sequenced using primer pair ITS1F/ITS4A (Larena et al. 1999) for Iowa and Michigan samples and ITS4/ITS5 for Wisconsin (White et al. 1990). Sequences from Iowa, Michigan, and Wisconsin were identical and showed a 97% sequence homology to GenBank deposit accession KU184459.1, with a 90% query cover. A representative sequence from each state was deposited: Iowa (BPI 910561) GenBank MG881848, Michigan (BPI 910562) GenBank MG881847, and Wisconsin (BPI 910560) GenBank MG881846. Sequences were not obtained from the Florida sample (BPI 910568). Koch’s postulates were not performed given the obligate nature of the pathogen (Muller and Samuels 1984). This report documents the first confirmation of tar spot on corn in Iowa, Michigan, and Wisconsin (three states surrounding Indiana and Illinois, where it was first reported in 2015; Ruhl et al. 2016) and Florida. It has been reported in Central and South America that when coinfection of P. maydis and Monographella maydis occurs there can be significant yield loss. However, M. maydis has not yet been documented within the United States. There may currently be no significant losses in grain production; however, this disease could potentially affect silage corn production for which early dry-down is not desired, and it may increase lodging.

Missouri Spring Freeze Event and Crop Loss Analysis for the Years 1982-2015

A spring freeze is an unexpected freeze event occurring in late spring that can result in severe domestic crop loss. These events coincide with seasonal weather conditions that promote early crop development. As a consequence, early growth is most susceptible to freeze damage. Spring temperature fluctuations pose significant threat to crop yield and growth, when compared to onsistently cold springtime temperatures. In this study, a thirty-four-year span (1982 to 2015) of historical climate, agricultural and crop insurance data for Missouri was analyzed. Risk analysis was performed for each Missouri county to determine statistical relationships between crop loss and springtime warm-cold temperature fluctuations. Statewide, several regions were identified as having an increased susceptibility to freeze events, with Lafayette County emerging as the state’s leading county in agricultural losses due to freeze events. The window for peak freeze damage for Lafayette County was identified as the last week of March through the first week of April. The years 1985, 1996 and 2007 stood apart in the dataset as they correspond to the highest crop damages on record. Each of these years also corresponds to a doubling of severity in the reported crop losses.

Salvage along the Red River: The Red Cox (3LA18) Site and its Place on the Caddo Landscape

The Red Cox (3LA18) site is located in Lafayette County, Arkansas along the Red River. As recounted in his weekly report of April 9, 1975, Dr. Frank Schambach received word that the site was being directly impacted by land leveling machinery. Salvage efforts collected the remains from the floor of a burned Caddo farmstead structure. Remains include ceramic sherds, carbonized corn kernels, acorn nutmeat and nutshells, burned wood fragments, and bits of daub. In this paper, we present the results of a recent analysis of the materials and situate the farmstead within the Red River landscape during a period shortly after Haley (ca. A.D. 1200 - 1400) phase and into the early part of the Belcher (ca. A.D. 1400 - 1700) phase.

William Faulkner, a Soldier of Lafayette County, Mississippi

NOTES AND DOCUMENTS GERALD W. WALTON University of Mississippi, Emeritus William Faulkner, a Soldier of Lafayette County, Mississippi IT IS WELL KNOWN THAT WILLIAM FAULKNER TRIED TO ENLIST IN THE Aviation Section of the Signal Corps of the United States Army and was rejected because of his height and weight. Biographers have agreed that Faulkner, in letters and later in oral accounts, exaggerated his experience and that he was actually a cadet for pilot with the rank of private who never flew solo and of course never saw combat during World War I. Nevertheless, after he returned to Oxford he took pleasure in wearing a British officer’s uniform, with lieutenant pips, RFC wings, and a cap suggesting overseas duty—all of which he ordered and paid for.1 Members of the David Reese Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution “in the spring of 1921 . . . decided to gather in one place accounts of the various forms of activity of Lafayette County in the World War.” It was “Filed as a public record of Lafayette County Mississippi, this the 7th Day of April AD 1926.” The work included “Records of the Soldiers of Lafayette County, Mississippi, Who Served in the World War, 1917-1918 AD, including the men of this County who served with the Young Men’s Christian Association and also some men born in this County who enlisted elsewhere.” Regent Mrs. Calvin Brown and a committee “Verified [the information] by comparison with the records of the War Department on file in the office of the Adjunct General at Jackson, Mississippi.” Members of the county Board of Supervisors “voted financial help to the amount of $100.00 and gave their personal assistance in collecting names of soldiers from the Beats, through sub-committees, mostly women named by them.” The work was “presented in its completed form in this Book, with the hope that it may serve its purpose.” The completed work was “accepted” by the Board of Supervisors “this 3rd day of Feby, 1926, 1 See especially Blotner 1: 205-33; Collins; and Millgate, “William Faulkner, Cadet” and “Faulkner in Toronto: A Further Note.” 522 Gerald W. Walton Fig. 1. Detail of Lafayette County Mississippi in the World War 1917-1918. 1926. Lafayette County Historical and Genealogical Society. Image supplied by the author. 523 William Faulkner, A Soldier of Lafayette County, Mississippi and is ordered by them to be kept in the Office of the Chancery Clerk as a part of the permanent records of the County.” Among the list of “some men born in this County who enlisted elsewhere” is William C. Falkner (Fig. 1). While there is no way of verifying who provided the information on Faulkner, it seems likely that it was Faulkner himself rather than the War Department office in Jackson. If it was indeed Faulkner who provided the information, he did not include the “u” in his surname as he did when he enlisted and while he was in military service for five months; he showed his “Camp” as the Royal Flying Corps, which had actually become the Royal Air Force in April 1918. He did not list any battles or wounds and did not indicate whether he had served abroad. He simply listed a “Weak leg from crash while training”—nothing about “being shot down over Germany and having a steel plate in his head from his war wounds” (Hamblin 25) or flying through the roof of a hanger upside down and intoxicated (Blotner, 224-25, 232)! Works Cited Blotner, Joseph. Faulkner: A Biography. 2 vols. New York: Random House, 1974. Collins, Carvel, “Faulkner’s War Service and His Fiction.” MLA Annual Convention. New York. 28 Dec. 1966. Address. Daughters of the American Revolution; David Reese Chapter (Oxford, MS). Lafayette County Mississippi in the World War 1917-1918. 1926. Lafayette County Historical and Genealogical Society. Hamblin, Robert W. Myself and the World: A Biography of William Faulkner. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2016. Millgate, Michael. “Faulkner in Toronto: A Further Note.” University of Toronto Quarterly 37.2 (1968): 197-202. —. “William Faulkner, Cadet.” University of Toronto Quarterly 35.2 (1966): 117-32. ...

LARRY BROWN: A WRITER'S LIFE

LARRY BROWN: A WRITER'S LIFE. By Jean W. Cash. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2011. xxii + 302 pp. $35.Jean W. Cash's biography is a much-needed and welcome addition to the small but growing collection of serious considerations of the work and life of Larry Brown (1951-2004). Cash has written a thoroughly researched and very readable account that provides an intimate perspective on both the life and the career of an important author who lived a fascinating life. Ultimately, the portrait of Brown that emerges is of a supremely determined man who worked incredibly hard to learn how to write, a real-life example of a successful do-it-yourself author.Cash's book is organized primarily around the major events and publications of Brown's literary career, rather than around incidents in his personal life, with a consequent focus on his professional development. Cash is able to use a lot of Brown's own words through the course of her narrative, a practice that adds a uniquely first-person slant to her biography. In fact, one of the book's major strengths is Cash's ability to organize and interweave materials from a multitude of sources-interviews, letters, essays, and unpublished writings-in a way that lets Brown, his family, and his friends tell the story of the author's life.The first two chapters cover Brown's childhood and early adulthood, revealing plenty of new information that scholars will find useful and fans interesting, including the family's history and its deep roots in Lafayette County, Mississippi. Except for ten years in Memphis (from age three to age thirteen) and two years in the Marines, "Larry Brown lived in Tula or Yocona for virtually all his life" (12). While in Memphis, the family moved frequently, living in a series of rented houses while Brown's father worked only sporadically, the family supported almost entirely by Brown's mother. Throughout the book, in fact, Cash pays tribute to the "strong, ambitious women in Brown's life-his mother, Leona Barlow Brown; and his wife, Mary Annie Coleman Brown" (12). They lived near the library in Memphis, and Leona's love of reading was passed on to her children.Brown's father, Willis Knox Brown, had traumatic experiences in World War II that he would sometimes recount while drinking. Brown expresses deep love and affection for his father but also tells tales of drunkenness, abuse, destruction of property, and arrests, saying, "I'll never be as scared of anything in my life as I was of my daddy" (qtd. on 17). Knox Brown's struggles with alcohol foreshadow his son's own drinking problems, which emerge as a major component of Larry Brown's public image and private life that at times inhibited his ability to write productively.Leaving Knox behind, Leona left Memphis for Tula in 1964 (when Larry was thirteen) after an incident in which Larry's older brother had hitchhiked back to Mississippi, saying he would not live with his father again. The father soon returned to the family but did not stop drinking until a confrontation with his oldest son, who pointed a loaded shotgun at him. Knox stayed sober until his death in 1968 (when Larry was sixteen), and Larry says that, when his father died, "my world pretty much fell apart and changed" (qtd. on 24).While Cash, to her credit, does not try to evade or gloss over Larry Brown's struggles with alcohol, she does not go into much detail about why he left the Marines or about his various jobs throughout the 1970s, or his infidelities and the two instances when he temporarily moved out of the family home. Conversely, she offers a great deal of detail about Brown's apprenticeship, during which he learned to write and struggled to get published. Brown was able to look back with humor and honesty at his early failed novels: "They're just not good enough. I can see now that everybody else was right years ago. See, I just didn't know it myself. That's the process you go through" (qtd. on 49). Brown's friendships and relationships with influential men and women and mentors during his apprenticeship period are recounted, often in the words of people such as Richard and Lisa Howorth (owners of Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi), Barry Hannah, Clyde Edgerton, Ellen Douglas, and John Osier (his only writing teacher besides Douglas). …

LARRY BROWN: A WRITER'S LIFE

LARRY BROWN: A WRITER'S LIFE. By Jean W. Cash. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2011. xxii + 302 pp. $35.Jean W. Cash's biography is a much-needed and welcome addition to the small but growing collection of serious considerations of the work and of (1951-2004). Cash has written a thoroughly researched and very readable account that provides an intimate perspective on both the and the career of an important author who lived a fascinating life. Ultimately, the portrait of that emerges is of a supremely determined man who worked incredibly hard to learn how to write, a real-life example of a successful do-it-yourself author.Cash's book is organized primarily around the major events and publications of Brown's literary career, rather than around incidents in his personal life, with a consequent focus on his professional development. Cash is able to use a lot of Brown's own words the course of her narrative, a practice that adds a uniquely first-person slant to her biography. In fact, one of the book's major strengths is Cash's ability to organize and interweave materials from a multitude of sources-interviews, letters, essays, and unpublished writings-in a way that lets Brown, his family, and his friends tell the story of the author's life.The first two chapters cover Brown's childhood and early adulthood, revealing plenty of new information that scholars will find useful and fans interesting, including the family's history and its deep roots in Lafayette County, Mississippi. Except for ten years in Memphis (from age three to age thirteen) and two years in the Marines, Larry lived in Tula or Yocona for virtually all his life (12). While in Memphis, the family moved frequently, living in a series of rented houses while Brown's father worked only sporadically, the family supported almost entirely by Brown's mother. Throughout the book, in fact, Cash pays tribute to the strong, ambitious women in Brown's life-his mother, Leona Barlow Brown; and his wife, Mary Annie Coleman Brown (12). They lived near the library in Memphis, and Leona's love of reading was passed on to her children.Brown's father, Willis Knox Brown, had traumatic experiences in World War II that he would sometimes recount while drinking. expresses deep love and affection for his father but also tells tales of drunkenness, abuse, destruction of property, and arrests, saying, I'll never be as scared of anything in as I was of daddy (qtd. on 17). Knox Brown's struggles with alcohol foreshadow his son's own drinking problems, which emerge as a major component of Brown's public image and private that at times inhibited his ability to write productively.Leaving Knox behind, Leona left Memphis for Tula in 1964 (when was thirteen) after an incident in which Larry's older brother had hitchhiked back to Mississippi, saying he would not live with his father again. The father soon returned to the family but did not stop drinking until a confrontation with his oldest son, who pointed a loaded shotgun at him. Knox stayed sober until his death in 1968 (when was sixteen), and says that, when his father died, my world pretty much fell apart and changed (qtd. on 24).While Cash, to her credit, does not try to evade or gloss over Brown's struggles with alcohol, she does not go into much detail about why he left the Marines or about his various jobs throughout the 1970s, or his infidelities and the two instances when he temporarily moved out of the family home. Conversely, she offers a great deal of detail about Brown's apprenticeship, during which he learned to write and struggled to get published. was able to look back with humor and honesty at his early failed novels: They're just not good enough. I can see now that everybody else was right years ago. See, I just didn't know it myself. That's the process you go through (qtd. on 49). Brown's friendships and relationships with influential men and women and mentors during his apprenticeship period are recounted, often in the words of people such as Richard and Lisa Howorth (owners of Square Books in Oxford, Mississippi), Barry Hannah, Clyde Edgerton, Ellen Douglas, and John Osier (his only writing teacher besides Douglas). …

Elemental fingerprinting of soils using ICP-MS and multivariate statistics: A study for and by forensic chemistry majors

Students in an instrumental analysis course with a forensic emphasis were presented with a mock scenario in which soil was collected from a murder suspect's car mat, from the crime scene, from adjacent areas, and from more distant locations. Students were then asked to conduct a comparative analysis using the soil's elemental distribution fingerprints. The soil was collected from Lafayette County, Mississippi, USA and categorized as sandy loam. Eight student groups determined twenty-two elements (Li, Be, Mg, Al, K, Ca, V, Cr, Mn, Fe, Co, Ni, Cu, Zn, As, Se, Rb, Sr, Cs, Ba, Pb, U) in seven samples of soil and one sample of sediment by microwave-assisted acid digestion and inductively coupled plasma-mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). Data were combined and evaluated using multivariate statistical analyses. All eight student groups correctly classified their unknown among the different locations. Students learn, however, that whereas their results suggest that the elemental fingerprinting approach can be used to distinguish soils from different land-use areas and geographic locations, applying the methodology in forensic investigations is more complicated and has potential pitfalls. Overall, the inquiry-based pedagogy enthused the students and provided learning opportunities in analytical chemistry, including sample preparation, ICP-MS, figures-of-merit, and multivariate statistics.

History of Benjy’s Fence in The Sound and the Fury

Faulkner Journal Edward Belk Perry History of Benjy’s Fence in The Sound and the Fury T he county courthouse was arguablythe most significant building in Wil­ liam Faulkners work (Hines, Tangible Past48; Bork 144). In “The Court­ house (A Name for the City)” in Requiemfor a Nun Faulkner writes: [A] Square, the courthouse in its grove the center... the offices ofthe lawyers and doc­ tors . . . each in its ordered place; the four broad diverging avenues . . . becoming the network ofroads and by-roads.... But above all, the courthouse: the center, the focus, the hub; sitting looming in the center ofthe county’s circumference like a single cloud in its ring of horizon, laying its vast shadow to the uttermost rim ofhorizon; musing, brooding, symbolic and ponder­ able, tall as cloud, solid as rock, dominating all: protector of the weak, judiciate and curb ofthe passions and lusts, repository and guardian ofthe aspirations and the hopes. (499-500) The courthouse was enclosed by an octagonal-shaped iron fence which re­ mains a mystery (Mayfield, Images 40-41; Aiken 76). Was it created by a black­ smith or in a foundry, i.e., was it wrought iron or cast iron or both?1 What hap­ pened to it? Where is it now? The purpose ofthis paper is to describe the history ofBenjy’s fence. Lafayette County Mississippi was organized as a territory in 1798 and was admitted to the Union in 1817. The Choctaw Indians ceded their land in north Mississippi in October 1830 at the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek, and the Chickasaw Indians ceded their land at the Treaty of Pontotoc Creek in October 1832 (Aiken 57, 62). The federal government hired private contractors to survey northern Mississippi into townships and sections (66). Volney Peel was born in 1805 in Bedford County, Virginia, and moved with his family to north Alabama near Huntsville. There he studied civil engineer­ ing and practical surveying and was employed as a draftsman in the land office ‘Iron fencing became popular in the 1830s and could be either wrought or cast, depending on the manufacturing process. Iron fencing could be a combination of both wrought and cast iron such as cast iron posts and panels with wrought iron gates. Cast iron is an iron based alloy with at least two percent carbon. The iron is heated to a fluid state and poured into a mold which allows a more detailed design. Wrought iron is iron that has been drawn out and shaped over a period of time using repeated force and heat by a black­ smith and is more expensive than cast iron. Wrought iron fence components are usually fused or riveted together either by lap joints or welding (US Natl. Park Service 6). 51 52 Edward Belk Perry History ofBenjy’s Fence at Florence, Alabama. In 1832 he received an appointment from the federal government to survey the territory of north Mississippi then occupied by the Chickasaw and Choctaw Indians. He left his wife and child with her parents, who had moved to Hardeman County, Tennessee, and spent two years survey­ ing. When his work was completed in 1834, he bought land in what would become Marshall County, Mississippi, and moved his family to a pioneer cabin he built there, the first white man to settle in the county (Biographical 576-77). Later he built Hickory Park in the Laws Hill community, fourteen miles south­ west of Holly Springs, north of the Tallahatchie River above where the town of Wyatt would be located (Miller, Lost Mansions 67-68; Fant 1). The Treaty of Pontotoc Creek caused a land rush that would see the population of north Mississippi explode. Thousands of acres of land were available for rock-bottom prices and cotton prices were high. Three years after Peel moved there, in the spring of 1837, Marshall County had 13,500 people and the white population was the most for any county in Mississippi (Aiken 67) and Holly Springs was the third largest town in Mississippi (Miller, Lost Landmarks 128). Lafayette was one of a dozen counties created on February 6, 1836, by the Mississippi Legislature in the territory ceded by the Chickasaw Indians (Sobotka 27...

American Studies in Review

Abstract: This essay reviews Don H. Doyle's Faulkner's County: The Historical Roots of Yoknapatawpha and Edouard Glissant's Faulkner Mississippi. Doyle's book is a detailed social history of Lafayette County, the county in Northern Mississippi on which Faulkner's fictional Yoknapatawpha was based, and I argue that he illustrates the ways in which fiction and history can assist each other in the search for truth. Glissant's book is more dense and philosophical, and I offer an interpretation of his claim that Faulkner's fiction works through “deferred revelation,” a literary process that is inseparable from social and cultural Creolization. I argue that Glissant's reading of Faulkner suggests possible ways in which to re-vision literary modernism. Together, the two books underscore the historical and philosophical significance and value of Faulkner's work.

Two Takes on Faulkner's "Postage Stamp of Native Soil"

Two Takes on Faulkner's "Postage Stamp of Native Soil" Christine McCulloch (bio) William Faulkner and the Southern Landscape. By Charles S. Aiken. Athens: UP of Georgia, 2009. xi + 283 pp. $34.95 cloth. Global Faulkner: Faulkner and Yoknapatawpha, 2006. Ed. Annette Trefzer and Ann J. Abadie. Jackson: UP of Mississippi, 2009. ix + 189 pp. $55.00 cloth. That Yoknapatawpha County is an amalgamation of real and imagined topographies is known, concedes Charles S. Aiken in his recent book, William Faulkner and the Southern Landscape. What is not known are the "particular techniques" by which Faulkner "convert[ed] the local geography into a fictional one." To the extent that Aiken remains focused on this question, his study proves an engaging and original contribution to the ever-widening scope of Faulkner scholarship. A geography professor whose family was among the first to settle in Lafayette County, Aiken is deeply familiar with Faulkner's actual—and apocryphal—southern landscapes. Because his "approach, methodology and sources are primarily those of historical geography," Aiken's book will be of more interest to scholars engaged in the interdisciplinary work of southern studies than to literary scholars, although it does offer some in-sightful readings of Faulkner's fiction. Aiken begins his foray into the world of William Faulkner by acknowledging that much of that world has now vanished, thus positioning his work as an act of preservation not unlike Oxford's recent "movement to preserve buildings [in] recognition of their relationship to the fictional Jefferson." Through numerous maps and photographs, Aiken [End Page 151] details the evolution of Faulkner's real and imagined topographies, dating from the Choctaw and Chickasaw land cessions of the 1830s to the present day. He demonstrates the many parallels that exist between Oxford and Jefferson, and between Lafayette County and Yoknapatawpha County, as well as the ways in which they differ. One of the most compelling aspects of Aiken's study is his seamless movement between real locales—many of which he photographed himself—and descriptive excerpts from Faulkner's novels and short stories. Nevertheless, despite these striking parallels, Aiken is careful not to subsume fiction to fact. He acknowledges that much of Faulkner's work is a conscious departure from direct observation and experience. Yoknapatawpha and its peculiar cast of characters are products of Faulkner's creative genius. Aiken also recognizes that "precise conformity of his fiction with actual geography and history was never a major concern of Faulkner." This, in turn, leads him to contend that Yoknapatawpha County is not a microcosm of the American South, as many critics have argued. Rather, it is a "distinctive geographical entity related to, and contrasted with, other areas of the Lowland South." Aiken effectively demonstrates the difficulty of presenting any picture of "the South in miniature" given the region's geographical, economical, racial, and cultural diversity. To do this is also to ignore Faulkner's principle objective—namely, "to write universally about mankind." Aiken astutely observes that "no boundaries are shown on the two maps that [Faulkner] drew" for the 1936 Absalom, Absalom! insert, nor for Malcolm Cowley's 1946 The Portable Faulkner. "Symbolically, Yoknapatawpha is a place with a core," writes Aiken, "but the county has no isolating walls." This observation concludes roughly the first half of the book. The latter half of Aiken's study is difficult to reconcile with his initial claims and questions. Ensuing chapters devoted to the Civil War, Reconstruction, the New and Modern South, and the Civil Rights Movement read as condensed regional histories rather than geographical or literary analyses. Aiken's references to Faulkner become increasingly biographical and increasingly indebted to Joseph Blotner. Although the chapter entitled "Geographical Interpretation of 'The Bear'" provides an exception, the second half of Aiken's study has a derivative, documentarian (as opposed to hermeneutic) quality that belies the quickly exhausted nature of its very subject. Thus, while Yoknapatawpha County has no isolating walls, William Faulkner and the Southern Landscape seems to circumscribe itself in a somewhat limiting way. These limitations are thrown into greater relief upon reading Annette [End Page 152] Trefzer and Ann J. Abadie's rich collection of essays, Global Faulkner. Here, eleven scholars explore the...

William Faulkner and the Southern Landscape by Charles S. Aiken

BOOK REVIEWS Charles S. Aiken. William Faulkner and the Southern Landscape. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia Press, 2009, 283 pp., 90 black-and-white maps, tables, drawings, and illustrations, hardcover, $34.95, ISBN 978-0820332192 By his death in 1962, William Faulkner had used his series of groundbreaking short stories and novels to construct an extraordinary and well-developed fictional landscape from a seemingly ordinary place. The most famous Southern literary landscape ofthe twentieth century, Yoknapatawpha County and its county seat, Jefferson, was loosely modeled on the land that Faulkner described as his "own little postage stamp of native soil," his home in Oxford, Mississippi (Faulkner quoted in Aiken, p. 24). Faulkner labeled it "a cosmos ofmy own," (Faulkner quoted in Aiken, p. 24). Charles S. Aiken revisits this terrain in William Faulkner and the Southern Landscape. ARRIS 82 VoLUME 21 ~ 2010 Among the voluminous scholarly commentary on Faulkner's work, a number of authors have turned particular attention to the geography of this specific place. Calvin S. Brown, for example, in an article in PMLA: Publications ofthe Modern Language Association ofAmerica in 1962, surveyed the landscape that served as Faulkner's model, connecting dots between sites in the physical world and those in the realm of the author's fiction 1 • However, Aiken's study goes beyond merely mapping one set of geographic coordinates onto another. Using Faulkner's writings and interviews as well as the physical landscape as his primary evidence, Aiken approaches the study of the real and fictional topographies with the tools of a historical geographer, examining changes over time in both realms. Aiken's study is a double biography of Faulkner's two interconnected landscapes and the first to examine their historical geography. Exploring the act ofcreation, he takes keen interest in two processes: he catalogs Faulkner's various systems for "sublimating the actual into the apocryphal" and tracks the processes of change over time that mold and then remold the twinned landscapes (Faulkner quoted in Aiken, p. 24). As such, Aiken demonstrates convincingly that the development of the two locales is woven together and that one cannot be understood without the other. Aiken traces the unfolding development of Faulkner's paired, mutually interdependent realms in ten chapters. The first three explore the relationship between the real and the fictional landscapes. Here, Aiken introduces a key difference between the two, to which he returns in the conclusion: while the region Faulkner constructed in fiction is frozen in time, the physical environment that the author knew is rapidly vanishing. He probes the process by which the novelist converted the real into the fictive, and, drawing 1 Calvin S. Brown, "Faulkner's Geography and Topography," PMLA 77: 5 (December 1962), 652-659. on Faulkner's own comments, rejects the idea that Yoknapatawpha was a metaphor for the entire South. In the middle three chapters, he sketches the historical geography of the two counties from the time of the Old South, through the Civil War, and into the period of the New South. He thus places the stories Faulkner composed against the backdrop of local history and geography. In chapter seven, he pauses to demonstrate the merits of his approach by showing how a geographical perspective offers new insights into one of Faulkner's most complex stories, "The Bear." The last three chapters display the particular strength of Aiken's work, which is his analysis of changes to the landscape of Lafayette County in the time after the completion of the Yoknapatawpha saga and even beyond Faulkner's lifetime. Because his focus is the geography, Aiken's study is not bound temporally to the time periods of Faulkner's stories. Faulkner's own well-documented fascination with the connections between past and present is neatly summarized in his paradoxical and often-quoted aphorisms : "The past is never dead. It's not even past" (Requiem for a Nun [1951], p. 92), echoes his earlier assertion, "Tomorrow is today" ("Red Leaves" [1930] in The Portable Faulkner [1946], p. 100). Given Faulkner's own interest in the resonance of the past in the present, Aiken's decision to push his analysis to examine additional reverberations beyond the time period in which...

Race and Class in Faulkner

els are valuable books. By helping readers to locate Faulkner's treatment of racial issues within his later novels?from Intruders in the Dust (1948) through The Reivers (1962)?Towner summarizes one of the more con troversial topics of recent Faulkner criticism. It is Kevin Riley's wide ranging assessment of the way Faulkner's fiction becomes a useful site for any consideration of history, text, and author, however, that deserves the label ground-breaking. Railey approaches William Faulkner the author as the product of the ideology of his culture, both Lafayette County, Mississippi, and the South. Managing to provide discussions of his use of terms paternal ism and as the ideological grid for Faulkner's thinking, Rai ley weaves biography, the ramifications of history, and close readings of the novels of the major period into a well-argued study. He contends that even as Faulkner understood that paternalism a fading, residual ide ology and liberalism an increasingly emergent, then dominant one, his sympathies lay with the paternalism of the well-bred white culture in which he saw himself enmeshed. While Faulkner understood rationally the way change in ideology was necessary, he could not accept the unsta ble leadership that occurred within democratic liberalism. Railey writes,

Faulkner's county: the historical roots of Yoknapatawpha

The rich history behind Faulkner's imagined world Lafayette County, Mississippi, was the primary inspiration for what is arguably the most famous place in American fiction: William Faulkner's County. Faulkner once explained that in his stories he sublimated the actual into the apocryphal. This history of Lafayette County reverses that notion, using Faulkner's rich fictional portrait of a place and its people to illuminate the past. From the arrival of Europeans in Chickasaw Indian territory in 1540 to Faulkner's death in 1962, Don Doyle chronicles more than four centuries of local history. He traces the building of a permanent community and plantation economy by white settlers, the lives of slaves in the region, the experiences of secession, Civil War, and Reconstruction, town life in Oxford, and the Revolt of the Rednecks Faulkner captured in his saga of the Snopes clan. Drawing on both history and literature, Doyle renders a rich and deeply researched portrait of Faulkner's home. Yoknapatawpha was a place of the imagination, invented by Faulkner as a vehicle for developing a coherent body of fiction, Doyle writes, but the raw materials from which he created this place and its people lay right at his front porch.

Current and Presettlement Tree Species Composition of Some Upland Forests in Northern Mississippi

compared present-day tree species composition of the two old-growth forests and the two younger forests with the composition of bearing trees (i.e., trees identified by land surveyors in the 1830s) in upland and lowland areas within townships encompassing the four sites. Bearing tree samples were similar in composition to an explorer's account of old-growth woodlands that dominated the region during sparse subsistence settlement by Chickasaw Indians. There were striking differences between present-day and bearing-tree samples. One of the old-growth forests (Bailey Woods) was more similar in species composition to the mid-successional secondgrowth forests than to bearing-tree samples. The shade-intolerant, but fire-tolerant, Quercus marilandica Muenchh. was nearly absent from present-day upland forests (< 1% of all stems 2 10 cm dbh; range 0-3%) but was the most common species among presettlement upland trees (42% of all bearing trees in the township containing the field sites). Liquidambar styraciflua L., often regarded as both a pioneer species and a common constituent of alluvial floodplain and mesophytic terrace forests, was the single most abundant tree species in the understory and midcanopy of one of the old-growth forests (Bailey Woods) and in all size classes of trees of both younger forests. It was completely absent from presettlement records of upland trees, but was an abundant bearing tree in nearby sections containing lowland alluvial forests. I hypothesize that open oak woodlands dominated the upland landscape of Lafayette County, Mississippi before extensive settlement. These woodlands were neither mid-successional nor late-successional forests but were a unique fire-dependent community type that is absent from north Mississippi today.

Timescales for nitrate contamination of spring waters, northern Florida, USA

Residence times of groundwater, discharging from springs in the middle Suwannee River Basin, were estimated using chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), tritium ( 3H), and tritium/helium-3 ( 3H/ 3He) age-dating methods to assess the chronology of nitrate contamination of spring waters in northern Florida. During base-flow conditions for the Suwannee River in 1997–1999, 17 water samples were collected from 12 first, second, and third magnitude springs discharging groundwater from the Upper Floridan aquifer. Extending age-dating techniques, using transient tracers to spring waters in complex karst systems, required an assessment of several models [piston-flow (PFM), exponential mixing (EMM), and binary-mixing (BMM)] to account for different distributions of groundwater age. Multi-tracer analyses of four springs yielded generally concordant PFM ages of around 20±2 years from CFC-12, CFC-113, 3H, and 3He, with evidence of partial CFC-11 degradation. The EMM gave a reasonable fit to CFC-113, CFC-12, and 3H data, but did not reproduce the observed 3He concentrations or 3H/ 3He ratios, nor did a combination PFM–EMM. The BMM could reproduce most of the multi-tracer data set only if both endmembers had 3H concentrations not much different from modern values. CFC analyses of 14 additional springs yielded apparent PFM ages from about 10 to 20 years from CFC-113, with evidence of partial CFC-11 degradation and variable CFC-12 contamination. While it is not conclusive, with respect to the age distribution within each spring, the data indicate that the average residence times were in the order of 10–20 years and were roughly proportional to spring magnitude. Applying similar models to recharge and discharge of nitrate based on historical nitrogen loading data yielded contrasting trends for Suwanee County and Lafayette County. In Suwanee County, spring nitrate trends and nitrogen isotope data were consistent with a peak in fertilizer input in the 1970s and a relatively high overall ratio of artificial fertilizer/manure; whereas in Lafayette County, spring nitrate trends and nitrogen isotope data were consistent with a more monotonic increase in fertilizer input and relatively low overall ratio of artificial fertilizer/manure. The combined results of this study indicate that the nitrate concentrations of springs in the Suwannee River basin have responded to increased nitrogen loads from various sources in the watersheds over the last few decades; however, the responses have been subdued and delayed because the average residence time of groundwater discharging from springs are in the order of decades.

Mitigation of metolachlor-associated agricultural runoff using constructed wetlands in Mississippi, USA

A loss of marginal wetland acreage adjoining agricultural fields has created a potential problem with water quality enhancement of agricultural runoff via wetlands. Current research is investigating the utility of constructed wetlands for pesticide mitigation purposes, thereby restoring water quality enhancement capability to the area. Constructed wetland mesocosms (59–73 m×14 m), located at the University of Mississippi Field Station (Lafayette County, MS), were amended with metolachlor to simulate a cropland runoff event. Target concentrations for wetlands were 73 and 147 μg/l metolachlor in addition to an unamended control (0 μg/l). Water, sediment, and plant samples were collected weekly for 35 days following metolachlor amendment. Samples were collected from sites, longitudinally distributed within each wetland, and analyzed for metolachlor using gas chromatography. Between 7 and 25% of measured metolachlor mass was in the first 30–36 m (from inflow) of wetlands immediately following application and simulated rainfall. Approximately 10% of measured metolachlor mass was in plant samples. Suggested wetland travel distances for effective mitigation of metolachlor runoff ranged from 100 to 400 m. According to the results from this research, aquatic receiving system impacts due to metolachlor runoff could be mitigated by using constructed wetlands as buffers. Landowners and government agencies can integrate this information into a water management plan, allowing for better control of both quantity and quality of runoff water from individual agricultural fields.