Center for the Study of Southern Culture

The Center for the Study of Southern Culture (CSSC), located in Barnard Observatory on the University of Mississippi campus in Oxford, Mississippi, is an academic organization dedicated to the investigation, documentation, interpretation and teaching of the Southern United States, including its culture.

[1] The CSSC includes the Southern Documentary Project division and the Southern Foodways Alliance institute, and a partner publication, Living Blues magazine.

Over the years it has hosted countless programs, including the Oxford Conference for the Book, the Music of the South Concert Series and Symposium, the Gilder-Jordan Lecture in Southern Cultural History, the Blues Today Symposium, and the Southern Documentary Festival.

Former directors of the Center include William Ferris, Charles Reagan Wilson, and Ted Ownby.

In Barnard Observatory, the center's Gammill Gallery hosts changing exhibits of documentary photography of the American South.