Required Reading

Dark Waters

Kristine Potter, Assistant Professor of Photography

MONOGRAPH

Potter’s second monograph features a dark and brooding series reflecting on the Gothic landscape of the American South, as evoked in the popular imagination of “murder ballads” from the 19th and 20th centuries. A recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship in Photography, Potter showcases where the crimes immortalized in the songs might take place—and often have. The New York Times wrote of Potter’s book that in the South, “our most isolated places are at once the most beautiful and the most blood-soaked, and Ms. Potter understands that women are in no way the sole victims of this violent legacy.” The book by the Yale University master’s graduate features 63 images of places like Murder Creek, Bloody Fork, and Deadman’s Pond.

Just Enough to Put Him Away Decent

Kristine M. McCusker, History Professor

HISTORY

As McCusker studied the massive drop in mortality rates in the South in the 20th century, she knew there was more to the story than just science. So she garnered a $122,000 grant through the National Institutes of Health National Library of Medicine to study the cultural connections to why and how. In Just Enough to Put Him Away Decent: Death Care, Life Extension, and the Making of a Healthier South, 1900–1955, McCusker chronicles how scientific advancement and biblical duties collided midcentury.

Deep Dish Conversations

Jerome Moore (’12), B.A. in Economics

ESSAYS

What does it mean to be a Nashvillian? A Black Nashvillian? A white Nashvillian? What does it mean to be an organizer, an elected official, an agent for change? Deep Dish Conversations began as a running online interview series in which its host Moore sat down over pizza with Nashville leaders and community members to talk about the past, present, and future of the city and what it means to live there. The resulting book is an honest conversation about racism, housing, policing, poverty, and more.

Jacin and the Olympians

Shane Berryhill (’98), B.S. in Psychology

COMIC BOOK

The co-creation of writer Berryhill and Chattanoogaarea artist Alex Ogle, Jacin and the Olympians is filled with rollicking robots, spaceships, and friendships. The comic book takes place in a world where the ancient Greek gods not only exist but continue to cohabit Earth until modern times. But when dark, alien truths emerge and portend to ravage the Earth, humanity’s last hope is Jacin and the Olympians!