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. The CSSC includes the Southern Documentary Project division and the Southern Foodways Alliance institute, and a partner publication, Living Blues magazine. CSSC published the award-winning Encyclopedia of Southern Culture and The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture.

In 2014, the CSSC launched a new online journal called Study the South. It also hosts 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 in 2016, will present the first Southern Documentary Festival. The Center supports an undergraduate and graduate Southern Studies academic department. Former directors of the Center include William Ferris and Charles Reagan Wilson. Ted Ownby is the current director.

The Center's Gammill Gallery hosts changing exhibits of documentary photography of the American South.

Among the many collections permanently housed at the Center is the internationally-acclaimed Kenneth S. Goldstein Folklore Collection.

Launched in 2014, Study the South is a peer-reviewed multimedia online journal, focusing on the culture of the American South. The academic approach is interdisciplinary, with a particular focus on history, anthropology, sociology, music, literature, documentary studies, gender studies, religion, geography, media studies, race studies, ethnicity, folklife, and art.