July 1, 2014 While recognizing that there are multiple Souths and “as many ways to be black as there are black people,” Zandria Robinson of the University of Memphis works to understand the multiple ways in which black people perform and make use of a Southern identity in their daily lives.

April 16, 2014 In An Idea Whose Time Has Come: Two Presidents, Two Parties, and the Battle for the Civil Rights Act of 1964, his highly readable popular history of the politics behind the groundbreaking civil-rights legislation, Todd Purdum is open to messy, multi-causal explanations involving a large cast of historical characters. Purdum will appear at Union Ave. Books in Knoxville on April 23, 2014, at 3 p.m.