Smith named MSUās Mississippi Humanities Council Teacher of the Year
Contact: Sarah Nicholas
STARKVILLE, Miss.āPete Smith, an associate professor of communication at Ļć½¶Ö±²„, is MSUās 2023 Mississippi Humanities Council Teacher of the Year.
Smith will receive his award at the MHCās annual ceremony in Jackson on March 24. Approximately 30 awards will be given to Mississippians whose work is recognized for bringing insights of the humanities to public audiences.
Smithās tribute includes a $400 honorarium and invitation to deliver the Ļć½¶Ö±²„College of Arts and Sciences annual humanities lectureāfree and open to the publicāMarch 2 at 2 p.m. in Mitchell Memorial Libraryās third-floor John Grisham Room.
A faculty member in the Ļć½¶Ö±²„Department of Communication since 2003, Smithās presentation will highlight his new book āBirddogs and Tough Old Broads: Women Journalists of Mississippi and a Century of State Politics, 1880sā1980s.ā Under contract with Lexington Books, an imprint of Rowman and Littlefield projected to be published later this year, Smithās book highlights women who covered the Capitol and state political issues.
āItās hard to think of the humanities without thinking of Mississippiāfrom the music of Muddy Waters and Jimmy Rodgers to the literary work of Anne Moody and Margaret Walker. This state illustrates the power and beauty of the humanities more than any other,ā Smith said. āThe humanities define and reflect who we are as a state and people; if you want to know about Mississippiāour history, challenges and accomplishmentsālook no further than theĀ humanities work created by its citizens.ā
Smith, the coordinator of the departmentās communication and media studies concentration, is a recipient of the 2021 inaugural humanities fellowship award from the universityās Institute for the Humanities. He used the fellowship to complete his āBirddogsā manuscript.
Smithās published pieces have examined the journalism careers of Carolyn Bennett Patterson, a native Mississippian with a distinguished 20-year career as an editor atĀ National GeographicĀ magazine, and Norma Fields, who covered the state Capitol beat for theĀ Tupelo Daily JournalĀ (now theĀ Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal) in the 1970s and ā80s. He also has studied how local and state media framed the political campaigns of Evelyn Gandy, the first woman to win election to multiple statewide offices, including lieutenant governor.
Smith authored the bookĀ āSomething on My Own: Gertrude Berg and American Broadcasting 1929-1956āĀ in 2007. He is a former president of the American Journalism Historians Association and is a contributing editor toĀ Journalism History,Ā the official academic journal of the History Division of the Association of Educators in Journalism and Mass Communication. He is on the advisory board of the Mississippi Free Press.
Smith holds an Ļć½¶Ö±²„undergraduate degree in communication studies, a masterās degree in communication from Auburn University and a Ph.D. in mass communication with an emphasis on mass communication history from the University of Southern Mississippi.
At MSU, Smithās research interests include Southern politics, 20th century broadcasting and print history, American cultural myths and social construction of gender.
The MHC, funded by Congress through the National Endowment for the Humanities, provides public programs in traditional liberal arts disciplines to serve nonprofit groups in Mississippi and pays tribute annually to outstanding faculty in traditional humanities fields at each of Mississippiās institutions of higher learning.
Part of MSUās College of Arts and Sciences, the Ļć½¶Ö±²„Department of Communication is online at . For more details about the College of Arts and Sciences, visit . For additional information about the annual humanities lecture, call 662-325-2646.
Ļć½¶Ö±²„is Mississippiās leading university, available online atĀ .