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Throughout its history, Mississippi has seen a small, steady stream of immigrants, and those identities—sometimes submerged, sometimes hidden—have helped shape the state in important ways. Amid renewed interest in identity, the Mississippi Humanities Council has commissioned a companion volume to its earlier book that studied ethnicity in the state from the period 1500–1900. This book offers stories of immigrants overcoming obstacles, immigrants newly arrived, and long-settled groups witnessing a revitalized claim to membership. It examines twentieth-century immigration trends, explores the reemergence of ethnic identity, and undertakes case studies of current ethnic groups. Some of the groups featured in the book include Chinese, Latino, Lebanese, Jewish, Filipino, South Asian, and Vietnamese communities. The book also examines Biloxi as a city that has long attracted a diverse population and takes a look at the growth in identity affiliation among people of European descent. It is funded in part by a “We the People” grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Folklore in Baltic History: Resistance and Resurgence is a study of how the discipline of folklore studies was treated under the totalitarian rule of the USSR in the Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania from 1945 to 1991 and what role the study of folklore has played since independence in 1991. It is a “dramatic history” of what happened to folklorists, folklore archives and folklore departments in the universities under the Soviet rule. On the one hand was a coercive and brutal state and on the other peoples conscious of their national, cultural and linguistic identity as comprised in their folklore. On the one hand, scholars and archivists fell in line and on the other, continued to subvert the coercion by devising ingenious ways of communicating among themselves. When freedom came in 1991 they were ready to create the record of undocumented brutality by documenting life stories and oral history. Sadhana Naithani juxtaposes the work of folklore scholars in the Baltic countries between 1945 and 1991 to the life of the people in the same period to reach an evaluation of the Baltic folkloristics. She concludes that the study of folklore has been an act of resistance and has aided in the resurgence of freedom and identity in the post-Soviet Baltic countries.

French on Shifting Ground introduces readers to the lower Lafourche Basin, Louisiana, where the land, a language, and a way of life are at risk due to climate change, environmental disaster, and coastal erosion. Louisiana French is endangered all around the state, but in the lower Lafourche Basin the shift to English is accompanied by the equally rapid disappearance of the land on which its speakers live. The book outlines the development of French in the region, highlighting the features that make it unique in the world, and including the first published description of the way it is spoken by the American Indian population. It then weaves together evidence from multiple lines of linguistic research, years of extensive participant observation, and personal narratives from the residents themselves to illustrate the ways in which language–in this case French–is as fundamental to the creation of place as is the physical landscape. It is a story at once scholarly and personal: the loss of the land and the concomitant loss of the language have implications for the scientific community as well as for the people whose cultures–and identities–are literally at stake.

Sweet Spots examines the dense meanings of interstitial spaces in New Orleans architecture and culture. “Interstitial space” refers not only to distinctive features of New Orleans’ houses—high ceilings, hidden passageways, balconies, courtyards and portes-de-cocheres, for example--but also to the relation of such features to the city’s streets and neighborhoods. Thirteen interdisciplinary contributors explore the roles played by “in-between” spaces in expressing and shaping intersections of race, class, gender, and environment in New Orleans. Sweet Spots is rich with visual materials, from maps, architectural renderings and surveys, to postcards, photographs, paintings and drawings.