Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 6, 1995 TAG: 9508070125
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: OXFORD, MISS. LENGTH: Short
Hard on the heels of Oxford's 22nd seminar on native son William Faulkner comes a hunka hunka pop culture - the first International Conference on Elvis Presley. It's not exactly the image some folks in this newly minted literary mecca want to project.
Could it mean participants chewing on fried peanut-butter-and-banana sandwiches while deconstructing ``Viva Las Vegas''? Black velvet portraits for sale alongside homegrown literary reviews and the work of Oxford authors such as John Grisham, Barry Hannah and Larry Brown?
``There clearly is a sense of class division,'' said William Ferris, co-director of the Elvis conference and head of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi. ``Faulkner represents the landed gentry and the old-guard elite who feel the university is their domain. Elvis was a poor, white, working-class kid who never had a chance to go to school here.''
What we're doing is raising an academic recognition of not only Elvis but popular culture in general ... because of the power that these things have in our lives,'' Ferris said. The conference will study Elvis' impact on music, performance, race, art and religion.
by CNB