Contact: Sarah Nicholas
STARKVILLE, Mississippi—Pete Smith, an associate professor of communications at Mississippi State University, is MSU’s 2023 Mississippi Humanities Council Teacher of the Year.
Pete Smith (Photo by Beth Wynn)
Smith will accept his award March 24 at the MHC’s annual ceremony in Jackson. Approximately 30 awards are presented to Mississippi residents whose work is recognized for bringing insight into the humanities to the public.
Smith’s honor includes a fee of $400 and an invitation to present the MSU College of Arts and Sciences’ annual humanities lecture on March 2 at 2 p.m. in the John Grisham Room on the third floor of the Mitchell Memorial Library open to the public.
Smith has been a faculty member in MSU’s Department of Communications since 2003 and will feature his new book, Birddogs and Tough Old Broads: Women Journalists of Mississippi and a Century of State Politics, 1880s–1980s, in his presentation. Contracted to Lexington Books, an imprint of Rowman and Littlefield for publication later this year, Smith’s book highlights women who reported on the state’s Capitol and political issues.
“It’s hard to think of the humanities without thinking of Mississippi—from 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,” Smith said. “The humanities define and reflect who we are as a state and a people; If you want to know about Mississippi—our history, challenges, and achievements—look no further than the humanities work created by its citizens.”
Smith, the coordinator of the department’s Communications and Media Studies concentration, is a recipient of the university’s 2021 Humanities Department’s first Humanities Scholarship Award. He used the grant to finish his manuscript Birddogs.
Smith’s published articles have examined the journalism careers of Carolyn Bennett Patterson, a Mississippian native with a distinguished 20-year career as an editor at National Geographic magazine, and Norma Fields, who worked for the Tupelo Daily Journal (now the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal) in the 1970s and 1980s. He has also examined how local and state media shaped the political campaigns of Evelyn Gandy, the first woman to win election to multiple statewide offices, including lieutenant governor.
Smith authored the book Something on My Own: Gertrude Berg and American Broadcasting 1929-1956 in 2007. He is past President of the American Journalism Historians Association and Associate Editor of Journalism History, 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 a bachelor’s degree in communications from MSU, a master’s degree in communications from Auburn University, and a Ph.D. in Mass Communications with a concentration in the History of Mass Communications from the University of Southern Mississippi.
Smith’s research interests at MSU include Southern politics, 20th-century broadcast and print history, American cultural myths, and the social construction of gender.
Funded by Congress through the National Endowment for the Humanities, the MHC offers public programs in traditional liberal arts disciplines to serve charitable groups in Mississippi and annually recognizes outstanding faculty in traditional liberal arts fields at each of Mississippi’s colleges .
The MSU Department of Communication is part of MSU’s College of Arts and Sciences and is online at www.comm.msstate.edu. For more information about the College of Arts and Sciences, visit www.cas.msstate.edu. For more information on the annual humanities lecture, call 662-325-2646.
MSU is Mississippi’s premier university, available online at www.msstate.edu.
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