Teachers! Coming soon is what you’ve been waiting for!

It’s the 2013 Natchez Literary and Cinema Celebration, an outstanding, award-winning conference that brings you enlightenment, entertainment and the opportunity to earn up to 2.6 continuing education units.

The 24th annual NLCC will use the theme of “Fiction, Fact, and Film: The Civil War’s Imprint on Southern Culture.” Dates are Feb. 21-24.

The conference will take place during the middle of the sesquicentennial observance of the Civil War, 1861-1865.

The agenda is full of references to the war in the fields of fiction, non-fiction, film, music, painting, sculpture and re-enacting.

In addition, the NLCC will explore physical references to the war in Natchez with tours of houses, churches, cemeteries and other sites.

The keynote speaker on Feb. 21 is William Cooper, a noted history professor and author at Louisiana State University, whose program is called “1863: Year of Crucial Decisions.”

Other speakers, most of whom are well-known authors, and their topics include:

Jay Watson, University of Mississippi, “Faulkner’s Civil Wars”

Gaines M. Foster, Louisiana State University, “Celebrating the Sesquicentennnial? Complexities and Ambiguities in Remembering the Civil War”

Maryemma Graham, University of Kansas, and C.B. Claiborne, Texas Southern University, “Reading/Seeing Between the Lines: Fact and Fiction in ‘Miss Jane Pittman’ and Subsequent Slave Narratives”

J. Parker Hills, military historian of Clinton, “Art of Commemoration: Vicksburg National Military Park”

Jefferson G. Mansell, historian with the Natchez National Historical Park, “Now Occupied for Public Use: The Houses of Natchez Behind Enemy Lines”

R. Lee Hadden, Civil War re-enactment expert of Sterling, Va., “Re-enactment: History by the People, of the People, and for the People”

Also on the program are three Civil War-inspired films with discussions. These are “Cold Mountain,” “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman” and “Margaret Mitchell: American Rebel,” about the author of “Gone with the Wind.”

In addition are tours of sites associated with the Civil War.

One tour is of the National Historic Landmark mansions, Longwood and Rosalie. The other tour is of Forks of the Road, where slaves were bought and sold until 1863; The Burn, a mansion inside the Union’s Fort McPherson, now home of Bridget and Glenn Green; and Natchez City Cemetery and Natchez National Cemetery, where Civil War forces lie buried.

Music of the Civil War is the theme of two concerts, one at Zion Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church and another at the Carriage House.

An awards ceremony will honor three outstanding writers: Jesmyn Ward, author of

“Salvage the Bones,” which won the 2011 National Book Award; Curtis Wilkie, writer for “The Boston Globe” and author of “The Fall of the House of Zeus: The

Rise and Ruin of America’s Most Powerful Trial Lawyer”; and John Lee Hancock,

screenwriter of “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” and “The Blind Side.”

Up to 2.6 Continuing Education Units are available by e-mailing me at Beth.Richard@colin.edu at Copiah-Lincoln Community College or calling 601-446-1103.

Information about the NLCC and tickets are available by visiting www.colin.edu/nlcc, emailing NLCC@colin.edu or calling 601-446-1289 or toll-free 866-296-NLCC (6522).

Sponsors are Copiah-Lincoln Community College, Natchez National Historical Park and Mississippi Department of Archives and History.

Partial funding is from the Mississippi Humanities Council.

 

Beth Richard coordinates the Natchez Literary and Cinema Celebration’s continuing education units.