Punk Diaspora in the Deep South Symposium

The Mississippi State University Department of Art and Galleries are pleased to present the Punk Diaspora in the Deep South Symposium April 9-12, here on campus and April 12th in Oxford, MS in partnership with the Southern Punk Archive and Punk Flea Market.

A student-focused event will take place the evening of April 9th.

On Friday, April 10th, please join us for a panel discussion with several authors from the recently published "What Punk Taught Me" (Vernon Press, 2025) in the Old Main Art Gallery at 1pm.

Saturday, April 11th, first things first. Please be sure to attend the 34th Annual International Fiesta on the Drill Field. We will then host a public zine and poster workshop in Stafford Hall from 3-5pm.

Sunday, the Symposium will travel up to Oxford to take part in Punker Decker Weekend and the Punk Flea Market in the afternoon and evening.

Four days focused on music, culture, and ethos.

Presenters include:

Dr. Greg Blair, University of Southern Indiana

Dr. Jason Swift, University of West Georgia

Valerie George, University of West Florida

Scott Satterwhite, University of West Florida

Dr. Jenna Altomonte, Mississippi State University 

Dixie Boswell, Mississippi State University

About the Presenters

Dr. Greg Blair

Originally from Red Deer, Canada, Gregory Blair is an artist, writer, educator, and activist that resides in Evansville, Indiana with his wife and two children. Blair is an Assistant Professor of Art and Design at the University of Southern Indiana where he teaches contemporary art history, digital illustration, and gender studies courses. Blair’s latest book project, What Punk Taught Me, was published by Vernon Press in 2025. Blair’s previous books include: The Politics of Spatial Transgressions in the Arts(2011) and Errant Bodies, Mobility, and Political Resistance (2018) - both published by Palgrave MacMillan. His writings have also been featured in Arts Magazine, The Journal of Art for Life, Echo: A Music-Centered Journal, Art Style Magazine, and Kapsula Magazine. Blair has also had the good fortune to hang out with the Guerilla Girls for an entire day.

Insta: @gregblairart

Dr. Jason Swift

Swift earned his BFA from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro in 1994, his MFA from the Rinehart School of Sculpture, MICA in 1997 and his EdM in 2003 and EdD in 2009 from Columbia University. He was artist in residence for MICA’s Curatorial Experiences Program, guest lecturer at the Central Academy of Fine Arts’ Art Education Leadership Academy in Beijing and a resident at the Vermont Studio Center. In 1997 Swift received the Amalie Rothschild Award and the Enid Morse Fellowship for Teaching in the Arts in 2005. In 2004 he co-founded the Pearl Street Gallery in Brooklyn, NY. Swift has served on the boards of artHarlem, Visions in New York City: Short Films and Video Group and ITI. He is an Associate Professor of Art at the University of West Georgia and in his studio and research practice, Swift investigates his experiences with skateboarding, punk rock and his Grandfather on his farm. He has exhibited nationally and internationally and published in Visual Inquiry: Learning and Teaching Art and Future Forward. Swift co-edited and published the book What Punk Taught Me and wrote the chapter Straight and Alert: Being a Straight Edge Punk in a Small Southern Town.

Insta:  @jswiftart

Val George

VALERIE GEORGE (she her) is an artist whose work over the past twenty years has reflected holistically on art and life through installation, site-specific works, video, performance, sound, sculpture, photography, new media, drawing, collaboration, and curatorial practice. Her work explores grief, loss, and mortality through the lens of punk—drawing from lyrics, sound, archival fragments, and materials that carry the weight of lived experience. George engages processes of chance, entropy, and accumulation, allowing works to emerge through layered gestures, recordings, and objects gathered across time and place. Influenced by punk’s ethic of immediacy and emotional candor, her practice treats art as both artifact and action: a way of confronting impermanence while honoring the communities and histories that shape us. Through these investigations, George creates spaces where art and life collapse into one another, offering raw meditations on memory, presence, and the fragile intensity of being alive.

George received her MFA from the University of California, Davis, where she worked closely with Lynn Hershman Leeson and Mary Lucier. She is a Professor of Art at the University of West Florida, a member of Good Children Gallery in New Orleans, and a Co-Founder and Co-Executive Director of the 309 Punk Project in Pensacola, Florida.  Insta:  @309punkproject

Dr. Jenna Altomonte

Jenna Ann Altomonte is an Associate Professor of Art History at Mississippi State University. She received her Master of Arts in Art History (2009) and Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Arts (2017) from Ohio University. Her primary area of research centers on contemporary art and digital performance studies.

Dixie Boswell

Dixie Boswell is an artist, curator, activist, and mischief maker.   She earned a BFA in Drawing & Painting from Mississippi State University and an MFA in Studio Art from Claremont Graduate University.

As the Gallery Director and Exhibition Coordinator for the Mississippi State University Department of Art, her days are filled with designing exhibitions, working with students and community colleagues, and creating interdisciplinary publicly accessible programming.  

She believes a better world can be built through collaboration and creativity.