[150] Center for Popular Music brings Memphis author/scholar Hughes to MTSU Monday

MURFREESBORO, Tenn. — Author and scholar Charles Hughes will visit MTSU Monday, Oct. 30, to discuss music and race in the South in a special lecture sponsored by the university’s Center for Popular Music.

“Country Soul: Making Music and Making Race in the American South,” a free public event, is set for 4 p.m. Oct. 30 inside the center, located in Room 140 of the Bragg Media and Entertainment Building at MTSU.

A searchable parking map is available at http://tinyurl.com/MTSUParkingMap, and off-campus visitors attending the lecture can obtain a special one-day permit at http://www.mtsu.edu/parking/visit.php.

Hughes is the director of the Memphis Center at Rhodes College, where he designs courses and programs on the history and culture of the mid-South. Both Rolling Stone and No Depression magazines named his first book, “Country Soul: Making Music and Making Race in the American South,” one of the best music books of 2015, and Paste Magazine included it in its list of the Best Nonfiction Books of the Year.

Hughes earned his doctorate in U.S. history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and previously served as the Memphis Center's Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow.

He’s been a featured lecturer at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Library & Archives, among several famous venues, and is working on a new book on the history of African-Americans and professional wrestling in the United States.

The Center for Popular Music at MTSU, a part of the College of Media and Entertainment, is one of the nation’s largest and richest repositories of research materials related to American vernacular music.

For more information on MTSU’s Center for Popular Music and its projects and special events, visit http://www.mtsu.edu/popmusic.