Professor Jocelyn Neal is the new Director of the Center for the Study of the American South effective July 1, 2012. Jocelyn Neal is Associate Professor of Music and Adjunct Associate Professor of American Studies. Her primary areas of research are commercial country music and American popular music. She is the author of The Songs of Jimmie Rodgers (Indiana University Press, 2009), which won the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award. Since 2009, Professor Neal has served as co-editor of Southern Cultures, a noted journal published by the Center for the Study of the American South. She has been a Fellow at the Mannes Institute for Advanced Studies in Music Theory and has served as chair of the Popular Music Group for the Society of Music Theory.
Professor Neal replaces Professor Harry Watson, a major historian of the antebellum South and Jacksonian America, who has directed the Center since 1999. The College is grateful to Harry for his extensive service in developing the Center into a leader in the field.