MSU English professor’s book explores TVA’s ‘monumental’ legacy

STARKVILLE, Miss. (Press Release)- According to an MSU Press Release, a new book by Mississippi State English Professor Ted Atkinson explores the Tennessee Valley Authority, a New Deal agency that reshaped parts of seven southern states through flood control, rural electrification, and social programs. The work highlights TVA’s enduring relevance at a time when the U.S. continues to debate climate change, fossil fuel dependence, and sustainable development.

“Monumental Designs: Infrastructure and the Culture of the Tennessee Valley Authority,” a University Press of Mississippi publication released in September, examines how cultural productions—from photography and documentary film to theater, fiction, and novels—have promoted, defined, and interrogated the TVA’s infrastructure initiatives.

Atkinson argues that while these works supported TVA’s agenda in the New Deal era, they also left a lasting artistic legacy.

“The Tennessee Valley Authority serves as a fascinating case study in the convergence of culture and infrastructure that occurred as architects of the New Deal turned to public works as a cornerstone of the recovery effort during the Great Depression,” said Atkinson. “Artists, photographers, writers, and filmmakers were essential to TVA’s early achievements and public support, inspiring subsequent cultural representations of the TVA that have portrayed the establishment and ongoing influence of the agency with more nuance and complexity than federal sponsorship under the New Deal allowed.”

Matthew M. Lambert, author of “The Green Depression: American Ecoliterature in the 1930s and 1940s,” writes in an editorial review: “Deftly combining critical theory, history and literary/film analysis, Atkinson’s Monumental Designs helps us understand the importance of interrogating the ideological underpinnings of infrastructure, something that is of the utmost importance in the present moment as we decide how to best respond to climate change.”

Atkinson has taught at MSU since 2009. He serves as editor of Mississippi Quarterly and is the author of “Faulkner and the Great Depression: Aesthetics, Ideology, and Cultural Politics” (University of Georgia Press, 2006).

His research and teaching focus on Southern studies, U.S. literature and culture, film and William Faulkner. A former president of the William Faulkner Society, he has held leadership roles in the Modern Language Association and currently serves as vice president of the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters.

For more information about MSU’s College of Arts and Sciences and its Department of English, visit www.cas.msstate.edu and www.english.msstate.edu.

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