B. Brian Foster

B. Brian Foster is an assistant professor of sociology and Southern studies at the University of Mississippi. He studies and writes about race and place, with special emphasis on questions and stories of racial stratification, regional development, and culture. Most recently, his work has focused on black communities in the “Delta” and “Hill Country” regions of Mississippi.

In the book I Don’t Like the Blues: Race, Place, and the Backbeat of Black Life (2020), Foster chronicles the inclusion of blues tourism in the economic development plan of Clarksdale, Miss., and the Black residents’ negative response. He has also published writing on “rap-centered aspirations among young Black males” and the University of Mississippi’s state flag.

Foster also serves as the Director of the Mississippi Hill Country Oral History Collective, an archive of the histories of Black and other marginalized communities across the 30-county Mississippi Hill Country region.