The Natchez Literary and Cinema Celebration takes pride in announcing plans for the 35^th annual Celebration. Using the theme, “Rites, Rituals, and Religion in the Deep South,” this humanities conference will explore life and death experiences in a series of presentations on religious traditions, burial rituals, cemetery history, mourning practices, and historic holidays which are all deeply embedded in the Southern Experience.

This two-and-a-half-day event will feature scholars whose presentations will parallel an evolving historical American narrative of the living and the dying based on both “Old World” traditions combined with a profound sense of democracy, race, and ingenuity. This mix of the old and new has created an eccentric culture we proudly call Mississippi.