Posted on October 14, 2010

Wachovia Lecture: Dean Hall

Thursday October 14, 2010
7-9 PM
Johnson Center, Room 206, 28 George Street

Associates with Brockington and Associates, a cultural resource management company in Mt. Pleasant, will be giving a public lecture on recent work at Dean Hall Plantation in Berkeley County, South Carolina. Charlie Philips, senior historian, will present the history of Dean Hall Plantation. Andrew Agha, senior archaeologist, will discuss the recent excavations, which uncovered 127,000 artifacts, including 57,000 Colonoware sherds. Nichole Isenbarger, lab supervisor, will discuss the significance of the found artifacts and Colonoware. Analysis of these sherds has helped shed light on the folkways of the enslaved people at Dean Hall plantation.

Posted on October 5, 2010

Reminder — October 9-10, 2010

Conference:

Crisis and Conflict in the Carolinas

CLAW will host a symposium on the two Carolinas during the first quarter of the eighteenth century, “Crisis and Conflict in the Early Carolinas,” on October 9-10, 2010. Approximately one dozen scholars will present work on various topics, including the Yamasee War, the Tuscarora War, the Revolution of 1719, the slave trade, the plantation economy, and piracy. For more information, contact conference conveners Brad Wood of Eastern Kentucky University, Michelle LeMaster of Lehigh University, or local organizer Sandy Slater of the College of Charleston.

Conference Schedule
Conference Registration

Posted on September 24, 2010

Lowcountry Time and Tide: The Fall of the South Carolina Rice Kingdom

Thursday September 30, 2010
7-9 PM
Avery Research Center, 125 Bull Street

James H. Tuten, a lowcountry native and College of Charleston graduate, opens this study with an overview of the history of rice culture in South Carolina through the Reconstruction era and then focuses on the industry’s manifestations and decline from 1877 to 1930. Tuten offers a close study of changes in agricultural techniques and tools during the period and demonstrates how adaptive and progressive rice planters became despite their conservative reputations. He also explores the cultural history of rice both as a foodway and a symbol of wealth in the lowcountry, used on currency and bedposts. Tuten concludes with a thorough treatment of the lasting legacy of rice culture, especially in terms of the environment, the continuation of rice foodways and iconography, and the role of rice and rice plantations in the modern tourism industry.

Posted on September 1, 2010

Civil War – Global Conflict

March 3 – 5, 2011

In 2011, the United States will observe the 150^th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War. To mark this important anniversary the Program in the Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World at the College of Charleston will host an international conference considering the war as an event of global significance. Examining the causes, passage, and consequences of the war in an international context promises to break from the divisive and narrow focus on the war as a sectional conflict fought in an America whose existence is seen as entirely separate from the rest of the world. The conference will therefore examine:

œ    the role of international currents of thought (political, racial, ethical, religious), international economic pressures, and international political alignments leading to the war;

œ    international support and opposition, as well as diplomatic efforts during the war;

œ    international consequences both during and after the war (e.g., who took advantage of the destruction of cotton and rice production? Who learned what from military, communication technology, etc.?); and

œ    commemoration and memorialization of the war beyond America’s borders (i.e., how the war has come to be remembered around the world in political movements, in fictional representations, in popular culture, toys, etc.).

We invite scholars to submit proposals for individual papers and panels that might address such questions as:

œ    How did the Union and Confederacy operate in the diplomatic sphere?

œ    How did the rest of the world view the conflict?

œ    What did Americans, particularly South Carolinians, think of international attitudes toward the United and Confederate States?

œ    What did Americans living abroad think of the conflict?

œ    What impact did Confederate exiles/colonies have on their host countries?

œ    What impact did American Emancipation have on slavery in Latin America, Africa etc.?

œ    How did the Civil War influence world views of the U.S., particularly the South, and how did Unionists/Confederates see themselves in the world?

œ    How is the Civil War remembered and recreated internationally in literature, film, and in popular memorabilia?

œ    How did international religious alliances play into the conflict and its representations?

Keynote speakers include Richard Blackett (Vanderbilt University), Joan Cashin (Ohio State University), James McPherson (Princeton University), and E.B. Rugemer (Yale University). Since the conference is the College of Charleston’s opening academic event in a broader, four-year-long commemoration of the war, there will be a number of subsidiary events going on in and around Charleston that participants will find of interest.

As with previous successful CLAW program events the conference will be run in a seminar style: accepted participants will be expected to send completed papers to the organizers two months in advance of the conference itself (by January 5^th, 2011) for circulation via password-protected site.  At the conference itself presenters will talk for no more than ten minutes about their paper, working on the assumption that everyone has read the paper itself.  This arrangement means that papers may be considerably lengthier and more carefully argued than the typical 20-minute presentation; and it leads to more substantive, better informed discussion. It also generally allows us to move quite smoothly toward publication of a selection of essays.

Proposals for individual papers should be between 300 and 500 words, and should be accompanied by a brief biographical statement indicating institutional affiliation, research interests, and relevant publishing record.  Please e-mail your proposal to  lewiss@cofc.edu or send by mail to: “Civil War – Global Conflict” Organizing Committee, c/o CLAW Program, College of Charleston, 66 George Street, Charleston, SC 29424-0001 before September 5^th, 2010.

If you wish to send a proposal for a 3- or 4-person panel, please send a 300 to 500-word proposal describing the panel as a whole as well as proposals for each of the individual papers, along with biographical statements for each of the presenters. The organizers reserve the right to accept individual papers from panel proposals, to break up panels, and to add papers to panels.  Notification of acceptance will be sent by October 5^th, 2010.

Organizing Committee:

Simon Lewis (CLAW); Lee Drago (History); Adam Mendelsohn (Jewish Studies); Scott Peeples (English); Bernard Powers (History); Lisa Randle (CLAW); John White (CLAW) [all College of Charleston]; O. Vernon Burton (Coastal Carolina University); David Gleeson (Northumbria University, UK); Valinda Littlefield (University of South Carolina)

Posted on August 11, 2010

The Irish in the Atlantic World: A New Vision of the Irish Diaspora within the Atlantic Context from the Eighteenth Century to the Present

Edited by David T. Gleeson

The Irish in the Atlantic World is the 17th publication in the CLAW series with the University of South Carolina Press. It presents a transnational and comparative view of the Irish historical and cultural experiences as phenomena transcending traditional chronological, topical, and ethnic paradigms. Edited by David T. Gleeson, this collection of essays offers a robust new vision of the global nature of the Irish diaspora within the Atlantic context from the eighteenth century to the present and makes original inroads for new research in Irish studies.

These essays from an international cast of scholars vary in their subject matter from investigations into links between Irish popular music and the United States—including the popularity of American blues music in Belfast during the 1960s and the influences of Celtic balladry on contemporary singer Van Morrison—to a discussion of the migration of Protestant Orangemen to America and the transplanting of their distinctive non-Catholic organizations. Other chapters explore the influence of American politics on the formation of the Irish Free State in 1922, manifestations of nineteenth-century temperance and abolition movements in Irish communities, links between slavery and Irish nationalism in the formation of Irish identity in the American South, the impact of yellow fever on Irish and black labor competition on Charleston’s waterfront, the fate of the Irish community at Saint Croix in the Danish West Indies, and other topics. These multidisciplinary essays offer fruitful explanations of how ideas and experiences from around the Atlantic influenced the politics, economics, and culture of Ireland, the Irish people, and the societies where Irish people settled. Taken collectively, these pieces map the web of connectivity between Irish communities at home and abroad as sites of ongoing negotiation in the development of a transatlantic Irish identity.

A native of Ireland, David T. Gleeson is a reader in history in the School of Arts and Social Sciences at Northumbria University in Newcastle upon Tyne. He is a former director of the College of Charleston’s Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World program. His first book, The Irish in the South, 1815–1877, won the Donald Murphy Prize of the American Conference for Irish Studies.

Posted on July 28, 2010

October 9-10, 2010

Conference:

Crisis and Conflict in the Carolinas

CLAW will host a symposium on the two Carolinas during the first quarter of the eighteenth century, “Crisis and Conflict in the Early Carolinas,” on October 9-10, 2010. Approximately one dozen scholars will present work on various topics, including the Yamasee War, the Tuscarora War, the Revolution of 1719, the slave trade, the plantation economy, and piracy. For more information, contact conference conveners Brad Wood of Eastern Kentucky University, Michelle LeMaster of Lehigh University, or local organizer Sandy Slater of the College of Charleston.

Conference Schedule

Posted on April 28, 2010

Thursday, June 17, 2010, 6:30 PM