2024 Conference Call for Proposals: “Archives in the Atlantic”

Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World Program at the College of Charleston
May 16 -18, 2024

Scope of Conference

Archives and related memory keeping institutions such as museums, libraries, and archaeological repositories have a collective mandate to document and preserve cultural heritage objects such as oral histories, textual records, artifacts, images, and textiles. In recent years, cultural heritage institutions responsible for collecting and preserving evidence of a shared past are confronting, re-examining, and in many cases making efforts to repair harmful, exploitative, or exclusive policies, practices, and norms. These include disrupting the widespread tendency for privileging, preserving, and reproducing a history that is predominantly white and further silencing the voices and histories of marginalized peoples and communities. 

The “Archives in the Atlantic” Conference will explore the ways archives and related cultural heritage institutions throughout the Atlantic World are confronting shared legacies of imperialism, slavery, and Indigenous dispossession through decolonizing traditional standards, developing liberatory practices, and expanding networks of belonging and representation. 

How can archival and curatorial institutions and the people who use them employ ethics of care when working with or studying communities affected by historical injustice, plunder of material culture, or erasure from the historic record? How can archivists, curators, and memory workers create more inclusive and representative holdings and build trust with members of historically marginalized and disenfranchised communities and groups? How has the landscape of repatriation transformed and how have these processes evolved in the tension between institutions, those who work within them, and stakeholder communities? Within the confines of those institutions, how do we confront and correct the curatorial decisions of past stewards of collections who perpetuated historical violences via their practice?

Other Potential Topics Include:

  • Reparative and Inclusive Description and/or Metadata Remediation
  • Ethical Collecting
  • Repatriating Collections 
  • Working with Indigenous Communities
  • Historic Preservation-National Trust-Saving Places
  • Working with Descendant Communities 
  • Black Memory Workers
  • Community Archiving 
  • Digital Archives and Digital Exhibits
  • HBCUs and Tribal Archives and Libraries 
  • Interpretation 
  • Developing Authentic Partnerships 
  • Cultural Humility in Archives and Museum Settings 

To submit a proposal and learn more, visit https://claw.cofc.edu/conferences/2024-conference-archives-in-the-atlantic/.

 

Afro-Brazilian Activist Vilma Reis Visits CofC

Contributed by John Thomas III, PhD
Department of Political Science, College of Charleston

On March 20, 2023 the College of Charleston hosted renowned Afro-Brazilian activist and scholar Vilma Reis. Ms. Reis was visiting the United States as part of a tour of Afro-Brazilian feminists organized by Dr. Gladys Mitchell-Walthour of North Carolina Central University. Her visit was arranged by CofC Political Science Assistant Professor John Thomas III as part of his “Politics of Latin America” course. In addition to CLAW, support for Ms. Reis visit was provided by African American Studies, Latin American and Caribbean Studies, the Political Science Department, the Portuguese Program and Women’s and Gender Studies.

A reception was organized for Ms. Reis with CofC students, faculty, staff, and local community representatives before the lecture. Due to weather delays, Ms. Reis arrived shortly before her talk was due to start. After a brief introduction by Political Science Chair Hollis France, Ms. Reis addressed the packed Stern Ballroom. She spoke on the topic “Race, Gender, People’s Democracy and Political Participation: Political parties and racial and gender (under)representation.” In her lecture, she highlighted the unique political environment that Afro-Brazilian women face and the challenges they face in garnering political representation. Ms. Reis also noted how Black academics and activists from the United States and Brazil have had a series of interchanges that have proven mutually beneficial and reinforcing.

Even after fielding several questions from the attendees, multiple students and faculty members engaged with Ms. Reis up until she returned to the airport to continue her tour. A group of CofC students will return the visit with Ms. Reis this summer in her home of Salvador da Bahia, Brazil.

2023 Hines Prize Winner Announced

Headshot of Evan Turiano smiling with pink and green botanical features in the background

The Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World Program is pleased to announce the winner of the 2023 Rachel Hines Prize. This year’s winner is The Politics of Fugitive Slave Rendition and the Coming of the Civil War by Dr. Evan Turiano. Turiano received his Ph.D. from the City University of New York Graduate Center in 2022. His dissertation, “‘Secession’s Moving Foundation’: Fugitive Slave Renditionand the Politics of American Slavery” also received the 2023 St. George Tucker Society Bradford-Delaney Dissertation Prize. He is currently the 2023 Walter O. Evans Fellow at Yale University, sponsored by the Beinecke Library and the Gilder Lehrman Center.

The Rachel Hines Prize is awarded to the best first book-manuscript relating to any aspect of the Carolina Lowcountry and/or the Atlantic World. The prize carries a cash award of $1,000 and preferential consideration by the University of South Carolina Press for the CLAW Program’s book series. Funded by a generous donation by retired professor, Dr. Sam Hines in honor of his mother, Rachel Hines, this award support early career scholars.

2021 Hines Prize Winner Announced

Dr. Caroline Grego, Visiting Assistant Professor, Queens University of Charlotte and 2021 Hines Prize Winner

We are proud to announce that the winner of our 2021 Hines Prize winner is Dr. Caroline Grego, a Visiting Assistant Professor at Queens University of Charlotte.

She received the prize for her manuscript, Hurricane of the New South: How the Great Sea Island Storm of 1893 Shaped the Jim Crow LowCountry which is currently under contract with University of North Carolina Press.

Hines Prize 2023 Call for Submissions

The Hines Prize is awarded to the best first book-manuscript relating to any aspect of the Carolina Lowcountry and/or the Atlantic World. The prize carries a cash award of $1,000 and preferential consideration by the University of South Carolina Press for the CLAW Program’s book series. If you have a manuscript on a topic pertaining to the Carolina Lowcountry and/or Atlantic World, please send a copy to CLAW Director Sandra Slater slaters@cofc.edu before May 15, 2023. If you have graduate students with potential manuscripts that could contend for the Prize, please make sure that they know of this biennial opportunity.

Lori Glover Lecture Rescheduled

The lecture by Dr. Lorri Glover on her book, Eliza Lucas Pinckney is being rescheduled.  The campus is adamant that no events affiliated with CofC be held this evening because of concerning weather and access to WiFi for students and faculty.  CLAW is working with Lorri to reschedule, so stay tuned.  Thank you for your understanding and please be safe today.

An Interview With Dr. Victoria Barnett-Woods

Book Cover for Cultural Economies of the Atlantic World by Victoria Barnett-Woods.

This past week CLAW Director Sandy Slater interviewed Dr. Victoria Barnett-Woods about her new edited collection, Cultural Economies of the Atlantic World: Objects and Capital in the Transatlantic Imagination (2020). Dr. Victoria Barnett-Woods is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at Loyola University Maryland. To access this interview please use the following link: https://cofc.zoom.us/rec/share/Rek2Sl5rJD3H

INSTITUTE FOR AFRICAN AMERICAN RESEARCH (IAAR) VIRTUAL SYMPOSIUM

Dear friends,

Please join the IAAR this Friday and Saturday (November 13-14, 2020) as they commemorate 350 years of the Carolina-Barbados connection. The IAAR website has been updated with the titles of the presentations: https://www.sc.edu/study/colleges_schools/artsandsciences/centers_and_institutes/iaar/.

Please see the registration links below for the symposium.

Click Here to Register for Day 1 (Friday, November 13, 2020)

Click Here to Register for Day 2 (Saturday, November 14, 2020)

Interdisciplinary Journal Call for Proposals

Understanding and Dismantling Privilege Journal Special Issue on the theme All Black Lives Matter

“In response to the murder of Breonna Taylor and others, ongoing systemic anti-Black racism and the outpouring of support to disrupt these current inequities, Understanding and Dismantling Privilege seeks to publish a special issue illustrating that not only do Black Lives Matter, but All Black Lives Matter. Students (youth and adult), activists, scholars, educators, and practitioners are invited to submit scholarship, personal reflections, creative pieces, and action-oriented curricular ideas that speak to lived experiences and critically constructed perceptions of All Black Lives. This special issue intends to address the diversity of those who identify as Black and honor additional lived experiences and social identities.”

Works must be submitted by November 1, 2020. For further details please visit: Call for submissions: ALL BLACK LIVES MATTER.