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.
The Gullah Geechee Cultural Heritage Corridor NHA invites you to attend a live, virtual event on Thursday, October 29, at 4PM EST. This virtual event will bring together a group of emerging, traditional artists from across the nation: Jake Blount, Sara Makeba Daise, Marquise Knox and Latanya D. Tigner. They are all deeply rooted in traditional culture and drawing on that powerful wellspring to offer important, contemporary social critiques of race, racial injustice and notions of self-identity. Their work encourages us to shape new narratives around contemporary, cultural identities rooted in traditional ways of knowing, living and making art — yet keenly responsive to our current moment.
Prior to the abolition of slavery, thousands of African-descended people in the Americas lived in freedom. Their efforts to navigate daily life and negotiate the boundaries of racial difference challenged the foundations of white authority. Black Freedom in the Age of Slavery examines how these individuals built lives in freedom for themselves and their families in two of the Atlantic World’s most important urban centers: Cartagena, along the Caribbean coast of modern-day Colombia, and Charleston, in the lowcountry of North America’s Atlantic coast.
Built upon research conducted on three continents, this book takes a comparative approach to understanding the contours of black freedom in the Americas. It examines how various paths to freedom, responses to the Haitian Revolution, opportunities to engage in skilled labor, involvement with social institutions, and the role of the church all helped shape the lived experience of free people of color in the Atlantic World.
Earlier in the Spring semester, as a part of the LCWA World Affairs Signature Series Sea Life, Dr. Carl Wise and Dr. Blake Scott coordinated an oral history booth and educational talk aboard the Spirit of South Carolina.
Ideas of home have taken on new meaning in this fraught moment of pandemic. For people less fortunate, home can represent insecurity and be charged with fear; and for those on the frontlines of COVID-19 it may be a place newly tenuous, frequented for momentary respite at best.
Dis/placements features ten artists whose works deal with issues of displacement from their ancestral homeland in various capacities. Artists were paired with writers who have offered their own reflections on the work and its relationship to the concepts of home and displacement. When taken together, this collection of work provides an opportunity to consider the traits and aspects that are both similar and jarringly disparate–from Asia to Africa, to Europe and the Middle East.
Hung Liu, Imperial Garden, 2014. Cast resin mixed media on box, hand painted by the artist, 60″ x 97″ Image courtesy of Trillium Graphics.
Left, former Dean Samuel Hines and right, Dr. Huw T. David
Dr. Huw T. David, Director of Development at the Rothermere American Institute at Oxford University, was awarded the biennial Hines Prize by former Dean Sam Hines on Thursday, April 14th, for his manuscript, The Atlantic at Work: Britain and South Carolina’s Trading Networks, 1730 to 1790.
The prize, endowed by former College of Charleston Dean Samuel Hines, is awarded every other year for the best first manuscript on a topic relating to the Carolina Lowcountry and/or Atlantic World.
“David’s manuscript presents a compendious history of the trade relations between South Carolina and Great Britain in the eighteenth century, both in the decades leading up to the Revolutionary War and immediately following the Revolution,” CLAW director Simon Lewis said.
David’s manuscript derives from his thesis at Oxford University, for which he used a collective biography of some two dozen “Carolina traders.” His study offers new insights into the political economy of Carolina trade with Great Britain and its impact on Atlantic politics in the era of the American Revolution. David’s study reveals how these men’s trading activity at first acted as a stabilizing force but from the 1760s on aggravated intra-imperial discord. After the Revolution, according to David, Carolinians exercised greater commercial discretion than contemporaries and historians have appreciated. David’s work thus challenges contentions of South Carolina’s continuing commercial subservience to British trading interests.
In the context of remarkably strong competition, with manuscripts on topics ranging from the Civil War to African and African American watermen, the Hines Prize committee praised David’s manuscript especially for its placing of the Lowcountry squarely at the center of Atlantic World geo-politics in the critical decades before, during, and immediately after American independence.
David works as a Development Officer at the Rothermere American Institute at Oxford University. He has previously published a number of articles in academic journals and he has held visiting fellowships at institutions including the University of South Carolina and the Huntington Library, Los Angeles.
Following the presentation, Dr. David lead a faculty seminar which discussed the notion of “Transatlantic Absenteeism” in colonial South Carolina.
“Women’s History Month is celebrated each year during March. In honor of celebrating women’s achievements throughout history, we wanted to share this article about Harriet Tubman — arguably one of the most noteworthy women in history and whose efforts during the Civil War and Underground Railraod helped shape our nation. Harriet Tubman is best known for her efforts during the Underground Railroad; however, she also played an important role in working with Union soldiers and freeing Southern slaves during the Civil War. Read more about her incredible efforts in this article written by Becky Oakes.”
The Old Exchange Building and Provost Dungeon, a national historic landmark located at the intersection of East Bay and Broad Street in downtown Charleston, South Carolina, has served many purposes for the city during its three hundred years.
These functions include: a jailhouse for hapless pirates, a customs and exchange building for a myriad of Atlantic goods entering the port city, a British-controlled dungeon harboring Revolutionary prisoners, a civic government institution where the South Carolina delegates who signed the Declaration of Independence were elected, the location of the the South Carolina convention which ratified the U.S. Constitution, and where George Washington was lavishly entertained for a week during his national post-Revolutionary war tour. However, a new role of the Old Exchange Building, equal in national significance to the aforementioned functions as well as critical to comprehending the local history of Charleston, has been researched and verified by Rice University Ph.D. candidate and research affiliate of the Old Exchange Building, Edwin C. Breeden. Continue reading New Historic Marker and Exhibit at the Old Exchange Building: “Slave Auctions,” Edwin C. Breeden
