Partnerships

CLAW-Rothermere Visiting Fellowship Program

The Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World Program (CLAW) is proud to announce a partnership between CLAW and the Rothermere American Institute (RAI) at Oxford University. In accordance with the CLAW program’s public mission of enhancing public awareness of the history of the Carolina Lowcountry in the broader context of the Atlantic World, the CLAW-Rothermere Visiting Fellowship Program is designed to draw attention to the wealth of archival, architectural, and archaeological material in Charleston and its environs. The breadth and depth of Charleston resources affirm the city’s historic connections with the United Kingdom which reinforces Charleston as a key node in the wider Atlantic World, not least in relation to the history of the transatlantic slave trade and the legacy thereof.

The inaugural CLAW-Rothermere Visiting Fellowship will be taken up between March 16th and 27th, 2020 by Professor Stephen Tuck, Professor of History at Oxford University and Tutorial Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford. A member of Oxford’s Race and Resistance Across Borders research network (www.torch.ox.ac.uk/raceresist), Dr. Tuck has recently completed an overview of the African American struggle for equality in the USA from 1861 to 2008. As part of his current research on the connections between religion, racism and resistance during the Jim Crow era, Professor Tuck will spend his two-week fellowship in Charleston researching the South Carolina childhood of Francis Grimke (1850-1937), one of the most renowned pastors and civil rights activists of his era. Towards the end of his stay Professor Tuck will deliver a Wells Fargo Distinguished Lecture and guest-lecture in appropriate College of Charleston classes.

The establishment of this annual Fellowship attests to the close connections between Charleston and the United Kingdom, and the recognition among Atlantic Studies scholars worldwide of the crucial importance of Charleston in the Atlantic World. That this inaugural Fellowship will be taken up in the same year as the city of Charleston celebrates the 350th anniversary of the first permanent British settlement here in 1670 makes the establishment of this scholarly connection between the College of Charleston and Oxford University especially significant. The CLAW program looks forward to making the Fellowship a significant annual feature of our academic calendar and to building further mutual arrangements between the College and Oxford.