The Program in the Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World

Stephen Morton for The New York Times
Published: October 6, 2011

ATLANTA — The onetime name of Gov. Rick Perry’s Texas hunting camp is currently the most famous example of an egregious race-based place name, but it is not the only one.

Consider Runaway Negro Creek, which flows near a state park outside Savannah, Ga. The name is printed on nautical charts, but park rangers find it so uncomfortable to use, they try to avoid saying it.

It is one of several hundred places that have the word “Negro” in their names and still exist on government maps and in the local vernacular in dozens of states.

They are vestiges of racial attitudes that not that long ago made it acceptable to label a piece of property once leased by Gov. Rick Perry’s family as Niggerhead, which had been painted in block letters on a large rock at the entrance to the rural northern Texas hunting camp. The word was once so common it was used as a brand name for everyday items like soap, canned shrimp and tobacco.

Read more:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/07/us/perrys-hunting-camp-puts-focus-on-us-maps-race-based-names.html

Students in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the College of Charleston will premiere this short but powerful fim to the public at 5:30 pm on Thursday, October 27, 2011 in the Robert Scott Small Building, room 235 on the campus of the College of Charleston. This student-made film features Elder Carlie Towne, Ron Daise, Carolyn “Jabulile” White and “Queen Quet” among others who talk about their experiences, dreams, and hopes for the future of the Gullah/Geechee people, their language, and their culture.

The Robert Scott Small Building is located in the center of  campus. Parking is available at St. Philip Street and Wentworth Street garages. For more information, contact Dr. E. Moore Quinn, quinne@cofc.edu or 843-953-7306.

Tags: Gullah/Geechee

The History News Network just published an op ed piece he wrote on memorials, race and gender on the National Mall:

http://hnn.us/articles/10-3-11/weve-come-a-long-way-from-memorializing-the-slave-mammy.html

The American Studies Program at the University of Miami presents:

ATLANTIC GEOGRAPHIES

A 4-day institute for advanced graduate students and recent PhDs May 14-17, 2012 The Elena Díaz-Versón Amos Conference Room of the Cuban Heritage Collection and the 3rd-Floor Conference Room, Richter Library, University of Miami www.as.miami.edu/ams/atlanticgeographies  

Keynote lecture and workshop by Vincent Brown (Professor of History and of African and African American Studies, Duke University). Public lecture: Monday, May 14, 4:30 p.m. Closed workshop: Tuesday, May 15, 9:30 a.m.

 The field of Atlantic studies has been at the forefront of the spatial turn in the humanities and social sciences for several decades, challenging national paradigms for the study of history and culture, embracing historical geography in groundbreaking projects such as the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, and producing a rich body of scholarship that brings together art, geography, history, literature, and politics in innovative and fruitful ways. From D. W. Meinig’s Atlantic America, 1492-1800 (1986) to Nicolás Wey Gómez’s The Tropics of Empire (2008), geographical studies of the Atlantic world have centrally informed Atlantic history and transatlantic literary studies. Most recently, Atlantic studies has also begun to engage the expanded datasets and sophisticated cartographies of geographical information systems (GIS).

 Eager to see what the next generation of scholars brings to this conversation and how they will change it, we invite applications from advanced doctoral students and recent PhDs in the humanities and social sciences who have completed or will complete the PhD between May 2010 and May 2013. We are interested in all environments, regions, communities, and countries of the Atlantic world and particularly in the wide array of discourses, events, and processes that bind them together. We hope that new maps of the field will emerge from these discussions and that participants will be able to draw and build on them over the course of their careers.

 Participants will discuss their pre-circulated working papers in closed seminars led by faculty from the University of Miami, Florida International University, and Florida Atlantic University, all of which share a strong scholarly tradition in Atlantic studies. The institute will provide several meals and a $300 stipend for all participants and hotel accommodations for out-of-town guests. Participants are responsible for their own travel arrangements and expenses, though we may be able to defray travel costs for one or two applicants who otherwise would not be able to attend. Although the common working language of the seminar will be English, we are eager to discuss a variety of geographic and linguistic areas and encourage applications from scholars in and of Africa, the Caribbean, and Latin America.

 Please send the following materials in PDF format to atlantic.geographies@miami.edu:

 1. a two-page description of your dissertation or book project; 2. a current CV; 3. a one-page abstract of the paper you wish to present; 4. (only if applicable) a request for partial travel funding. 5. Please arrange for two confidential letters of recommendation to be sent to the same email address.

Completed applications are due December 8, 2011. We will notify up to twelve successful applicants by mid-January 2012.

For more information, please visit our website at www.as.miami.edu/ams/atlanticgeographies.

Organizing committee: Tracy Devine Guzmán (Modern Languages and Literatures), Kate Ramsey (History), Tim Watson (American Studies and English), Ashli White (History).

The Atlantic Geographies Institute is generously supported by the following units at the University of Miami: the Program in American Studies, the University of Miami Libraries, the Office of the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, the Department of History, the Department of English, the Joseph Carter Memorial Fund of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures, the Department of Geography and Regional Studies, the Department of Philosophy, the Center for the Humanities, the Center for Latin American Studies, the Graduate School, the Atlantic Studies Interdisciplinary Research Group, and the Program in Africana Studies.

New York, Sep 30 2011  3:05PM

The committee tasked with building a permanent memorial at the United Nations to honour the victims of slavery and the transatlantic slave trade today launched a global competition for the design of the structure to remind the world that millions of Africans were violently removed from their homelands, abused and robbed of their dignity.

The UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) will administer the design competition, Ambassador Raymond Wolfe of Jamaica, the chair of the Permanent Memorial Committee on Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade, told a news conference at UN Headquarters.

“As we launch the competition I am pleased to report that all stakeholders including the members of the committee, Member States of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and the Africa Group which participated in the negotiations are supremely confident that UNESCO will manage a transparent, inclusive and politically impartial selection process,” said Mr. Wolfe.

He urged ministries of foreign affairs and culture of Member States to disseminate information about the design competition so that a “rich and diverse pool of applications can be submitted to UNESCO for consideration.” The deadline for submitting designs to the competition is 19 December 2011.

Philippe Kridelka, the Director of UNESCO’s New York Office and Representative to the UN, noted that the monument will not only be a symbol, but part of an education process in memory of slavery and the trans-Atlantic slave trade.

Some $4.5 million is required to build the monument, and just over $1 million has been raised through donations from States and others sources.

Mr. Wolfe encouraged corporations, philanthropists and the private sector to contribute to the project.

________________

For more details go to UN News Centre at http://www.un.org/news

Yale University’s Beinecke Library announces the recent acquisition of the archive of Thomas Thistlewood, eighteenth-century British planter in Jamaica.   Spanning more than thirty-five years, from before Thistlewood’s arrival in Jamaica in 1750 through his death in 1786, the archive comprises some 92 volumes of diaries and notebooks. 

The archive has already been the subject of several important recent works by scholars including James Walvin, Trevor Burnard, Douglas Hall, and Michael Chenoweth.    The collection adds to the Beinecke’s already extensive manuscript and archival holdings for early modern British history and materials relating to slavery and abolition, and will prove an invaluable resource for scholarship in the Atlantic World, the Caribbean, African Diaspora Studies, cultures of empire, and British and European history.

Once catalogued, the collection will be open for research. For more information contact Kathryn James at kathryn.james@yale.edu.

SC State University 1890 Research & Extension is among several organizations and businesses to join the City of Charleston in its efforts to revitalize the area where the former Cooper River bridges once touched down, near Cooper and Meeting streets. The 1890 Program has plans to develop an outreach community center, where extension educators will offer GED classes, nutrition education, youth-oriented programs, agriculture-related workshops and other programs and services relevant to the community needs. Development of the center will further enhance the existing services and programs that 1890 Extension provides to businesses, families and individuals in Charleston. Report of the community center was published Aug. 30 in the Charleston Post and Courier’s “Bridge-area makeover in slow lane: College plans community outreach center.”

The 1890 Research & Extension Program will provide updates on the development of the center as they become available.

CfP: 2012 Southern Historical Association — Reminder with Revised Submission Deadline (9/15)

The Program Committee for the 2012 conference of the Southern Historical Association invites proposals on all topics related to the history of the American South from its pre-colonial era to today. In addition, for the 2012 meeting in Mobile, it extends a special welcome to proposals relating to:

 * Mobile and the Gulf South (including its relation to the Caribbean and N. American interior)

* International, transnational, or comparative approaches to the American South

* 2012 as an anniversary of major historical events, publications, etc. (For example: War of 1812, Civil War 1862, Election of Woodrow Wilson 1912; Equal Rights Amendment 1972-1982. Or, the historical context for the 2012 Presidential Election and the American South).

The Program Committee accepts proposals for single papers but encourages session proposals that include two or three papers.

According to SHA policy, no one who appeared on the previous two programs, those at Charlotte and Baltimore, can be part of the program in Mobile. No two people from the same institution can be on the same session.

NOTE: New Policy regarding composition of proposals for the 2012 Program: Those submitting proposals should include suggestions of people who would be appropriate as commentators/chairs but not issue invitations. The Program Committee will select and invite a chair and usually two commentators.

DEADLINE: The deadline for proposals this year is September 15, 2011.

All 2012 proposals must be submitted online: http://www.uga.edu/sha/meeting/index.htm

If you are interested in submitting a session for the Latin American and Caribbean Section, please visit their web site: http://ww2.tnstate.edu/lacs/

2012 Program Committee Co-Chairs: Don Doyle and Marjorie Spruill, University of South Carolina don.doyle@sc.edu marjorie.spruill@sc.edu

Review of Robin Blackburn, The American Crucible: Slavery,
Emancipation and Human Rights

By Eric Foner
The Nation
August 10, 2011

http://www.thenation.com/article/162669/inhuman-bondage-slavery-emancipation-and-human-rights

This past spring, television viewers in Britain were treated to a six-part series called Civilization about the rise (and possible fall, if China has its way) of the West, hosted by the historian Niall Ferguson. One episode explored why after independence, the United States forged ahead economically while the nations of Latin America stagnated. In an unusual twist, Ferguson chose South Carolina, a state governed by a tight-knit planter oligarchy, as a model of Jeffersonian democracy resting on small property ownership, in contrast to the autocratic societies south of the border organized around large latifundia. Only after forty-five minutes of the one-hour show did Ferguson mention the existence of slaves-the majority of South Carolina’s population. When slavery was finally discussed, it was presented not as a crucial structural feature of early American society but as a moral dilemma, an “original sin” expiated by the election of Barack Obama.

SOURCE: Catholic Online (8-8-11)

Wealthy anonymous donors in the United States, a group of historians, archaeologists and concerned citizens are working to preserve what’s left of the infamous slave castle on Bunce Island near Sierra Leone in Africa. The area is a crucial site in remembering America’s slave trade in the 18th and 19th centuries. Philanthropists now want to build a museum that explores the island’s role in the transatlantic slave trade.

http://www.catholic.org/international/international_story.php?id=42314