Dr. Bernard Powers is a departmental director and professor emeritus at the College of Charleston whose research focuses on African American history and culture and slavery’s role in American history.  

Dr. Powers began studying history at Northwestern University. During his time there, he developed a specialized interest in American history. With a pre-developed interest in African Studies, Powers’ interests in African American and slavery studies began to take shape after observing the late Dr. Sterling Stuckey. Stuckey was a distinguished professor emeritus of history at the University of California, Riverside. He specialized in American slavery, the arts and history, and Afro-American intellectual and cultural history. Dr. Powers graduated from Northwestern University with a M.A. and Ph.D. in American history. Powers’ research of slavery in America inherently brought about a strong connection to Southern Studies.

Throughout the majority of Charleston and general South Carolina history, the region was populated by a majority of African Americans. 40% of all slaves that were brought into America were imported via the Charleston harbor. African Americans, as a result, had an especially large impact on the cultural development of the region. This piqued Dr. Powers’ interests and drew him to the College of Charleston. He began teaching history at the college in 1992 and taught until 2018. In 2018, he founded and began directing the Center for the Study of Slavery in Charleston (CSSC). This program studies the influence and activity of African American slaves in the Charleston area and, more specifically, at the College of Charleston. CSSC is a part of a broader organization that studies the relationship between slaves and Universities. The organization is called the University Studying Slavery Consortium and it is a multi-institutional collaboration. Dr. Powers describes CSSC as a, “think tank,” that answers important questions about the role of both slaves and slaveholders in the running and construction of the College of Charleston.

Dr. Powers works often with projects independent of the College of Charleston. Powers is currently the president of the International African American Museum located on the Cooper River in Charleston. The museum has been in the works for over 20 years and is projected to open in 2022. It will be the premier African American museum in the Southeast. Dr. Powers has also done research on the African Methodist Church. AME was the first African American independent religious denomination in the country and its presence in America lies directly in Powers’ field of study.

 Powers also researches the modern sociopolitical aspects of the confederate monuments across the South and specifically in Charleston. He believes that the removal of the John C. Calhoun monument was a huge step in the right direction for the Charleston community. He says that, despite his thorough knowledge in the field, he never would’ve expected the monument to come down in his lifetime. Powers believes that this is one of the most fascinating and exciting things about his studies and says that, oftentimes, “you think you understand a situation, then something comes out of left field and surprises you.” He is now working to install monuments of important, positive African American historical figures where the confederates once stood.

Dr. Annette Watson is a geographer who works as an Associate Professor in the Political Science department at CofC with a specialty in Human Environmental Geography. She teaches courses on environmental geography, Indigenous/Native American studies, and political ecology. Her research has focused on subsistence economies of North America, natural resource management, and the effect of climate change on indigenous wildlife policy. Dr. Watson got a B.A. in Human Ecology from College of the Atlantic, an M.A. in Northern Studies from University of Alaska-Fairbanks, and a Ph.D. in Geography from University of Minnesota.

At the College of Charleston, Dr. Watson teaches Reading the Lowcountry Landscape (GEOG 219), where students learn about the coastal area of the South where CofC is located. In this class, students use a variety of geographical techniques to analyze places in the Lowcountry. Dr. Watson has also contributed to the field of Southern Studies by collaborating with several Gullah/Geechee communities to “understand their connection to the ecology of the Sea Islands” and the effect of gentrification on their economies. She even participates in the Gullah/Geechee Sustainability Think Tank, which consists of community representatives and academics who research local Gullah communities. Through her collaborations, she has focused on the subsistence economies of these communities. In terms of her personal connection with the South, she says that she has “lived in Charleston since 2008, when [she] first was hired to teach at the College.” Along the way, she has developed many personal and professional relationships with the people who live in the region.

Dr. Watson told me that historical artifacts like “the shell midden rings left by Indigenous cultures from thousands of years ago” and “the sites of some of the earliest European settlement in the colonial era” are a major part of what makes the South such a unique place.” She noted that the varied histories that exist in the South provoke different responses across the cultures of the South and beyond. This is part of what she calls the continuous negotiation of Southern culture. The rich and diverse history of the region is what “produces the uniqueness of the South (and its sub-regions)”, according to Dr. Watson.

 Currently, Dr. Watson is continuing her research on Gullah/Geechee communities in the Lowcountry. She also recently conducted research on wildlife management and salmon fisheries conflict. Finally, Dr. Watson expressed her hope that some students in this class take her Reading the Lowcountry Landscape class at some point!

Dr. Gibbs Knotts is currently the Interim Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences at the College as well as a faculty member of the Southern Studies department.  Since he.   came to the College, he has been able to use his reformed view of the South to further the department and all the students that pass through it. His childhood as a “fraud” southerner has given him a unique perspective and respect for the South and everything he teaches. After obtaining degrees from both UNC and Emory, he has evolved from an “ashamed southerner” to someone that has a healthy respect for the evolution and complexities of the region.  Through his time at the College of Charleston, he has met other individuals that share similar thoughts about the South as well as music and authors, which has grown his interest in the region and its issues.  

Dr. Knotts has written several books throughout his career at both WCU and here at the College.  Through his work, he has studied the topics related to Southern Studies, such as the southern identity, which led him to co-author a book with another professor he met in his time at Western Carolina University.  Along with Dr. Christopher Cooper, Dr, Knotts wrote The Resilience of the Southern Identity: Why the South Still Matters in the Minds of Its People.  He has also written on topics more related to politics, which he also teaches at the College.  This resulted in a book he published in 2020 on the South Carolina Presidential Primary and it’s impact on the nation, as it is the first primary in the South.  He says that working as a professor has allowed him to be a “lifelong student” in both the Southern Studies department and beyond. 

Currently, Dr. Knotts is working on a project regarding the southern accent and the assumptions that can be made by hearing one.  This particular project involves the perception of southern politicians in comparison to those without an accent, and so far the results have shown that people prefer politicians without an accent.  He plans to add additional variables to the study before publishing it as an article sometime in the future. 

Leah Worthington is technically a librarian at the College of Charleston where she works to codirect both the Lowcountry Digital History Initiative and the Lowcountry Digital Library. She first came to the south to pursue her masters degree in History through the College of Charleston. Since the college did not offer a public history masters at the time she pursued internships with both of the programs she now helps direct alongside her degree in History in order to have a background that is fitting for her public history career. The Lowcountry Digital History Initiative is a collection of permanent online history exhibits and publications that tend to focus on more unrepresented history of the lowcountry. The Lowcountry Digital Library, though often confused, is different than the digital history initiative. The point of this program is to help make archives that store history about the lowcountry digital and accessible when the owner of the archive does not have the resources to do so themselves. What she days at the Digital History Initiative is manages the day to day operations. This includes finding authors to write for exhibits reading over said writings and working with graduate students to help them find pictures and write captions that can go along with exhibits as well. For the Digital Library the majority of her work has to do with verifying and digitizing the works that have to be put online so that they can be properly archived. When asked about why she chose these jobs in particular she explained some about public history. She told me how there was front of house work like giving tours on history and back of house work such as making sure information gets displayed. She said that, “I like the intellectual side of the backend or back of the house work” because of fact checking and making sure the public receives the right information. For the foreseeable future she plans to continue working on both of these projects and to constantly improve them.

Dr. Joe Kelly is a professor in the English department at the College of Charleston. He is currently the director of the Irish and Irish American Studies and has taught classes in modern Irish literature, modern British literature, composition, and western civilization. When Professor Kelly was 15, he moved from his home in New Jersey to Texas, which would later have a large impact on his career field. Professor Kelly would go on to attend the University of Dallas to get his bachelor’s degree in English and he would then attend the University of Texas at Austin to receive both his masters and doctorate in English. 

Being from an “old catholic Irish family”, Professor Kelly had a large interest in Irish literature and has written many pieces on the famous Irish author James Joyce. Although it may seem that Irish culture has little to do with the south, Professor Kelly does discuss how Irish nationalism was inspired by the civil rights movement in southern states. While he didn’t study the south specifically, Professor Kelly’s research and location in the south provided him the opportunity to write an article on Irish history in Charleston. After learning about the Irish history in the south, specifically looking towards Catholic Bishop John England, Professor Kelly took a turn in his career and began to look more at history than just literary criticism. He describes the situation as “it was just the fact that I happened to be living in the south that led to this encyclopedia article and then my fascination in writing this 500 word encyclopedia article led to this book which really changed the course of my career and I became, I would describe myself now as somebody who rights the history of ideas as opposed to the literary criticism”. Many of Professor Kelly’s works would now showcase this shift towards a different type of narrative. 

In his most recent novel Marooned: Jamestown, Shipwreck, and a New History of America’s Origin, Professor Kelly offers a different perspective to the beginning of America that focuses on reconstructing the confounding mythology of American history. He states that “It’s not so much that I’m interpreting things as I’m trying, myself at least in a small part, to contribute to that myth making”. In another one of his works that focuses more directly on the south, America’s Longest Siege: How Charleston Caused the Civil War, Professor Kelly is able to showcase the impact slavery had on Charleston culture which then affected the start of the Civil War. Both of these novels use the new type of narrative that Professor Kelly discovered while writing on the Irish south.

Professor Kelly’s current project is a novel showcasing the battle between two ideologies, liberal democracy and fascism, between World War l and World War ll. He plans on writing a narrative to show how modern writers were able to shift American culture in a way that allowed liberal democracy to succeed.