
71 George Street, Charleston, SC
Monday, March 20, 2023
4:00 PM – 5:30 PM (ET)
Thaddeus Street Jr. Education Center
Septima P. Clark Auditorium (Rm 118)
25 St. Philip Street, Charleston, SC
Tuesday, March 21, 2023
5:30PM – 7:00 PM(ET)
The Center for the Study of Slavery in Charleston has invited Tamara Lanier to deliver a lecture about her enslaved ancesto
Thaddeus Street Jr. Education Center
Septima P. Clark Auditorium (Rm 118)
25 St. Philip Street, Charleston, SC
Tuesday, March 21, 2023
5:00PM – 6:30 PM (ET)
Join African American Studies affiliate faculty Dr. Nakeisha Daniel and Gary Marshall of the Theatre Department in a conversation with Dr. Patricia Williams Dockery, the former director of the Avery Research Center, regarding her play, Septima. Septima, currently showing at PURE Theatre, depicted the life of Septima Clark. Explore Dockery’s process for depicting Septima Clark on the stage and the importance of her life on African American life in Charleston, South Carolina.
Join Dr. Mari N. Crabtree with a presentation of her sabbatical research.
Addlestone Library: Room 227
205 Calhoun Street, Charleston, SC
Thursday, March 23, 2023
5:00 PM – 6:30 PM(ET)
Black Studies scholars often have sought to recover Black voices that have been excluded, marginalized, or erased from mainstream scholarship as a form of reclamation, and as a corrective to research that excludes Black people, and therefore distorts, our understanding of the world in which we live. But what if some of these Black voices don’t want to be found? What claims to privacy do the dead have? This talk offers answers to these questions and will be part of a collection of essays Professor Crabtree is writing on ethical praxis and the craft of writing in Black Studies.
Join the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program in welcoming Kim Hass
Rita Hollings Science Center, Rm 101
College of Charleston
58 Coming Street, Charleston, SC 29401
Wednesday, April 19th
5:00 PM – 6:00 PM(ET)
Kim Haas is Executive Producer, Host and Creator of Afro-Latino Travels with Kim Haas, a travel show celebrating the African influence in Latin America. She has traveled extensively throughout Latin America. Kim has been active in Afro-Latino issues for more than a decade and is founder of losafrolatinos.com, a blog celebrating Afro Latino culture. Kim speaks fluent Spanish, Italian and Portuguese. Her undergraduate and graduate degrees are in Spanish. Kim is the owner of Haas Media LLC, a multilingual community outreach, translation services, and communications firm located in the greater New York City area.
Thursday, February 16th at 5 pm
Thaddeus Street Jr. Education Center * Septima Clark Auditorium
25 St. Philip Street, Room 118
origin story outlines a family history of distant sisters, grieving mothers and daughters, and alcoholic fathers. These poems take us from Kansas to Korea and back again in an attempt to reconnect with estranged family and familial ghosts divided by years of diaspora. An interrogation of cultural and personal myths, origin story wrestles with the questions: Who will remember us? How do we deal with the failures of memory? Whose stories are told?
Black southerners often shielded their loved ones from the most painful memories of local lynchings with strategic silences but also told lynching stories about vengeful ghosts or a wrathful God or the deathbed confessions of a lyncher tormented by his past. They protested lynching and its legacies through art and activism, and they mourned those lost to a mob’s fury. They infused a blues element into their lynching narratives to confront traumatic memories and keep the blues at bay, even if just for a spell. Telling their stories troubles the simplistic binary of resistance or submission that has tended to dominate narratives of Black life and reminds us that amid the utter devastation of lynching were glimmers of hope and an affirmation of life.
My Soul Is a Witness traces the long afterlife of lynching in the South through the traumatic memories it left in its wake. She unearths how African American victims and survivors found ways to live through and beyond the horrors of lynching, offering a theory of African American collective trauma and memory rooted in the ironic spirit of the blues sensibility—a spirit of misdirection and cunning that blends joy and pain.
The Conseula Francis Emerging Scholar Lecture presents Tara A. Bynum and Reading Pleasures: Everyday Black Living in Early America
Tuesday, February 7th at 7 pm
Avery Research Center * Senator McKinley Washington Auditorium
In the early United States, a Black person committed an act of resistance simply by reading and writing. Yet we overlook that these activities also brought pleasure. In her book, Reading Pleasures: Everyday Black Living in Early America, Tara A. Bynum tells the compelling stories of four early American writers who expressed feeling good despite living while enslaved or only nominally free. The poet Phillis Wheatley delights in writing letters to a friend. Ministers John Marrant and James Albert Ukawsaw Gronniosaw memorialize their love for God. David Walker’s pamphlets ask Black Americans to claim their victory over slavery. Together, their writings reflect the joyous, if messy, humanity inside each of them. This proof of a thriving interior self in pursuit of good feeling forces us to reckon with the fact that Black lives do matter.
This week, the Department of Theatre and Dance in the College of Charleston School of the Arts will open Kim Hines’ moving drama, Home on the Mornin’ Train.
The kindness of strangers amidst great danger has kept the Underground Railroad alive to this day. In this play, the audience sees the freedom train in action as two stories unfold a hundred years apart. In 1939 as World War II begins, young Jews escaping Germany find inspiration in a book about the journey of young slaves escaping the South, in 1839. Intertwined in their stories are beautiful African American and Jewish songs that speak to a legacy of hope through the ages. Their stories stand as a testament to the unimaginable courage to reach out and help no matter one’s color, one’s beliefs or one’s station in life.
Director and Music Director of the production, Laura Turner, describes the drama, stating, “Unlike most scripts dealing with Slavery or the Holocaust, this play chooses to focus on the brave work done by those willing to risk their lives for freedom. Instead of dwelling on the horrible circumstances of the characters’ situations, this play’s uplifting music and surprising moments of humor, takes the audience on a journey of hope.”
DETAILS: The production will take place Thursday, March 12 through Sunday, March 15 with a second run from Wednesday, March 18 through Sunday, March 22. The performances will take place at the Chapel Theatre, 172 Calhoun St. Performances will begin at 7:30 p.m, except the Sunday shows, which will take place at 3:00 p.m. only. The performances on Saturday, March 14 and Saturday, March 21 will take place at both 3:00 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $10 for College of Charleston students, faculty/staff, and senior citizens and $15 for the general public. Tickets can be purchased online at theatre.cofc.edu, or by email or phone (843) 953-6306.