Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World

Upcoming Conferences

Our conferences draw together a national and international group of both established and beginning scholars to explore the histories, cultures and dynamics that reveal the Lowcountry and the Atlantic World to be regions of constant interaction and complex connection.

At the heart of these highly successful events is a shared commitment across disciplinary boundaries to depict, on the one hand, the distinctive textures of lives lived within specific places, and, on the other, to build conceptual bridges that link several such locales together as connected parts of a world characterized by a pervasive Atlantic dimension.

These conferences have been funded by grants from the National Endowment for Humanities, Humanities Council SC, and other corporate donors.

Spring 2011
CLAW Presents United States Civil War as International Conflict

In 2011, the United States will observe the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War. The Program in the Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World (CLAW) at the College of Charleston will host an international conference to mark this important anniversary.  In keeping with the ethos of CLAW we will examine this event by looking at it in an international context. The conference will focus on the effects and implications of the Civil War on the Atlantic and wider world. Some of the questions to be addressed include: How did the Union and Confederacy operate foreign diplomacy?  How did nations in the rest of the world view this conflict?  What did Americans, particularly South Carolinians, think of international attitudes toward the United and Confederate States?  What did Americans living abroad think of the conflict?  What impact did Confederate exiles/colonies have on their host countries?  What impact did American Emancipation have on slavery in Latin America, Africa etc.?  How did the Civil War influence World views of the U.S., particularly the South, and how did Unionists/Confederates see themselves in the world?

Co-sponsored Conferences:

February 18 - 20, 2010
Women in the Iberian-American Atlantic (1500-1800)

Call for Papers 

The Program in the Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World (CLAW) at the College of Charleston calls for papers on Women in the Iberian and Latin American Atlantic World.  The conference will take place in Charleston, South Carolina, from Feb. 18 to 20, 2010.  This interdisciplinary conference welcomes papers on Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American history, literature, cultural production, etc.  We hope to examine questions such as: Who were the women that traveled from the Iberian Peninsula to the New World or vice-versa? What ideas did they bring with them? What influence did women who did not physically travel have on the Atlantic world? What role did women play in creating an Atlantic network? What can women’s experience in the Atlantic World tell us about the Atlantic cultural production, literary exchanges, economy, race relations, religion, etc., between 1500 and 1800? 

Three Keynote Speakers:

1. Lisa Vollendorf: Professor of Spanish, California State University at Long Beach.
2. Allyson Poska, Professor of History, University of Mary Washington.
3. Bianca Premo, Associate Professor of History, Florida International University.

 Logistics: The symposium will take place from Thursday to Saturday. The three keynote speakers will each give a plenary talk. We will also have 5 or 6 additional panels of select participants. This symposium is open (and not limited) to professors of literature, history, political science, anthropology, and sociology. We particularly encourage new scholars and graduate students to submit proposals. The format of the sessions will be roundtable discussion. One month before the conference each participant will submit their completed paper to be posted on a secure site. During the session each participant will be allotted 10 minutes to discuss the main points of their paper.  There will be a respondent for each session and ample time for discussion. There is the possibility for a volume of selected papers from the conference to be published in our Carolina Atlantic World Series by the University of South Carolina Press (For more info. see www.sc.edu/uscpress )

Charleston, South Carolina is a prime location for this conference.  It was a major city in the Atlantic World with strong connections to Europe, Africa, and the Caribbean as well as other parts of North America. South Carolina was also site of Santa Elena (1566-1587), the northern most Spanish settlement during the colonial period and the capital of La Florida Province.

Please submit one-page proposals in English and one-page c.v. to Dr. Sarah E. Owens, Dept. of Hispanic Studies as an attachment to owenss@cofc.edu by August 1, 2009.  For more info. on the CLAW program visit www.cofc.edu/atlanticworld/

For more information, contact the conference coordinator, Dr. Sarah E. Owens (College of Charleston).

March 2010
Religion and the Sea: North American Faiths in the Maritime World

This conference seeks to bring together scholars from a variety of disciplines and geographic areas to explore, through paper presentations and discussions, the relationship of the sea to American religious cultures and history. The sea is, and has been, a source of food, transportation, play, destruction, refuge, myth, and legend. It has fired the imagination as a place of both possibility and limit.

Experientially, the sea has also been the site of innovation and potential as well as constraint and death. From the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries, the sea was an active and important part of Americans’ orientation to the world. Travel to Europe or elsewhere meant a long voyage across the ocean. Whaling was an integral part of the American economy. While some Americans were exploring and occupying the continent’s interior, others were moving outwards, bringing America to the world and the world to America. From missionaries to seamen, from immigrants to diplomats, the sea was a part of everyday life.

Today, amidst the buzz of globalization and reconfigurations of early American history through the lens of the Atlantic World, and with an increasing awareness of the importance of the Pacific World in the formation of modern religion(s) and culture(s), the sea continues to be an important, if overlooked, element of religious and cultural history and practice. This conference seeks to encourage the convergence of scholarship around this topic. By raising the flag of “religion and the sea” as an area of research, we hope to foster dialogue and scholarly exchange across disciplines and subject areas, and to spark further thought that promises to make important contributions to understanding religion and culture in North America.

For more information, please contact Dr. Elijah T. Siegler (College of Charleston) or Dr. Richard "Chip" J. Callahan, Jr. (University of Missouri).