CLAW History
In 1994, the College established the Program in the Carolina Lowcountry and the Atlantic World to promote scholarship on the Lowcountry, the Atlantic World, and the connections between the two, to strengthen the College’s instructional program, and to promote public understanding of the region and its place in a broader international context.
What's New?
Regulated Wild:
The Impact of Human & Natural Forces
on the Lowcountry Landscape
Thursday Lecture Series
October 2 - Topic: Sweetgrass - Speakers: Dr. Dale Rosengarten (College of Charleston), Thomasena Stokes (Sweetgrass Festival), Dr. Danny J. Gustafson (The Citadel), Karl Ohlandt (Spring Island Trust), and Nakia Wigfall (Six Mile Community in Mt. Pleasant); 7:30 pm, Avery Research Center
November 13 - Topic: Ecology of Rice - Speaker: Dr. Richard Porcher (The Citadel); 7:30 pm, Arnold Hall
December 4 - Topic: Sea Island Cotton - Speaker: Dr. Richard Porcher (The Citadel); 7:30 pm, Arnold Hall
January 15 - Topic: Indigo - Speaker: Arianne King-Comer; 7:30 pm, Avery Research Center
February 5 - Topic: Grapes - Speaker: Dr. David Shields (University of South Carolina); 7:30 pm, Avery Research Center
March 12 - Topic: Fish - Speaker: Edwin Gardner (Independent Scholar); 7:30 pm, Avery Research Center
April 2 - Topic: Longleaf Pines - Speaker: Dr. Jean Everett (College of Charleston); 7:30 pm, Avery Research Center
Topic titles and more information will be posted soon.
Call for Manuscripts
Do you hava a manuscript in hand or in preparation that would fit the scope of our book series? Do you know others who do?
If your manuscript is for a first book you should consider entering it for the competition for the fourth biennial award of the Hines Prize given to the best first book relating to any aspect of the Carolina Lowcountry and/or the Atlantic World.
The prize carries a cash award of $1,000 and preferential consideration by the University of South Carolina Press for the Program's book series.
The Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World Book Series
Next Deadline: May 1, 2009
2007 Hines Prize Winner
T. J. Desch-Obi, winner of the 2007 Hines Prize, will give a lecture in this year’s Wachovia Lecture series. Including 45 illustrations, Dr. Desch-Obi’s Fighting for Honor: The History of African Martial Arts Traditions in the Atlantic World sets out the rich history of the arrival and dissemination of African martial arts in the Atlantic world and furthers our understanding of the powerful influence of enslaved populations on our general culture. Grounded in historical and cultural anthropological method, Desch-Obi traces the influence of well-delineated African traditions on long-observed but misunderstood African and African American cultural activities in North America, Brazil, and the Caribbean. He links the Brazilian martial art capoeira to reports of slave activities recorded in colonial and antebellum North America, and images of kalenda African stick-fighting techniques to the Haitian Revolution.
Congratulations!
Dr. O. Vernon Burton's (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) recent book The Age of Lincoln won the 2007 Heartland Prize for Non-Fiction. He will appear at the College of Charleston in February 2009. The book is earning rave reviews, typified by this opening paragraph by John David Smith for bookpage.com: “If the Civil War era was America's Iliad, then historian Orville Vernon Burton is our latest Homer. Burton, a distinguished scholar at the University of Illinois, is best known for his widely acclaimed In My Father's House Are Many Mansions (1985), a brilliantly nuanced social history of Edgefield County, South Carolina. With The Age of Lincoln, Burton has significantly widened his lens, ratcheted up his analysis and produced a magisterial narrative history of American social and intellectual life from the age of slavery up to the era of Jim Crow. New details, fresh insights and sparkling interpretations punctuate nearly every page of Burton's fast-paced and elegantly written new book.”
Abolition Bicentenary Commemoration
To mark the bicentenary of the abolition of the international slave trade, the Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World program at the College of Charleston spearheaded an ambitious city-wide collaboration to commemorate slavery, resistance, and abolition, and the African American contribution as a whole to the development of Charleston, the Lowcountry, South Carolina, and the nation. The commemoration invited involvement from all of the city and region's major historical sites, both publicly and privately owned, as well as collaboration with city and state administrations in the areas of archives, education, and tourism. As part of the ongoing international UNESCO transatlantic slave trade curriculum initiative, the CLAW program worked with state and local education authorities to integrate the commemoration into school curricula. Charleston's Office of Cultural Affairs included appropriate events in its Moja, Spoleto USA, and Piccolo Spoleto festivals in 2008. Click here to view events in the Charleston area (PDF).
The College of Charleston marked the commemoration by offering an array of special courses, guest lectures, performances and exhibitions. Related events and classes at the College of Charleston and Trident Technical College (in PDF).
For Students:
Student Research Travel Grants (click for information)
For Educators:
Are you looking for books, websites and information about the Transatlantic Slave Trade? Visit our extensive bibliography and links pages.
UNESCO’s African Passages
In 2004, the Transatlantic Slave Trade Education Project (TST) of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) encouraged each participating member state to develop a “Site of Memory” website about their region as an educational resource for teachers and other educators around the world. An important aim of UNESCO’s Transatlantic Slave Trade Education Project is the preservation and protection of places of memory related to the Slave Trade. Over 100 schools in 23 nations around the Atlantic World participate in this project.
A “site of memory” is a contemporary geographic or physical location with cultural, spiritual, or historic elements that can be interpreted to teach some or all of the themes of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. It can include buildings, the natural environment or the site of a significant event.
UNESCO’s African Passages is intended to be a prototype “Site of Memory” website. Focusing on the Ashley River Historic District of the Lowcountry surrounding Charleston, South Carolina, it explores the journey of Africans from freedom to slavery, the transformation of the landscape and development of wealth generated by the work of enslaved Africans, and the surviving traditions of those individuals in contemporary South Carolina.
UNESCO’s African Passages is a multimedia presentation and demonstrates not only the past contributions of enslaved people but reveals as well the enduring legacy of those contributions—in people, in music, in naming practices, in the built environment—as part of our effort to reveal the "living" past. Created and refined through a collaboration of academic and public historians, historic site and museum professionals, interested individuals and educators from around the world, this website contains spoken word and musical recordings, a series of primary documents—including maps and plantation records, as well as a detailed educational component with lesson plans and additional activities for teachers’ use in integrating the materials into their classrooms.
Related Links:
The United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
www.unesco.org
More about UNESCO’s Transatlantic Slave Trade Education Project
www.unesco.org/education/asp/tst
The UNESCO Slave Route Project
www.unesco.org/culture/slaveroute
