James Island Arts will present a special program on ring shouts and praise houses at McLeod Plantation  Historic Site on April 28, 2018. Ring shouts and praise houses are two examples of the rich cultural traditions found in the Americas western Atlantic basin and rooted in the West African cultures of people captured and sold into slavery. SC Humanities supported this program with a Mini Grant. Students from the University of North Carolina, Charlotte will perform a dance inspired by three types of dances from the Africa diaspora: Palo, an Afro-Cuban warrior dance; Trinidadian circle dances; and Gullah Geechee Ring
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SC Humanities is pleased to announce that eight new speakers have joined the Speakers Bureau: Humanities Out Loud program. Offering a variety of interesting programs from “Pat Conroy’s Reverence for Teaching” to “Music and Politics” to “How Shirley Temple Changed America,” these eight scholars are available to speak for public audiences at nonprofit organizations or public institutions across the state. The Speakers Bureau program is one of the longest-running and most popular programs offered by SC Humanities. The eight new speakers are: Debra Conner Debra Conner has worked as a Chautauqua performer since receiving a grant from the National Endowment for
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The University of South Carolina will explore current perspectives on American (Jewish) Humor through a conference on April 28 – 30, 2018. The conference seeks to serve both the University of South Carolina and the Columbia community by bringing about a much-needed discussion of civility in discourse, as it relates to the use (and misuse) of religious, ethnic, racial, and gender humor. SC Humanities supported this program with a Mini Grant. The conference will examine humor in the contexts of (i) American and European traditions; (ii) racial, ethnic, religious, and gender-based humor in general; and (iii) the current social and
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Historic Columbia and the University of South Carolina’s History Center will commemorate the 150th anniversary of the 14th Amendment with a public symposium on Thursday, April 19 and Friday, April 20. Leading legal scholars and historians will participate in the symposium, which will provide a public forum for discussing the Amendment’s relevance in today’s world and reflect on what it means to be a United States citizen. SC Humanities supported this program with a Major Grant. The 14th Amendment, enacted in 1868, was designed to secure the freedom of former enslaved Africans and African Americans by guaranteeing them the basic rights of citizenship and insuring equality
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The South Carolina Archives and History Foundation will present an exhibit titled South Carolina’s Reconstruction: Restoration, Revolution, Reaction which will offer a concise overview of the period of Reconstruction following the American Civil War. The exhibit will open on April 25, 2018 and will be on display through the end of December. SC Humanities supported this program with a Major Grant. South Carolina’s Reconstruction: Restoration, Revolution, Reaction will use the holdings of the South Carolina Deparment of Archives and History to provide visitors insight into this often misunderstood era. Original copies of three of the state’s constitutions – those written in
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Winthrop University will present a keynote event featuring Dr. Cynthia Ensloe speaking about “#MeToo the World Over: Hollywood to Kabul to Beijing” on Monday, April 16, 2018. It will be the seventh and final event of a program series that started in September 2017. Dr. Ensloe (Clark University) will place the #MeToo movement into an international context. The free event will be live-streamed on Facebook and archived there. SC Humanities supported this program with a Mini Grant. Dr. Cynthia Ensloe is the author of fifteen books, including The Big Push: Exposing and Challenging Persistent Patriarchy (2017); Globalization and Militarism: Feminists Make
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The South Carolina Humanities Board of Directors awarded more than $60,000 in Major Grants to 10 cultural organizations after a February 23, 2018 Board Meeting in Columbia. The awards were selected through a competitive application and review process and are made possible by SC Humanities and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Matching community support for the 10 awarded projects totaled: $544,239. A list of awarded grants is provided below: Sponsoring Organization: Edisto Island Historic Preservation Society Project Title: An Exhibit of Early Edistonians Project Director: Gretchen Smith Awarded: $8,000; cost-share: $18,633 The Edisto Island Historic Preservation Society will create a new permanent exhibit in their museum about
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The Greenwood County Library in partnership with the Benjamin E. Mays Historical Site will present a three-month series on “Let’s Talk About Race in America.” Programs start on February 18 and go through May 2018. SC Humanities supported this project with a Mini Grant. The goal of the program is for Greenwood County to come together to celebrate diversity and multicultural appreciation in the community. “Locally, Greenwood and surrounding counties have a rich heritage of racial conflict and racial order within the societies that evolved here. America — as well as the Lakelands area — has greatly improved this divide between
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South Carolina State University will present programming in February and March 2018 intended to establish inter-generational dialogue regarding the changing meaning and significance of the term “Civil Rights” and commemorate and re-contextualize the Orangeburg Massacre. A variety of events are planned, including two art exhibitions, film screenings, and a community colloquium. SC Humanities supported this programming with a Major Grant in September 2017. The goal of “Resistance, Reform, and Reasoning: The Orangeburg Massacre” is to bring the processes of the human capacity for reasoning to understanding this complicated moment in South Carolina’s history in a new context. Using the tools of photography, visual
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The Gibbes Museum of Art will present the project “Guardians of the Gallery: Interpreting Visible Storage.” Designed to increase understanding about how staff protect and preserve the Museum’s collection of almost 10,000 works of art, the program will include permanent interpretive material, rotating exhibitions and public tours of the Collections Storage Center that will highlight operations involved with maintaining artwork and explain what visitors see as they peer through the glass walls. The first programming will start in March 2018. SC Humanities supported this program with a Mini Grant. The first exhibit that will be part of the “Guardians of
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