Dart After Dark Book Discussions:
We are excited to announce the continuance of this Book Discussion Series into 2013. Book discussions will be held on the third Thursday of every month at the Dart Library.
This series was made possible through a generous grant from the National Council of Black Studies.

The Book List for 2013 includes:
January 17:The Other Wes Moore by Wes Moore
March 21: Perfect Peace by Daniel Black
May 16: Letters to a Young Brother: MANifest Your Destiny by Hill Harper
July 18: Falling into Grace by Michelle Stimpson
September 19: Sister Citizen by Melissa Harris-Perry
November 21: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz

Avery Research Center to Host “Eternal Vigilantes: The Art of Karole Turner Campbell”.

On Friday, October 19, the African American Studies program will be pleased to welcome on campus a distinguished romance novelist, AlTonya Washington.  She will be visiting with Dr. Conseula Francis’ English 364 class which is focused on Black Women Writers. 

After class, all African American Studies students are invited to attend a lunch discussion with Ms. Washington in the 9 College Way conference room at noon.

About Ms. Washington: (from her website, http://www.lovealtonya.com/index.html)

“AlTonya Washington has been a romance novelist for 9 years. Her novel Finding Love Again won the Romantic Times Reviewer’s Choice Award for Best Multicultural Romance in 2004.

She lives in North Carolina and recently received her Masters Degree in Library Science. She’s served as an Instructor at Central Piedmont Community College in Charlotte, NC where she taught “Writing the Romance Novel” for two years.”

StoryCorps, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to recording, preserving, and sharing the stories of people from all backgrounds and beliefs, is coming to South Carolina to collect stories from the Palmetto State.

About StoryCorps: StoryCorps’ mission is to provide people of all backgrounds and beliefs with the opportunity to record, preserve, and share their stories. Each week, millions of Americans listen to StoryCorps’ award-winning broadcasts on NPR’s Morning Edition. StoryCorps has published three books: Listening Is an Act of Love and Mom: A Celebration of Mothers from StoryCorps, and All There Is: Love Stories from StoryCorps–all of which are New York Times best sellers. For more information, or to listen to stories online, visit storycorps.org.

StoryCorps will bring their MobileBooth (an Airstream trailer outfitted with a recording studio) to Ansonborough Field in Charleston, SC from October 25, 2012 to November 19, 2012. Reservations will be available beginning at 10:00 a.m. on October 11 and can be made by calling StoryCorps’ 24-hour toll-free reservation line at 1-800-850-4406 or visiting storycorps.org.

StoryCorps’ MobileBooth interviews are conducted between two people who know and care about each other, with a trained StoryCorps facilitator guiding the participants through the interview process. At the end of each 40-minute recording session, participants receive a complimentary CD copy of their interview. With participant permission, a second copy is archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress for future generations to hear.

In Charleston, StoryCorps will partner with ETV Radio, South Carolina’s NPR affiliate. ETV Radio will air a selection of the local interviews recorded in the StoryCorps MobileBooth and create special programs around the project. Segments of select interviews may also air nationally on NPR’s Morning Edition.

http://www.scetv.org/index.php/press/release/storycorps_the_groundbreaking_oral_history_organization_to_visit_charl/

Tomorrow marks the 150th anniversary of the publication of one of the most significant documents in American history, the Emancipation Proclamation.

Coming almost immediately after the battle of Antietam, the proclamation had tactical political and military motivations in the short term, but on the grand scale it had, and has continued to have, profound implications for the grand narrative of American history and the even broader international narrative that has enshrined individual liberty as a human right. At the immediate political and military level, the Proclamation, in Clemson historian Vernon Burton’s words, “free[d] Lincoln from the confines of contradictory war goals—fighting a war for democratic liberty but not against slavery;” on the broader front, as Howard University’s Edna Greene Medford writes, when the Proclamation came into effect on January 1st, 1863, it “transformed the legal status of nearly four million persons of African descent, from lawfully owned property to human beings ostensibly responsible to no one but themselves.” It was a massively important document, without which it is almost impossible to imagine how the century and a half between 1862 and now might have played out.

The document’s especial significance in South Carolina probably needs no elaborate explanation. Suffice it to say that Union-occupied parts of South Carolina were among the very few and very earliest portions of this country where the Proclamation had the immediate material effect of emancipation, and that South Carolina traditions marking January 1st as Emancipation Day have been among the strongest, most enduring, and most deeply felt in the nation, even during the years when legal segregation restricted the freedoms of African Americans in this state.

With this background, and as a spin-off from the Civil War Global Conflict sesquicentennial commemoration of the Civil War, I would like to draw your attention to the CLAW program’s Jubilee Project 2013, a broad collaborative effort involving cultural, educational and historical institutions up and down the coast and all across the state, that will commemorate both the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation and the 50th anniversary of the desegregation of Charleston County schools, Clemson University, and the University of South Carolina. In critically examining the events both of 1863 and 1963, we expect to ask searching questions about issues of freedom, equality and race in South Carolina and beyond. We hope that these questions, however difficult and uncomfortable they may be, will result in productive discussions. We welcome campus-wide and broader campus involvement in these conversations; if you are interested in learning more about the Project, please take a look at the press release on the College home-page and at our blog-site at http://jubileeprojectsc.wordpress.com/category/jubilee-project/.

From Simon Lewis,
Associate Director-Program in the Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World (CLAW) (http://www.cofc.edu/atlanticworld)

As a primary objective of the institution’s new strategic plan, the College of Charleston is building an African American Studies program as befits its unique location and the history of the Carolina Lowcountry.  Working with key institutional partners, including the Avery Research Center and the Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World as well as the 16 affiliated faculty, and pending final approval, the program expects to launch a new major in African American Studies in Fall 2013 to accompany an existing and successful minor.
 
The African American Studies Program invites applications for an experienced full-time faculty member in African American Studies to begin August 16, 2013. We seek an academic leader who has achieved national distinction as a scholar and teacher meriting a tenured appointment at the rank of associate professor or higher. The successful candidate will hold a doctoral degree in African American Studies or a related discipline and will teach exclusively in African American Studies.  Area of specialization is open, but preference may be given to applicants with scholarly and teaching expertise in one or more of the following areas, as they relate to African American history and culture:  art, art history, music, ethnomusicology, or performance studies.  The minimum salary for this position is $80,000. The teaching load is 3/3; demonstrated teaching ability and an active research agenda is required. A Ph.D. is required. Candidates should submit a cover letter, CV, graduate transcripts, letters from three academic referees, and a short writing sample (no more than 20 pages) by October 26, 2012 to: Dr. Conseula Francis, African American Studies, College of Charleston, 66 George Street, Charleston, SC 29424.
 
The College of Charleston is a selective institution with a strong liberal arts and sciences tradition located in historic downtown Charleston, SC.  Founded in 1770, the College has a rich history with an enrollment of approximately 10,000 undergraduates and 1,500 graduate students.  The College of Charleston is an Affirmative Action, Equal Opportunity Employer and is committed to increasing the diversity of its faculty. We welcome applications from women and minority groups, as well as others who would bring additional dimensions to the college’s teaching and research missions.  Screening begins on October 26, 2012 and continues until the position is filled.