Dr. Gibbs Knotts is currently the Interim Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences at the College as well as a faculty member of the Southern Studies department.  Since he.   came to the College, he has been able to use his reformed view of the South to further the department and all the students that pass through it. His childhood as a “fraud” southerner has given him a unique perspective and respect for the South and everything he teaches. After obtaining degrees from both UNC and Emory, he has evolved from an “ashamed southerner” to someone that has a healthy respect for the evolution and complexities of the region.  Through his time at the College of Charleston, he has met other individuals that share similar thoughts about the South as well as music and authors, which has grown his interest in the region and its issues.  

Dr. Knotts has written several books throughout his career at both WCU and here at the College.  Through his work, he has studied the topics related to Southern Studies, such as the southern identity, which led him to co-author a book with another professor he met in his time at Western Carolina University.  Along with Dr. Christopher Cooper, Dr, Knotts wrote The Resilience of the Southern Identity: Why the South Still Matters in the Minds of Its People.  He has also written on topics more related to politics, which he also teaches at the College.  This resulted in a book he published in 2020 on the South Carolina Presidential Primary and it’s impact on the nation, as it is the first primary in the South.  He says that working as a professor has allowed him to be a “lifelong student” in both the Southern Studies department and beyond. 

Currently, Dr. Knotts is working on a project regarding the southern accent and the assumptions that can be made by hearing one.  This particular project involves the perception of southern politicians in comparison to those without an accent, and so far the results have shown that people prefer politicians without an accent.  He plans to add additional variables to the study before publishing it as an article sometime in the future. 

Leah Worthington is technically a librarian at the College of Charleston where she works to codirect both the Lowcountry Digital History Initiative and the Lowcountry Digital Library. She first came to the south to pursue her masters degree in History through the College of Charleston. Since the college did not offer a public history masters at the time she pursued internships with both of the programs she now helps direct alongside her degree in History in order to have a background that is fitting for her public history career. The Lowcountry Digital History Initiative is a collection of permanent online history exhibits and publications that tend to focus on more unrepresented history of the lowcountry. The Lowcountry Digital Library, though often confused, is different than the digital history initiative. The point of this program is to help make archives that store history about the lowcountry digital and accessible when the owner of the archive does not have the resources to do so themselves. What she days at the Digital History Initiative is manages the day to day operations. This includes finding authors to write for exhibits reading over said writings and working with graduate students to help them find pictures and write captions that can go along with exhibits as well. For the Digital Library the majority of her work has to do with verifying and digitizing the works that have to be put online so that they can be properly archived. When asked about why she chose these jobs in particular she explained some about public history. She told me how there was front of house work like giving tours on history and back of house work such as making sure information gets displayed. She said that, “I like the intellectual side of the backend or back of the house work” because of fact checking and making sure the public receives the right information. For the foreseeable future she plans to continue working on both of these projects and to constantly improve them.