My Soul Is a Witness traces the long afterlife of lynching in the South through the traumatic memories it left in its wake. It unearths how African American victims and survivors found ways to live through and beyond the horrors of lynching, offering a theory of African American collective trauma and memory rooted in the ironic spirit of the blues sensibility--a spirit of misdirection and cunning that blends joy and pain.
Mari Crabtree is an Associate Professor of African American Studies.
During the Old Kingdom, the ancient Egyptians constructed elaborately decorated mortuary monuments for their pharaohs. By the last Old Kingdom (ca. 2435-2153 BCE), these pyramid complexes began to contain a new and unique type of statue, the so-called prisoner statues. Despite being known to Egyptologists for decades, these statues of kneeling, bound foreign captives have been only partially documented, and questions surrounding their use, treatment, and exact meaning have remained unanswered. Ancient Egyptian Prisoner Statues -- the first comprehensive analysis of the prisoner statues-- addresses this gap, demonstrating that Egyptians conceived of and used the prisoner statues differently over time as a response to contemporary social, cultural, and historical changes.
Tara Prakash is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Art and Architectural History.
Everyday People Save the Planet and So Can You examines three interview studies, conducted over the last two decades, with green parents, choice utility bike commuters, and necessity utility bike commuters. This book draws qualitative analyses of the data and literature (social practice, social innovation, embodiment, and attention economy research/theory) to ask and answer the question of how advocates and policy makers can enable pro-environmental behavior in people's everyday lives.
Deborah McCarthy Auriffeille is an Associate Professor of Sociology and associate chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology.
Solitons are waves with a surprising particle-like behavior that have applications in science and engineering. Aside from these practical applications, however, soliton equations can be solved explicitly using algebraic methods and the set of all of the solutions has a rich geometric structure. Because of its interdisciplinary nature - combining aspects of algebra, geometry, analysis, and applied mathematics - Glimpses of Solition Theory would make an ideal textbook for a "capstone class" in mathematics.
Alex Kasman is a Professor in the Department of Mathematics.
Six hundred thoughts of Sade, in echo to the "six hundred passions" of the One Hundred and Twenty Days of Sodom. Simone de Beauvior thought that Sade asserted the truth of man against all escapist abstractions and wrote that he had gone beyond the sensualism of his epoch to transform it into a morality of authenticity. Maurice Heine, on the other hand, saw in Sade's work a philosophy which was the most formidable war machine with a view to the absolute emancipation of man that materialism has ever built. This (Sade: Pensées) selection of thoughts, which takes up on and amplifies on one of Norbert Sclippa's earlier works, remains an indispensable reference book for scholars and readers as well.
Norbert Sclippa is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of French and Francophone Studies.
Unpacked: A History of Caribbean Tourism offers a critical, novel perspective on the Caribbean's now taken-for-granted desirability as a tourist's paradise. Dreams of a tropical vacation have become a quintessential aspect of the modern Caribbean, as millions of tourists travel to the region and spend extravagantly to pursue vacation fantasies. At the beginning of the twentieth century, however, travelers from North America and Europe thought of the Caribbean as diseased, dangerous, and, according to many observers, "the white man's graveyard." How then did a trip to the Caribbean become a supposedly fun and safe experience? Unpacked examines the historical roots of the region's tourism industry by following a well-traveled sea route linking the US East Coast with the island of Cuba and the Isthmus of Panama.
Blake Scott is an Assistant Professor of International Studies.
The American empire emerged from the shadows of World War II. As the nation's influence swept the globe with near impunity, a host of evil forces followed-- from racism, exploitation, and military invasion to killer clowns, flying saucers, and monsters borne of a fear of the other. By viewing American imperial history through the prism of the horror genre, Dark Carnivals lays bare how the genre shaped us, distracted us, and gave form to a violence as American as apple pie.
W. Scott Poole is a Professor in the Department of History.
Modern humans, descendants of a founding population that separated from chimpanzees some five to eight million years ago, are today the only living representative of a branching group of African apes called hominins. Because of its extraordinary size and shape, the baobab (Adansonia digitata L.) has long been identified as the most striking tree of Africa's mosaic savanna, the landscape generally regarded as the environment of hominin evolution. Baobab makes the case for identifying the baobab as the tree of life in the hunter-gatherer adaptation that was the economic foundation of hominin evolution. The argument is based on the significance of the baobab as a resource-rich environment for the Hadza of northeastern Tanzania, who continue to be successful hunter-gatherers of the African savanna.
John Rashford is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology.
A Psychological Perspective on Folk Moral Objectivism is a thoroughly researched interdisciplinary exploration of the critical role metaethical beliefs play in the way morality functions. Whether people are "morally objectivists" or not is something that deserves much more empirical attention than it has thus far received, not only because it bears upon philosophical claims but also because it is a critical piece of the puzzle of human morality. This book aims to facilitate incorporating the study of metaethical beliefs into existing research programs by providing a roadmap through the theoretical and empirical landscape as it currently exists and evaluating the methodological approaches used this far. In doing so, it summarizes the key findings--both in terms of metaethical beliefs and their correlates, causes, and consequences--that have emerged, and explores the value of this area of study for anyone interested in the development, function, causes, and/or consequences of morality.
Jennifer Cole Wright is a Professor in the Department of Psychology.
The Real Rainbow Row was written to fill a gap in the local historical record. Although LGBTQ+ people inhabited the Lowcountry long before Europeans arrived and although they have been present in every era and contributed greatly to the making of the city of Charleston, there was no written record to attest to that. In fact, there was very little information at all documenting that LGBTQ+ people had ever existed here. The story is drawn from newspapers, police reports, diaries, organizational files, correspondence, and oral histories: over time, voices of community members predominate as the narrative shifts from a record of isolated (and sometimes persecuted) individuals to a fuller picture of people coming together to create institutions to face down prejudice, root out internalized homophobia, and fight for civil rights for all. It's a tale of gender fluid indigenous peoples, misbehaving ante-bellum women and cross-dressing men, cultural leaders, trans pioneers, and people who not only changed Charleston but the country. It's the first book on the topic in Charleston's over 350 years of settled history.
Harlan Green is the Outreach Archivist and SC LGBTQ Project Coordinator in Special Collections at Addlestone Library.
Gender and Sexuality in Indigenous North America, 1400-1850 probes gender identification, labor roles, and political authority within Native American societies. The essays are linked by overarching examinations of how Europeans manipulated native ideas about gender for their own ends and how indigenous people responded to European attempts to impose gendered cultural practices at odds with established traditions. Many of the essays also address how indigenous people made meaning of gender and how these meanings developed over time within their own communities. Several contributors also consider sexual practice as a mode of cultural articulation, as well as a vehicle for the expression of gender roles.
Sandra Slater is an Associate Professor in the Department of History.
Eudora Welty's ingenious play with readers' expectations made her a cunning writer, a paramount modernist, a short story artist of the first rank, and a remarkable literary innovator. In her signature puzzle-texts, she habitually engages with familiar genres and then delights readers with her transformations and nonfulfillment of conventions. Eudora Welty and Mystery reveals how often that play is with mystery, crime, and detective fiction genres, popular fiction forms often condescended to in literary studies, but unabashedly beloved by Welty throughout her lifetime.
Harriet Pollack is an Affiliate Professor of American Literature in the Department of English.
In The American Historical Imaginary Caroline Guthrie examines the American relationship to versions of the past that are known to be untrue and asks why do these myths persist, and why do so many people them so dear? To answer these questions, she examines popular sites where fictional versions of history are formed, played through, and solidified. Through her explanation and analysis of what she calls the historical imaginary, Guthrie offers new ways of attempting to combat harmful myths of the past through the imaginative engagements they have dominated for so long.
Caroline Guthrie is an adjunct faculty in the Department of Communication.
Catching Fire investigates the rise of women's health activism in Ireland within a global reproductive justice framework, which aims to understand and dismantle the systems of social inequality that shape, oppress, and restrict reproductive rights and bodily autonomy. The volume focuses on successful efforts by Irish healthcare reformers and activists to improve Irish women's access to essential healthcare services and links key developments in Irish history to reproductive advocacy in America and beyond.
Beth Sundstrom is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication. Cara Delay is a Professor in the Department of History.
Featuring more than 100 color and black-and-white photographs and illustrations alongside author Ralph Muldrow's compelling storytelling, this fascinating book reveals the deep connection between Albert Simmons and the Charleston cityscape. Muldrow's Charleston Renaissance Man is a celebration of Charleston's unique architectural character and the architect who embodied the Charleston Renaissance.
Ralph Muldrow is an Associate Professor in the Department of Art and Architectural History.
View our collection of College of Charleston faculty and staff publications at this link.
Includes transcripts of global radio and television broadcasts, telegraph, and news sources translated into English and summarized by the BBC Monitoring Service. The collection is divided into several components covering periods in which the content remained largely static. Series 1 includes Daily Digest of Foreign Broadcasts, August 28, 1939-1958; Daily Digest of World Broadcasts, May 24, 1945-May 6, 1947; Digest of World Broadcasting, May 7, 1947-May 27, 1947; Summary of World Broadcasts, May 28, 1947-May 24, 1949, and Summary of World Broadcasts, May 25, 1949-April 15, 1959.
First-person accounts, compiled in the postwar period and early 20th Century period, chronicle the highs and lows of army life from 1861 through 1865.
Provides access to hundreds of award-winning stage productions from Broadway HD, the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Stratford Festival and more, with coverage as far back as the 1970s. Also includes access to quality written and teaching resources.
An award award-winning digital library from Bloomsbury, the world's leading drama publisher. College of Charleston Libraries provides access to selected collections from Drama Online which currently include the Donmar Shakespeare Trilogy on Screen; the National Theatre Collections 1, 2, & 3; the Oberon Books 1 &2; RSC Live; and the TCG Books: American Drama.
Provides context for the world's major political and economic developments, including recent election results for every country world, the ability to compare national statistics in graph and tabular form, and more.
Sheds light on the internal organization, personnel, and activities of some of the most prominent radical groups in the United States in the 1960s.
From the publisher: “This collection of FBI, local and state police, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, and the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, shed new light on the motivations of the Communist organizers, the shootings, subsequent investigations, and efforts to heal the Greensboro community” after the November 3, 1979 rally and march of black industrial workers and Communists in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Combines experience and impact of Hispanic Americans as told by the news media, 2010 to today. Updated daily. Articles in English and Spanish.
Curated by the National Archives and Records Administration largely from the official Bureau of Indian Affairs which provides detailed records of tribal relations with settlers, the Territorial and Federal governments, and other tribes. Series 1 includes the Michigan Superintendency, Northern Superintendency, Southern Superintendency, Arkansas Superintendency, Central Superintendency, Florida Superintendency, Iowa Superintendency, and St. Louis Superintendency.
From the publisher: “James E. Jackson and Esther Cooper Jackson, African American communists and civil rights activists, are best known for their role in founding and leading the Southern Negro Youth Congress (1937-48). This collection contains the correspondence of both Esther Cooper and James E. Jackson, James Jackson's lectures, research notebooks, speeches, and writings (published and unpublished), subject files, correspondence, internal documents and printed ephemera pertaining to the Southern Negro Youth Congress and the periodical Freedomways, legal and other materials pertaining to the Smith Act indictments of James Jackson and other communists, Communist Party internal documents, many of a programmatic nature, and clippings (articles by and about the Jacksons).”
From the publisher: “Provides an in-depth analysis of poverty in America with an extensive inventory of historical data at a local level. Each profile, composed as a narrative with statistical indices, contains information showing general poverty indicators, size and composition of the poor population, and selected aspects of geography, demography, economy, and social resources.”
