{"id":26437,"date":"2023-06-26T13:03:45","date_gmt":"2023-06-26T17:03:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/?p=26437"},"modified":"2023-06-26T13:09:45","modified_gmt":"2023-06-26T17:09:45","slug":"summer-institute-reconstructing-the-black-archive-aims-to-create-a-more-complete-picture-of-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/summer-institute-reconstructing-the-black-archive-aims-to-create-a-more-complete-picture-of-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Summer institute \u2018Reconstructing the Black Archive\u2019 aims to create a more complete picture of history"},"content":{"rendered":"

Twenty-four scholars from across the country will spend three weeks in South Carolina, learning how to teach and tell a more complete picture of American history, thanks to a grant<\/a> from the National Endowment for the Humanities.<\/p>\n

\u201cReconstructing the Black Archive<\/a>,\u201d a summer institute run by Furman University and Clemson University, will send the scholars, most of whom teach undergraduate students, into churches, historical associations, museums and other sources to learn to recover missing, often intentionally buried, histories.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are vibrant sources that tell a history lost to many earlier generations. It\u2019s exciting and thrilling to behold,\u201d said Gregg Hecimovich<\/a>, Furman professor English, who directs the institute with Furman\u2019s Kaniqua Robinson<\/a>, assistant professor of anthropology, and Clemson\u2019s Susanna Ashton<\/a> and Rhondda Robinson Thomas<\/a>, both professors in the Department of English.<\/p>\n

The scholars\u2019 itinerary<\/a> takes them to sources at Clemson University and the city itself, Columbia and Charleston where they\u2019ll learn from a cast of experts<\/a> including archivists, literary critics, prize-winning authors, poets and historians, people who have forged the tools for reassembling the scattered shards of information that give a fuller picture of the past. Scholars will also have the opportunity to visit the International African American History Museum<\/a> and learn about Harriet Tubman\u2019s Combahee Ferry Raid<\/a> that freed more than 700 slaves in 1863.<\/p>\n

The narratives and discoveries will hopefully make their way into the public discourse and into our collective understanding of history through the scholars\u2019 art, books and other scholarly projects, Hecimovich said. He\u2019s also excited about how the institute will effect change and bring new perspectives into the classroom.<\/p>\n

\"Black

Rhonnda Thomas, left, speaks to scholars participating in “Reconstructing the Black Archive.”<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cSome of the folks in our institute are teaching at community colleges, and their interest is how they can bring this model to their students,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

For example, in Hecimovich\u2019s first-year writing seminar, \u201cPicturing Slavery,\u201d he introduces students to seven South Carolina captives whose images were among the first-ever recorded in early photography. He shows students how Furman is connected to slavery through field trips to archives, which have added to the original findings of Furman\u2019s Seeking Abraham<\/a> project. In another class, \u201cSlavery and the Novel,\u201d Hecimovich exposes the textural nuances of slavery, helping students understand how it has shaped their world.<\/p>\n

Hecimovich\u2019s work and much of the institute is modelled on the groundbreaking \u201cCall My Name<\/a>\u201d research of Rhondda Thomas at Clemson University.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith people from across the spectrum \u2013 artists who want to write poetry about this, college teachers who want to engage it further in their classes, graduate students who are at the beginning of their careers, or endowed professors who have the power at their institutions to shape the curriculum \u2013 it\u2019s collaborating with those shaping how we access the past,\u201d Hecimovich added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scholars participating in “Reconstructing the Black Archive” will look beyond traditional archival sources to knit together a more inclusive picture of South Carolina Black history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":257,"featured_media":26438,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[71,31],"tags":[2144,1065,2143,1110,817],"class_list":["post-26437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anthropology","category-english","tag-black-archive","tag-clemson-university","tag-public-memory","tag-slavery","tag-south-carolina-history"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/257"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26437\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}