Expanding Opportunities for Place-based Storytelling With(in) Community

FAIN: ASA-292218-23

Coastal Carolina University (Conway, SC 29526-8428)
Alli Crandell (Project Director: November 2022 to present)
Scott Mann (Co Project Director: April 2023 to present)

A one-year project resulting in expansion of a community-based storytelling lab through integration into the humanities curriculum

Coastal Carolina University is seeking to Spotlight in the Humanities Exploratory funding to expand community-based storytelling into its humanities curriculum. The university’s student-driven publishing lab, The Athenaeum Press, has already accomplished over 13 community collaborative innovative projects over the past ten years, and the Press will be spearheading the grant activities. These activities include a workshop with eight humanities faculty to find new curricular and extracurricular opportunities for storytelling, the creation of a community story bank for ideas for storytelling work, and interviews with external centers and initiatives to develop a set of best practices for our regional public university. Community-based storytelling is especially important to connect the university’s least-retained student populations with the underrepresented stories that surround the university’s campus, including Gullah Geechee and economically disadvantaged communities.