The Ethnohistory of Indians in the American South

FAIN: FS-50256-10

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Chapel Hill, NC 27599-1350)
Clara Sue Kidwell (Project Director: March 2010 to November 2014)
Theda Perdue (Co Project Director: March 2010 to November 2014)

Funding details:
Original grant (2010) $142,418.00
Supplement (2011) $9,834.00

A five-week seminar for sixteen college and university faculty on Indians in the American South.

In response to NEH’s Bridging Cultures initiative, this seminar will bring together college teachers from various disciplines to explore the role of Indians in the region, the ways in which they managed to retain their ethnic and tribal identities, and their relationship to other southern peoples. By focusing on ethnohistory, an interdisciplinary methodology designed to recover the history of Native Americans, participants in the seminar will have an opportunity to investigate an unacknowledged part of the southern past and gain an understanding of the Native communities that exist today. At the same time, the seminar will enrich participants’ appreciation for the diversity of the South and for the ways in which all its peoples have interacted over time. In practical terms, the seminar will enable participants to bring to their classes a new perspective on race and ethnicity, one that challenges students’ stereotypes about Indians and the South.