| FEL-263129-19 | Research Programs: Fellowships | Michael LeMahieu | Reconstructing Civil War Memory in American Literature after Brown v. Board of Education (1954) | 8/1/2019 - 7/31/2020 | $60,000.00 | Michael | | LeMahieu | | | | Clemson University | Clemson | SC | 29634-0001 | USA | 2018 | American Literature | Fellowships | Research Programs | 60000 | 0 | 60000 | 0 | Completion
of a book-length study on literary representations of the Civil War after Brown
v. Board of Education (1954).
Post-54 examines the role of Civil War memory in American literature from the civil rights movement to the contemporary moment. Following the Brown decision, writers reconstructed genres of Civil War memory that had previously mystified military valor, mutual sacrifice, and sectional reconciliation in order to minimize the legacies of slavery and to underwrite racial inequality. Whether embodied in public monuments or depicted in feature films, Civil War memory circulates through cultural narratives whose generic form performs ideological functions: chivalric romance underwrites racial violence, pastoral elegy encodes agrarian ideology, and concepts of tragedy undo narratives of emancipation. Through works that inhabit and transfigure these generic forms, writers in the civil rights era as well as those in the contemporary moment advance counter-genres of Civil War memory that strategically debunk Lost Cause mythology and actively intervene in civil rights struggles. |
| GI-269711-20 | Public Programs: Exhibitions: Implementation | Clemson University | Call My Name: The Black Experience in the South Carolina Upstate from Enslavement to Desegregation | 5/1/2020 - 4/30/2026 | $400,000.00 | Rhondda | Robinson | Thomas | | | | Clemson University | Clemson | SC | 29634-0001 | USA | 2020 | African American History | Exhibitions: Implementation | Public Programs | 400000 | 0 | 400000 | 0 | Implementation of a traveling exhibition examining the history of the African Americans who lived and worked the land that became Clemson University.
This project records, represents, and solicits the experiences of six generations of African Americans in a microcosm of American history and racial politics-Clemson, SC. Through this one university campus, built on formerly Cherokee land by settlers from the Ulster Plantations of Ireland, we start with the pre-history of the plantation in British colonial settings to tell an intergenerational story of African American life to the present day. Emerging from six years of work documenting, highlighting, and inviting community reflections (with two prior NEH grants), Call my Name assembles an unprecedented volume of materials on African American life in Upstate, Appalachian South Carolina. With this application, we seek $400,000 for the implementation phase of the Call My Name exhibition, including a 2-year staff person. After the conclusion of its three-state tour, the exhibit will be permanently installed in an off-campus, independent location, the Clemson Area African American Museum. |
| PY-263730-19 | Preservation and Access: Common Heritage | Clemson University | Call My Name: Digitizing African American Heritage in the Greater Clemson, South Carolina Community | 1/1/2019 - 5/31/2021 | $11,165.00 | Rhondda | Robinson | Thomas | | | | Clemson University | Clemson | SC | 29634-0001 | USA | 2018 | U.S. History | Common Heritage | Preservation and Access | 11165 | 0 | 10745.53 | 0 | A two-day digitization event to collect
materials regarding the under-documented contributions and stories of African
Americans at Clemson University and from the surrounding community. In collaboration with local community
partners, the applicant would add digitized items to an existing Call My Name community digitization
project created in 2014. The proposed
events would incorporate a community stage featuring music, dance, oral history
collection, and presentations. With
donor permission, digital objects would be made publicly available on the web
site and the South Carolina Digital Archive.
Through Call my Name, a community outreach project I created in 2014, I have collaborated with three local community partners—the Bertha Lee Strickland Cultural Museum in Seneca, SC, the Clemson Area African American Museum, and the Pendleton Foundation for Black History and Culture—to find, document, and preserve the African-American cultural heritage of Clemson University, which was built by convicts on the former Fort Hill Plantation of proslavery American statesman John C. Calhoun in Upstate South Carolina in the early 1890s, and the towns that developed around the higher education institution. I apply for a Common Heritage grant to support the digitization of African American material history that is collected during a two-day Black History Month event in February 2020 for use on the Call My Name website and the Documenting the Clemson African American Experience collection in the South Carolina Digital Archive, and to offer preservation support to the owners of the material. |
| ZR-256734-18 | Challenge Programs: Creating Humanities Communities Grants | Clemson University | Call My Name: African Americans in Early Clemson University History | 2/1/2017 - 5/31/2022 | $30,000.00 | Lee | | Morrissey | | | | Clemson University | Clemson | SC | 29634-0001 | USA | 2017 | American Literature | Creating Humanities Communities Grants | Challenge Programs | 0 | 30000 | 0 | 30000 | An ethnographic project that seeks to explore
the lived experiences of Native Americans and African Americans and their
contributions to Clemson University’s history.
Call My Name: African Americans in Early Clemson University History: By creating and nurturing this humanities community, we seek to illuminate how the story of African Americans in early Clemson University history is a significant narrative that intersects with the complex race relations that undergird the history of the Upstate region, the state of South Carolina, and the nation. The community-based programs co-sponsored by our partners, the oral histories, and the crowdsourcing website will not only offer the public opportunities to participate in the project, it will also give them access to digitized primary documents associated with Call My Name that enable them to learn about and contribute insights into the racial and socio-political complexities of Clemson history. |