Charles Joyner named president-elect of Southern Historical Association
The Southern Historical Association, founded in 1935, is an organization of nearly 5,000 members across the world that studies Southern history. Joyner has just completed a three-year term on the executive council of the association, and will assume the vice presidency of the association next year with an automatic promotion to president the following year.
"To be elected to this office by my colleagues in the historical profession is the greatest honor of my life," said Joyner. "The Burroughs Chair made it possible, because it enabled me to disseminate the findings of my research to scholars around the world."
The Burroughs Chair in Southern History and Culture was created in 1988 by Henry Buck Burroughs in honor of his parents, Franklin Augustus and Iola Buck Burroughs.
Joyner's election follows numerous honors during his career, including the South Carolina Humanities Council Governor's Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Humanities; the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters by Presbyterian College, his alma mater; and the Lifetime Commitment Award from Bluegrass on the Waccamaw.
He has also been honored with honorary Life Memberships in BrANCH (British 19th century American Historians) for his contributions to the transatlantic study of American history and in the American Civil War Round Table of Australia for his contributions to international understanding of Southern history and culture. He was twice chosen for Fullbright lectureships in New Zealand.
Joyner's book "Down by the Riverside: A South Carolina Slave Community," a study of life on the rice plantations along the Waccamaw River in Coastal South Carolina, won the National University Press Book Award in 1984.
Joyner's other books include: "Folk Song in South Carolina; Remember Me: Slave Life in Coastal Georgia," and his recent "Shared Traditions: Southern History and Folk Culture." He is co-author of "Before Freedom Came: African-American Life and Labor in the Antebellum South," chosen by the American Library Association for its Notable Books List, and "Southern Writers and Their Worlds." He has written introductions to new editions of Elizabeth Allston Pringle's "A Woman Rice Planter," Julia Peterkin's "Green Thursday," Patricia Jones-Jackson's "When Roots Die: Endangered Traditions in the Sea Islands," and Guy and Candie Carawan's "Ain't You Got a Right to the Tree of Life? The People of Johns Island."
An alumnus of Myrtle Beach High School and Presbyterian College, he holds two earned doctorates - a Ph.D. in history from the University of South Carolina and a Ph.D. in folklore and folklife from the University of Pennsylvania. He also held a post-doctoral fellowship in comparative slave societies at Harvard University.