Dr. Charles Joyner
7607 Driftwood Drive
Myrtle Beach SC 29572
(843) 449-5656

      Charles Joyner is Burroughs Distinguished Professor of Southern History and Culture at Coastal Carolina University. Prior to assuming his present position he taught at the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Mississippi; and the University of Alabama. He was an associate of the DuBois Center at Harvard University in 1989-90 and was visiting professor at the University of Sydney (Australia) in 1993.

      An alumnus of 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 postdoctoral fellowship in Comparative Slave Societies at Harvard University.

      He has lectured and published on the South in Africa (Senegal), Asia (China), Australasia (Australia and New Zealand), Europe (Austria, Denmark, Norway, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and Yugoslavia), South America (Brazil), and North America (Canada, Jamaica, St. Croix), as well as the United States. He has twice been a Fulbright lecturer in New Zealand.

      Joyner is perhaps best known for his book Down by the Riverside: A South Carolina Slave Community (University of Illinois Press, 1984). It won the National University Press Book Award and has been called "the finest work ever written on American slavery." His most recent book is Shared Traditions: Southern History and Folk Culture (University of Illinois Press, 1999). He is also author of Remember Me: Slave Life in Coastal Georgia (Georgia Humanities Council, 1989) and Folk Song in South Carolina (University of South Carolina Press, 1971).

      He is co-author of Before Freedom Came: African-American Life and Labor in the Antebellum South (University Press of Virginia, 1992), chosen by the American Library Association as one of the thirteen non-fiction works in its Notable Books List, and Southern Writers and Their Worlds (Louisiana State University Press).

      He edited new editions of Drums and Shadows: Survival Studies among the Georgia Coastal Negroes (University of Georgia Press, 1987), Elizabeth Allston Pringle's A Woman Rice Planter (University of South Carolina Press, 1992), and Julia Peterkin's Green Thursday (University of Georgia Press, 1997).

      He wrote introductions to When Roots Die: Endangered Traditions in the Sea Islands (University of Georgia Press, 1987), Ain't You Got a Right to the Tree of Life? (University of Georgia Press, 1989), and Ballots and Fence Rails: Reconstruction on the Lower Cape Fear (University of Georgia Press, 1995).

      His numerous essays have appeared in such publications as Dixie Debates: Perspectives on Southern Cultures (London: Pluto Press); Religion and American Culture (New York, Routledge); Famille et Esclavage dans les Ameriques (Universite de Montreal); Folklor i povijesni proces (Zagreb, Croatia); Black and White: Cultural Interaction in the Antebellum South (University Press of Mississippi), African-American Religion (University of California Press), His Soul Goes Marching On: New Views of the John Brown Raid (University Press of Virginia), and Faulkner: Achievement and Endurance (Peking University Press).

      Among Joyner's numerous awards are the South Carolina Humanities Council Governor's Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Humanities, the "Ambassador of Peace" Award of the Louis G. Gregory Ba'hai Center, an Honorary Life Membership in BrANCH (British Nineteenth-century American Historians) for his contributions to the transatlantic study of American history, an honorary life membership in the American Civil War Roundtable of Australia for his contributions to International understanding of Southern history and culture, and the honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters by Presbyterian College.

      In addition to his writing and teaching, Joyner has been active in the production of films and television and radio programs dealing with the South. His production I'd Like to See What's Down There (National Trust for Historic Preservation), a documentary examining oral history and historical archaeology at Drayton Hall plantation on the Ashley River, near Charleston, won awards from the South Carolina Federation of Museums and from the American Association for State and Local History for its "innovative approach to uncovering the past." It has been screened at meetings of the Organization of American Historians and the Southern Historical Association and has been broadcast nationally on the History Channel. Joyner also wrote, produced, and hosted the mini-series Legacy of Conflict (South Carolina Educational Television Network), examining South Carolina's role in the Civil War. It won the "Award of Distinction" at the North Carolina International Film Festival. He also produced Voices of History and South Carolina Folk Music for SCETV.

      The film Gullah Tales (a Gary Moss Production), for which Joyner was narrator and principal consultant, was nominated for an Academy Award as best live action short subject. Joyner was also co-host of South Carolina's Musical Heritage (SCETV) and was a featured commentator on Flight to Freedom: The History of the Underground Railroad (WXXI-TV, Rochester); on Africans in America (WGBH-TV, Boston); on John Brown's Private War (The American Experience series, WGBH-TV, Boston); on Arts and History (Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts); on Music Masters and Rhythm Kings (Georgia Public Television); and on God's Gonna Trouble the Water (SCETV), aired nationally on PBS. He was a featured writer on The Writers Circle (SCETV), which won a Governor's Community Service Award in the Humanities, and narrated C.C.I. (SCETV), which won a CINE Golden Eagle Award.

      He was a featured radio commentator on Old Time Religion (South Carolina Educational Radio Network), a four-part series examining African-American Religious history in South Carolina. Old Time Religion won a first-place Gabriel Award (in competition with national networks), the first time SCERN has won this prestigious national award.