Writing the South: a stellar conference of writers, historians, fans
A roomful of historians, writers, poets, friends, faculty and staff of Coastal Carolina University paid tribute to the amazing career of Charles Joyner at the "Writing the South in Fact, Fiction and Poetry," a three-day symposium held in February.
Three Pulitzer Prize winners, an Emmy recipient and 20 distinguished scholars of history were on hand to discuss their craft and honor Joyner, a CCU history professor from 1980 to 2006, a former president of the Southern Historical Association and author of "Down by the Riverside: A South Carolina Slave Community," which has just been reissued.
"In my adult life, I've become obsessed with history," said novelist Josephine Humphreys. "History just gives me a kind of inspiration I don't get anywhere else."
Humphreys, who lives in Charleston, wrote a book of historical fiction titled "Nowhere Else on Earth" in 2000, based on the Lumbee Indians in North Carolina. Her earlier works were Southern novels set in the Lowcountry and praised for their keen sense of place. " She said she hated history as a child because it was all about presidents, treaties and battles. "Somewhere along the line, the teaching of history changed with this generation," she says, and history became interesting and palatable.
The first early-morning panel opened with a conversation between Humphreys and three historians. Bertram Wyatt-Brown, visiting scholar at John Hopkins University and the author of 10 books, was one of them. He gave a tribute to the late C. Vann Woodward, a pre-eminent historian who focused on the South and race relations. (Woodward attended the first "Southern Writers of Fact and Fiction" in 1996, as did the late Pulitzer Prize-winning author William Styron.)
Theodore Rosengarten and David Hackett Fischer were also on the first panel. Rosengarten, also of Charleston, won the National Book Award for his 1974 book, "All God's Dangers: The Life of Nate Shaw."
David Hackett Fischer of Brandeis University, best known for the Pulitzer Prize-winning "Washington's Crossing (Pivotal Moments in American History)," said, "Chaz [Joyner] has invented here a better way of writing a history book," referring to "Down by the Riverside," which has been called "the finest book ever written on American slavery."
Other historians who participated included Dan T. Carter, Valinda Littlefield, James L. Peacock, Jack Bass, Natasha Trethewey, Raymond Arsenault, David Moltke-Hansen, Rod Gragg, Hank Klibanoff, Richard Carwardine, Anne Wyatt-Brown, John Inscoe, Dale Rosengarten, Daniel C. Littlefield, Eldred (Wink) Prince Jr., Robert Korstad and Roy Talbert.
Walter Edgar, best known for "South Carolina: A History," gave the final talk on "How to Teach South Carolina History."
Joyner, who is now retired, was the first Burroughs Distinguished Professor of Southern History and Culture and the founding director of the Waccamaw Center for Historical and Cultural Studies at CCU. He received the Humanities Council’s Governor’s Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Humanities for his contributions to public understanding of Southern history and culture.
The conference was organized by Vernon Burton, a distinguished Abraham Lincoln scholar and internationally known historian. Burton, who is president-elect of the Southern Historical Association, was formerly director of CCU's Waccamaw Center for Historical and Cultural Studies and is currently at Clemson University.
