The Aiken Rhett House Museum's historic structures in downtown Charleston serve as a learning laboratory for participants to explore how to create a comprehensive and conscientious interpretation of slavery. Based on the book Interpreting Slavery at Museums and Historic Sites, this workshop helps public history professionals grow not only in knowledge, but also in skill and sensitivity, as they interpret slavery. Kristin Gallas will share best practices for connecting to and extending your site’s interpretation of its history of slavery; training to help staff achieve a greater understanding of difficult knowledge and navigate complicated emotions.
The workshop will provide participants with key tools and techniques for understanding their own process of learning and acceptance related to interpreting slavery, handling controversy, and promoting awareness. Additionally, attendees learn how to help their colleagues work through their concerns about sensitive issues of race and slavery. The workshop also covers how and why visitors respond to receiving new information on the history of slavery, and attendees gain specific skills to help audiences to a greater awareness of, and ability to sensitively engage with, the history of slavery, as well as tools for evaluating their own performance.
Skin Deep/Deep Skin: Using Ethnographic Theatre to Address America’s Racial Divide, Past and Present
The Synagogue Block in Bridgetown, Barbados: Assessing Past Accomplishments and Emerging Possibilities
Breaking the Code of Charleston: Who Wrote the Pseudonymous Slave Narrative, Before the War and After the Union
Trust Us This Is History Too: Non-Historians Doing History
Interpreting Ruins: Legacies of Enslavement at the Menokin Glass House
Charting Civil Rights: Using Google Maps to Visualize the Southern Movement
Maritime Archaeology from Slave Ships to Rice Boats; Reflecting on South Carolina’s Underwater Archaeological Record and Its Representation of Enslaved Life
The Identification, Preservation, and Commemoration Of Ferry Sites in South Carolina
“The Slaves Who Were Ourselves”: Public History, Race, and Slavery in Post-Postracial America
Making Black Lives Visible at Jarrell Plantation: An Undergraduate Research Partnership between a Private University and a State Historic Site
Public History and Education at the College of Charleston
Between the Waters: Hobcaw Barony as a Historical Case Study
Reimagining African Diaspora through Intersectional, Experiential Learning and Outreach
“I Born Since Peace Declare” Gullah Narratives of the Post-Slavery Era
The Power in Preservation: Reevaluating Activism through Black Material Culture
The Building of a National Park: The Cotton Pickers' Monument Project
Race and Social Justice in US Public History
Michael Allen, Natoinal Park Services
Makiba Foster, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
Fath Davis Ruffins, Smithsonian Institute National Museum of American History
Rachel Donaldson, College of Charleston, Moderator
Transforming Public History in the Atlantic World
Ana Lucia Aroujo, Howard University
Richard Benjamin, International Slavery Museum—National Museums, Liverpool
Alissandra Cummins, UNESCO
Rex Ellis, Smithsonian Institute National Museum of African American History
Bayo Holsey, Rutgers University
Bernard Powers, College of Charleston, Moderator
“Unburied, Unmourned, Unmarked: Requiem for Rice Mobile Interactive Website” New Sources, New Stories Roundtable
If These Structures Could Speak…Retrieving the Memory of Institutions Established by African American Women in Columbia, SC
The Journey toward a Broader Understanding of Ben Delane and Celia Mann at Columbia's Mann-Simons Site
Middle Passage Public History
Drayton Hall: A Changing, Evolving, and Expanding Landscape of Interpretation
Silent Histories, Public Audiences: Using Archives and Exhibitions to Introduce Challenging Subjects
Slave Quarters and Places of Memory as Tools to Fight Racial Intolerance: The Power of Preservation and Interpretation
Transitioning to Justice
History of American Slavery Represented in Recent TV, Cinema and Video Games
Zachary Nataf, Learning Culture, Inc.
Slavery and the Slave Trade in the City: Integrating the Enslaved into the Public History of Downtown Charleston
The Atlantic Life of the 'Portrait of Cinque'
Not Lost and Not Forgotten: How to Help Cultural Communities Preserve Their Sacred Traditions and Sacred Spaces
Rev. Jerry Colbert, John Wesley UM Church, Singing and Praying Bands of Maryland and Delaware
African Americans in 1790s Philadelphia: Land of the Free and the Home of the Slave
They Wore White and Prayed to the East: The Material Legacy of Enslaved Muslims in Early America
The Louis G. Gregory Bahá’í Museum: Making Space for Interracial Unity in Charleston
Public History and the Narratives of Slavery in Rio de Janeiro
From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration
Toward Archival Justice: Charleston Contraband Registers
Revitalizing the Digital Archive of Ecclesiastical and Secular Sources for Slave Societies
Remembering Slavery in America’s Most Historic City
Out of Sight, Out of Mind: Archaeological Heritage within the City of Charleston
The Place Where It Happened: How One Historic Site Is Tackling Controversial Topics in Interpretation
Liverpool, Charleston and the Shaping of Space and Landscape by the System of Slavery
The Power of Place: Gadsden's Wharf and American History
Uncomfortable memory: Peoples of African Descent and Places of Memory in Cartegena de Indias, Colombia
Reimagining the Camino Real or King's Highway in East Texas: The Free, Fugitive, and Forcibly Transported People of African Descent
Power and Memory in the Great Dismal Swamp
Celebrating Caribbean-American Identity in the Southeastern US
Festive Noise: Creating Collective Memory in Pre-Emancipation Jamaica
Presentation with Caryl Phillips, Yale University, Novelist, Essayist, and Playwright
In conversation with Simon Lewis, College of Charleston
Sponsored by the Wells Fargo Distinguished Public Lecture Series
In this presentation, representatives from the museum planning and design firm Ralph Appelbaum Associates will present with IAAM leaders on the current planning and future directions of this groundbreaking museum project.
Pushing Past the Limits of Public History Practice: Reimagining Approaches to Representing Slavery in the Atlantic World
The Pest House on Sullivan's Island: Fact vs. Fantasy
The Thin Neck in the Hourglass: New Public History Perspectives on Early Charleston and the Afro-Atlantic World
Africanity: Recovering Agency from an Atlantic World Public History
Whose Heritage? Engaging Atlantic World Histories in Belizean Cultural Initiatives
Challenging Lies across the Landscape: Removing Confederate Statues and Memorials in the South
New World Memories: Which History Are We Learning in the High Schools of the Atlantic World?
Munree Cemetery: A Place of Remembrance and Community
The Continuing Struggle for a Substantive Democracy: From the Atlantic Revolutions to Today
This workshop will examine the coalition-building processes that planned the centennial events and installation of the permanent marker honoring Anthony Crawford, and other Abbeville lynching victims. With only seven weeks notice, and working with city officials and the Crawford family, these institutions executed two-days of well-attended events including an outdoor freedom school, a soil collection and consecration faith service, a scholarship essay contest and a community-wide service at Mr. Crawford's church. We seek to understand what investments institutions had in the Crawford lynching memorial so that other communities may begin a new way forward creating public history events, markers and artifacts dealing with local ugly histories.
Slavery Out of Sight: Dealing with Difficult Heritage in North Mississippi
Interpreting African American History in the Age of Black Lives Matter and Trump
Blurred Lines: Accountability and Difficult Dialogues in the Wake of Racial Violence
Inalienable Rights: Living History Through the Eyes of the Enslaved
Presenting the Past To Be Sold: The American Slave Trade from Virginia to New Orleans
Conquest and Catastrophe
The Living Dead: A Global Content Analysis of Two Sacred African Burial Grounds
Sweetened Pasts: New Orleans Pralines, Charleston Benne Wafers, and the Remembrance of Slavery
“Forms and Motifs in African Art: Works from the Avery Research Center’s John R. Dupree African Art Collection”
Thank you so much for joining us this weekend. Conferences like this are made possible by diligent behind the scenes work combined with intellectual and thought provoking professional discussions. We look forward to seeing you in the future!
