Summersell Center Accepting Nominations for 2024 Deep South Book Prize

The Frances S. Summersell Center for the Study of the South and the Charles G. Summersell Chair of Southern History at The University of Alabama are pleased to announce that they are receiving nominations for the 2024 Summersell Deep South Book Prize for the best book on the history of the American South. The author of the prizewinning book will be awarded a cash prize and be invited to give an address and meet with faculty and students at The […]

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Voices of the Enslaved Wins 2022 Summersell Deep South Book Prize

The Frances S. Summersell Center for the Study of the South and the Charles G. Summersell Chair of Southern History at The University of Alabama are proud to announce the winner of the Sixth Biennial Summersell Deep South Book Prize for the best book on the history of the American South: Voices of the Enslaved: Love, Labor, and Longing in French Louisiana (UNC, 2019) by Sophie White, Professor of American Studies at the University of Notre Dame. Voices of the […]

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2021 Summersell Deep South Book Prize Nominations

The Frances S. Summersell Center for the Study of the South and the Charles G. Summersell Chair of Southern History at The University of Alabama are pleased to communicate that they are receiving nominations for the 2021 Summersell Deep South Book Prize for the best book on the history of the American South. The author of the prizewinning book will be awarded a $2500 cash prize and be invited to give an address and meet with faculty and students at […]

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Undergraduate Jana Venable Wins 2021 Randall Outstanding Undergraduate Research Award

Elmore County, Alabama native and senior history major Jana Venable has been awarded the 2021 Randall Outstanding Undergraduate Research Award. Venable received the award for her work, “Recovering Hidden Histories: Memorializing Lynching Victims in Elmore County, Alabama,” which she completed as part of Associate Professor and Director of the Summersell Center for the Study of the South John Giggie‘s Alabama Memory project, which seeks to recover the lives of black Alabamians lost in decades of race-driven lynching violence.  Venable is […]

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From Revolt Against Chivalry to Sisters and Rebels: A Life in Southern and Women’s History

Dr. Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, Julia Cherry Spruill Professor Emerita at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and winner of the 2020 Summersell Center for the Study of the South’s Deep South Book Prize, will give her acceptance address on Friday, March 5, at 3 PM CST via Zoom. Her address, entitled “From Revolt Against Chivalry to Sisters and Rebels: A Life in Southern and Women’s History,” will offer perspective and insight into her distinguished career as a student […]

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History of Us Featured in Recent Edition of Collegian

A History of Us An article about Dr. Giggie’s “History of Us” class, the first Black History class taught in an Alabama public high school, was featured recently in the College of Arts & Sciences magazine, Collegian. “On a January morning, 18 Central High School students sat around a circle of tables in their first period class. It’s silent, but it’s not tense—there’s an air of thoughtfulness, of students searching to find their answer to the question posed moments before. […]

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Summersell Center Hosts Queer History Reading Group

The Summersell Center recently hosted a Queer History Reading Group for graduate students in history. Organized by Margaret Montgomery, Isabella Garrison, and Dr. John Giggie, Summersell Director, the conversation centered on Charles Blow’s recent memoir, Fire Shut up in My Bones, in which the New York Times journalists talks about growing as a bisexual Black man in the Deep South. The goal for the group, as put by Isabella, is to “create new spaces for graduate students to look at […]

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Dr. John Giggie to Participate in David Mathews Center’s Civic Institute, August 21

The Mathews Center will host its annual Civic Institute on August 21st, 2020. The event will be held entirely online. The theme of this year’s event is Common Bonds: Collective Purpose and Civic Resilience in Uncertain Times. Dr. David Mathews, President and C.E.O. of the Kettering Foundation, will deliver a (pre-recorded) keynote address drawing on his experiences at the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare—where he served as Secretary during the Swine Flu outbreak of 1976. Mathews is an alum of The […]

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UA Faculty & Students Present at University of Montevallo’s Civic Institute

  Last week our faculty and students participated in the annual David Mathews Center for Civic Life‘s  Civic Institute in Montevallo. The panel, organized by Dr. John Giggie and titled “Geographical Imaginations: The Role of Recuperative Storytelling in Southern History and Memory,” explored the transformative potential in little-known, marginalized, and difficult pasts. Panel participants included two UA History majors: Margaret Lawson, who discussed her work on “History of Us,” a course that trains Central High School students to become producers of history as they contend with […]

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Summersell Center Receives Grant to Develop Queer History Website

Dr. John Giggie and the Summersell Center were recently chosen to receive a 2019 Teaching Grant from The University of Alabama College of Arts & Sciences to develop Queer Alabama, the digital humanities website that came out of the course “Invisible Histories,” that was taught this spring. It will fund the work of student Isabella Garrison as she refines and expands the website this summer. The site showcases the research done by students documenting the queer community at The University […]

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