Sheila Pree Bright is a photographer based in Atlanta. She has been recognized with multiple awards, including the Santa Fe Fellowship, and her photographs are in the collections of the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture and the Library of Congress, both in Washington, D.C., and the National Center for Civil and Human Rights and the High Museum of Art, in Atlanta, among many others.

Bright’s sustained focus on the African American experience in the South has entailed projects that range from the most apparently banal, suburban living, to the most charged, the Black Lives Matter protests in the region and beyond over recent years. Bright’s work also showcases a profound historical sensitivity, as seen for example in her 1960Who series, in which she wheat-pasted on buildings across Atlanta her portraits of locally significant but nationally unsung heroes of the civil rights movement in the mid- twentieth century, afterwards making photographs of those public art installations.

Bright’s photographs found in Southbound are drawn from her #1960Now series, which examines race, gender, and generational divides to raise awareness of millennial perspectives on civil and human rights. With a focus on capturing the efforts of emerging young leaders affiliated with the Black Lives Matter movement, Bright has made photographs on the front lines of demonstrations in Ferguson, Baltimore, and Atlanta, among many other places.

Bright is a keynote speaker for the Public Memory in the New South Symposium, which takes place the following day, Saturday, January 12 from 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM.

Bright’s lecture is co-presented by the Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture, with support from the College of Charleston’s Sustainability Literacy Institute.

Over recent months and years, as white Southerners’ hold over Southern history and memory is called into question, landscapes in the South are experiencing profound change. Monuments to the region’s charged past continue to be contested and removed from statehouse grounds, college campuses and the heart of the region’s downtowns.  Meanwhile, galvanizing new markers speak to places and memories long forgotten by many, notably in Montgomery’s National Memorial for Peace and Justice and Charleston’s planned International African American Museum. 

The Southbound symposium on Public Memory in the New South is concerned with what we remember and forget, and how we choose to frame our recollections to arrive at a collective sense of who we are in today’s South. It brings together exhibiting artists whose photographic projects document sites of memory ranging from the almost invisible to the forgotten, the ephemeral, the performed, and the, sometimes, hidden in plain sight. It also features scholars, educators, and activists who are challenging taken for granted memorialization of one vision for southern history, synonymous with the region itself for many here and further afield. Public Memory in the New South advocates for more complex readings of the region to be central to public memory here.

The symposium’s purpose is to arrive at new understandings of how our collective memories ultimately reflect and inform how we experience this place and to take stock of ways in which our sense of ourselves is changing in the New South.

The symposium kicks off on Friday evening with a keynote lecture by Southbound photographer Sheila Pree Bright.

Friday, January 11, 2019 | 7:00 PM
Opening Keynote Lecture
Sheila Pree Bright | #UNAPOLOGETIC
College of Charleston Sottile Theatre | 44 George St.

Saturday, January 12, 2019 | 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM
College of Charleston School of Sciences and Math Building, Auditorium | 202 Calhoun St.

Dr. Adam H. Domby | What Were They Supposed to Mean: Confederate Monuments in the Eyes of Their Builders | 10:00 AM

Dr. Thomas Brown | Civil War Monuments and Photography | 10:30 AM

Jeanine Michna Bales | Through Darkness to Light: Photographs Along the Underground Railroad | 11:00 AM

Jessica Ingram | Visualizing Violence in the American South in Road Through Midnight: A Civil Rights Memorial | 11:30 AM

Lunch Break | 12:00 – 2:00 PM

Dr. Thavolia Glymph | Posing/Posed for the Camera: The Right to Look Back in Possession of One’s Self | 2:00 PM

Anderson Scott | The Selective Memory of the South | 2:30 PM

Eliot Dudik | Memory, Beauty, and Humor as Unifying Forces | 3:00 PM

Brenda Tindal | K(NO)W Justice K(NO)W Peace: Reckoning & the Making of a Rapid Response Exhibit in a New South City | 3:30 PM

Dinner Break | 4:00 – 7:00 PM

Closing Keynote Lecture
Saturday, January 12, 2019 | 7:00 PM
Michael Arad | Memory in the Public Realm: Making the Past Present
College of Charleston School of Sciences and Math Building, Auditorium | 202 Calhoun St.

Michael Arad is an architect most notable for his design of the World Trade Center Memorial in New York City. He is also the designer of the forthcoming Mother Emanuel AME Church Memorial in Charleston.

 Arad will speak about memorials and public memory, including a presentation on the design of the Mother Emanuel AME Church Memorial project.

Arad is a keynote speaker for the Public Memory in the New South symposium, which takes place earlier that day on Saturday, January 12 from 10:00 AM – 4:00 PM.

The Sit a Spell Conversation Series aims to encourage thoughtful conversation on a variety of topics and issues faced by today’s New South. 

In a series of four installments, participants who represent the diverse facets of the Lowcountry community will be available  in the Southbound exhibition space and available for free-form conversation during lunch hour, from 12:00 – 2:00 PM. 

The the third installment features Chase Glenn, Executive Director of the Alliance for Full Acceptance. 

Check back soon for participant and topic information.

Wednesday, November 14 at the Halsey Institute – Drs. Dale and Ted Rosengarten

Wednesday, December 5 at City Gallery at Waterfront Park, 34 Prioleau Street – Dr. Rénard Harris

Wednesday, January 16 at City Gallery at Waterfront Park, 34 Prioleau Street – Chase Glenn

Wednesday, February 6 at the Halsey Institute – TBD

All members are invited to join the Halsey Institute staff and tour guides for a fun-filled family-friendly celebration of Southbound: Photographs of and about the New South. Enjoy guided tours, art activities, and refreshments. This event is open to all levels of Halsey membership.

To join the Halsey Institute family, please visit halsey.cofc.edu/sustain/ or call (843) 953-5652.

The Halsey Institute commissioned Dr. Rick Bunch, a geographic information science (GIS) and spatial cognition specialist, to design an interactive map of the South, representing everything from street name maps to data collected on prison populations and churchgoers, among other topics. Available on interactive technology inside the exhibition space and on the project website (southboundproject.org), this Index of Southerness allows viewers to switch on- and-off indicators and arrive at their own maps of the South.

Rick Bunch is a Professor in the Department of Geography, Environment, & Sustainability at UNC Greensboro. He has more than twenty years of experience in GIS and the conceptualization, modeling, and analysis of geographically referenced data. Bunch has conducted research that examines patterns in human behavior through cognitive maps, geographic space, and the processes associated with how people learn and synthesize geographic information. He has been the project leader on more than fifty projects over the past decade, and has published twenty-five academic articles, reports, and manuals. He currently serves on the editorial board for the journals Cartography and Geographic Information Science and the International Journal of Applied Geospatial Research.

The Sit a Spell Conversation Series aims to encourage thoughtful conversation on a variety of topics and issues faced by today’s New South. 

In a series of four installments, participants who represent the diverse facets of the Lowcountry community will be present in the Southbound exhibition space and available for free-form conversation during lunch hour, from 12:00 – 2:00 PM. 

Check back soon for participant and topic information.

Wednesday, November 14 at the Halsey Institute – Drs. Dale and Ted Rosengarten

Wednesday, December 5 at City Gallery at Waterfront Park, 34 Prioleau Street – Dr. Rénard Harris

Wednesday, January 16 at City Gallery at Waterfront Park, 34 Prioleau Street – Chase Glenn

Wednesday, February 6 at the Halsey Institute – TBD

Nikky Finney, Professor of Creative Writing and Southern Letters at the University of South Carolina and 2011 winner of the National Book Award for Poetry, was commissioned to create new work in response to photographs from the Southbound project. Finney wrote four new poems that she will read, along with readings of other work.

Finney was born in South Carolina, within listening distance of the sea. A child of activists, she came of age during the Civil Rights and Black Arts Movements. At Talladega College, nurtured by Hale Woodruff’s Amistad murals, Finney began to understand the powerful synergy between art and history. Finney has authored four books of poetry: Head Off & Split (2011), The World Is Round (2003), Rice (1995), and On Wings Made of Gauze (1985). Finney also authored Heartwood (1997), edited The Ringing Ear: Black Poets Lean South (2007), and co-founded the Affrilachian Poets. 

Join the Halsey Institute staff for a fun and exclusive evening tour. Beginning at 6:00 PM, curators Mark Sloan and Mark Long will lead Halsey Institute members on a guided tour of Southbound: Photographs of and about the New South at City Gallery at Waterfront Park. The City Gallery is located at 34 Prioleau Street.

Explore the exhibitions, get insider knowledge, meet other Halsey Institute lovers! This tour is for Halsey Institute members only.

To join the Halsey Institute family, please visit halsey.cofc.edu/sustain/ or call (843) 953-5652.

This dynamic panel exploring photographers’ privileged access to communities that we might otherwise never have the chance to see. Featuring Southbound artists Deborah Luster, who photographs prisoners in Louisiana’s Angola Prison; Susana Raab, who photographs migrant workers in Florida; Sofia Valiente, who documents a transitional community of registered sex offenders, and Rob Amberg, who photographs intentional communities and those who live off the land in rural North Carolina.

Join the Halsey Institute staff for a fun and exclusive evening tour. Beginning at 6:00 PM, curators Mark Sloan and Mark Long will lead Halsey Institute members on a guided tour of Southbound: Photographs of and about the New South in the Halsey Institute galleries.

Explore the exhibitions, get insider knowledge, meet other Halsey Institute lovers! This tour is for Halsey Institute members only.

To join the Halsey Institute family, please visit halsey.cofc.edu/sustain/ or call (843) 953-5652.