I’ll be speaking on South Carolinian intellectuals and their role in the struggle to forge the story of United States nationhood, at, appropriately enough, the University of South Carolina, on Oct. 26. It’s a topic I researched for my most recent book, Union, which was, in effect, a biography of William Gilmore Simms, Woodrow Wilson (South Carolinians both), George Bancroft, Frederick Douglass, and Frederick Jackson Turner. These men engaged in a two-generation-long battle over whether we would be a civic or ethnic nation, and the ethnonationalists were the initial winners. The event is sponsored by USC’s Humanities Collaborative. It’s free, open to the public, and kicks off at 4pm in the Karen J. Williams Courtroom at the Law School, If you live in or around the South Carolinian capitol, come by and say hello.
More details on the talk, entitled “South Carolinian Intellectuals and the Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood,” can be found here.
COLIN WOODARD is a New York Times bestselling author and award-winning journalist. He is the author of six books that have been translated into a dozen foreign languages and inspired an NBC television drama. He is currently Director of Nationhood Lab at the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Affairs at Salve Regina University. As State and National Affairs Writer at the Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram he won a 2012 George Polk Award and was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in 2016. He is a contributing editor at POLITICO and his work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Economist, Smithsonian and dozens of other major publications.