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Department of English Language and Literature

Directory

Neal Polhemus

Title: Instructor
Department: English Language and Literature
College of Arts and Sciences
Email: polhemus@email.sc.edu
Office: HOB 605
Neal Polhemus

Education

PhD, University of South Carolina 
MA, College of Charleston 
BS, College of Charleston  

Areas of Specialization

African Diaspora
Slavery in the US & Caribbean
American Environmental Movement  

Courses Taught

Social Advocacy and Ethical Life
The Black Experience in the United States to 1865 
Introduction to Latin American History 

Selected Awards

   • Bridge Humanities Corp. Fellowship, Office of the Provost and College of Arts and Sciences, University of South Carolina, 2017-2019.
   • Russell J. and Dorothy S. Bilinski Dissertation Completion Fellowship, College of Arts & Sciences, University of South Carolina, 2015-2016.
   • Ralph Lee Woodward Jr. Prize, Best Graduate Student Paper, Latin American and Caribbean Section of the Southern Historical Association (LACS), January 2016.
   • Robert Wienefield Essay Prize, Best Graduate Student Research Paper, University of South Carolina, 2014.

Publications

   • “Bodies on the Beach: Sullivan’s Island and the Processing of West African Bodies for Market in the Anglo-Atlantic World,” in Watery Connections: A New History of Ports and their Transnational Entanglements in the US South, Carolina Lowcountry in the Atlantic World, Jacob Steere-Williams and Blake C. Scott, eds., (Columbia, University of South Carolina Press, 2023).
   • “One Man’s Contributions - John V. Dennis and Congaree National Park,” Friends of Congaree Swamp Newsletter, Fall 2022.
   • 
“50 Years Since the Torch was Passed: The Sierra Club and the Founding of Congaree National Park,” The Metropole – The Official Blog of the Urban History Association, October, 2019. https://themetropole.blog/2019/10/16/50-years-since-the-torch-was-passed-the-sierra-club-and-the-founding-of-congaree-national-park/
   • 
“The Congaree Swamp and the Floyd J. Spence Papers,” Friends of Congaree Swamp Newsletter, Summer 2018.
   • 
“Ouidah” and “Senegambia,” in David Head, ed., in Encyclopedia of The Atlantic World, 1400-1900: Europe, Africa, and the Americas in An Age of Exploration, Trade, and Empires (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2017). 
   • 
“A Dialogue with King Agaja: William Snelgrave’s 1727 Ardra Diary and the Contours of Dahomian-European Commercial Exchange,” History in Africa 43, (2016): 29–62.
   • 
“‘Nothing but Death Before My Eyes’: Mending Broken Spirits and Repairing Defensive Walls in Colonial Charleston.” Atlantic Studies 12, no. 4 (2015): 457–81.
   • 
“‘Differences in Opinion or Practice in Matters of Religious Concernment’: The Dynamics of Promoting Liberty of Conscience in Proprietary South Carolina, 1630-1687,” Transactions of the Huguenot Society of South Carolina, No. 115 (2011): 57-79. 


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