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 |
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.