Late August for academics is time to return to campus. And returning to campus is, invariably, an occasion for thinking both about what one accomplished (and didn’t accomplish) over the summer and about what one needs to accomplish (and would like to accomplish) in the coming year. For me, it’s a good time to assess […]
When I was growing up in North Carolina, it was sometimes said that slavery only really existed in the eastern part of the state; the western part was historically a land of small farms, tilled by their owners, a place more like Vermont, geographically and ideologically, than South Carolina. It was something of a shock, […]
The trip to northwest Rowan County, North Carolina, in the summer of 2007 was valuable in several respects. I learned my way around the Third Creek community. I took photographs, several of which turned out to be useful in later research. And I visited the graves of the three individuals I most wanted to learn […]
City of Rhetoric 