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Tag: John Giggie

SCSS Works with Partners to Elect Vivian Malone Jones to AWHoF

The Alabama Women’s Hall of Fame recently announced that Ms. Vivian Malone Jones will be inducted into the Hall’s upcoming 2021 class. Malone Jones was one of two students who integrated The University of Alabama on June 11, 1963. Two years later, she was the first African-American to earn a degree from UA. After graduation, Malone Jones worked for the US Department of Justice and later the Environmental Protections Agency. In 1996, former Alabama Governor George Wallace, who had stood […]

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Giggie & Stovall Partner with Local Churches to Create Civil Rights Guide to State’s AMEZ Churches

Dr. John Giggie and Ms. Liz Stovall, a Ph.D student focusing on Black migration in the antebellum US, have joined with Rev. Thaddeus Steele, Pastor of Hunter Chapel AMEZ Church in Tuscaloosa, to complete a civil rights guide of African Methodist Episcopal Zion Churches in Alabama. They will work with members from individual congregations to research and write their churches histories and integrate them into a larger state-wide guide, titled “The AME Zion Historical Civil Rights and Freedom Trail of […]

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History of Us Curriculum Looks to Expand into Other Alabama Schools

  History of Us, the ground-breaking, student-centered Black History course developed by the Frances J. Summersell Center of the Study of the South, in conjunction with Tuscaloosa’s Central High School, is being taught again this year. The success of the program has attracted attention from across the state, where other school systems are seeking to introduce the curriculum into their own classrooms. Birmingham’s WBHM explored the program’s success in a recent feature. “Eighteen-year-old Delphia McGraw of Tuscaloosa says she loves […]

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Dr. John Giggie to Join Others on Panel Discussion: What Would John Lewis Do?

On Monday, October 26 at 6 PM, Dr. John Giggie will join faculty from American Studies, Journalism, and Political Science to discuss the evolution of voting in America; how the electoral college works; and the role of media in covering elections. The panel will take questions from the audience, via Zoom. The event is free, but registration is required.

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Dr. John Giggie to Address National Conference on Citizenship

Dr. John Giggie will address the National Conference on Citizenship‘s Learn, Ask, & Share Circle this Wednesday, October 14, at 1 pm CDT. Giggie will discuss his work designing and teaching History of Us, the first Black History course taught in an Alabama public school.  Joining him will be Ms. Margaret Lawson, education/history graduate student and co-creator, and two alums, Ms. Delphia McGraw and Ms. Noa Jordan. Registration is free for this online event. Details are available at the National […]

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Dr. John Giggie to Participate in David Mathews Center’s Civic Institute, August 21

The Mathews Center will host its annual Civic Institute on August 21st, 2020. The event will be held entirely online. The theme of this year’s event is Common Bonds: Collective Purpose and Civic Resilience in Uncertain Times. Dr. David Mathews, President and C.E.O. of the Kettering Foundation, will deliver a (pre-recorded) keynote address drawing on his experiences at the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare—where he served as Secretary during the Swine Flu outbreak of 1976. Mathews is an alum of The […]

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Why the Debate Over Building Names Matters

Associate Professors Dr. John Giggie and Dr. James Mixson co-authored an opinion piece for al.com that explores the significance of building names, the legacies those names carry, and what they say about our often flawed understanding of the past. “When W.E.B. Dubois, the great Black intellectual and co-founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, surveyed the southern frenzy to memorialize the Confederacy in the late 1920s, he shook his head in disbelief. He feared the power […]

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Sisters and Rebels Named Winner of the 2020 Summersell Prize

The Frances S. Summersell Center for the Study of the South and the Charles G. Summersell Chair of Southern History at The University of Alabama are proud to announce the winner of the 2020 Summersell Prize for the best book on the history of the American South: Sisters and Rebels: A Struggle for the Soul of America (W.W. Norton, 2019) by Jacquelyn Dowd Hall. Sisters and Rebels is a masterful study of the three “estranged yet forever entangled” Lumpkin sisters […]

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UA Faculty and Students Present at University of Montevallo’s Civic Institute

Last week our faculty and students participated in the annual David Mathews Center for Civic Life‘s  Civic Institute in Montevallo. The panel, organized by Dr. John Giggie and titled “Geographical Imaginations: The Role of Recuperative Storytelling in Southern History and Memory,” explored the transformative potential in little-known, marginalized, and difficult pasts. Panel participants included two UA History majors: Margaret Lawson, who discussed her work on “History of Us,” a course that trains Central High School students to become producers of history as they […]

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Doctoral Candidate Wins Graduate Council Writing Fellowship

Doctoral Candidate Melissa Young has won a special Graduate Council Writing Fellowship for the summer and fall terms. Funded by UA’s Graduate School, the competitive award is designed to allow top doctoral students to devote themselves full-time to completing their dissertations and includes release time, a summer stipend, and an enhanced fall stipend (along with a full tuition scholarship and health insurance). Young is completing her dissertation on the emergence of the Jewish community in Birmingham after the Civil War. […]

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Summersell Center Receives Grant to Develop Queer History Website

Dr. John Giggie and the Summersell Center were recently chosen to receive a 2019 Teaching Grant from The University of Alabama College of Arts & Sciences to develop Queer Alabama, the digital humanities website that came out of the course “Invisible Histories,” that was taught this spring. It will fund the work of student Isabella Garrison as she refines and expands the website this summer. The site showcases the research done by students documenting the queer community at The University […]

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Summersell Center and Civil Rights History Task Force Publish Civil Rights Trail Book

Director of the Frances J. Summersell Center for the Study of the South , Dr. John Giggie, working with students from his class on Religion and Civil Rights at The University of Alabama and members of the Tuscaloosa Civil Rights History Task Force, recently published a 37-page Civil Rights History Trail guide for the city of Tuscaloosa. Based partly on student research, the pamphlet chronicles the history of key events, institutions, and individuals associated with the local history of the movement.  In […]

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Summersell Student Wins First Place in URSCA

History major and Summersell Center for the Study of the South student Isabella Garrison of Raleigh, North Carolina, took first place in the College of Arts & Sciences’ Summit for Undergraduate Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity (URSCA) poster competition for her presentation on “The Cartography of Southern Queerness.” URSCA allows undergraduate students the opportunity to highlight their research and creativity at UA. Garrison uncovered a deeper understanding of the emergence of the queer movement at the University of Alabama, specifically […]

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History Students Excel at URSCA

The College of Arts and Sciences held its 16th annual A&S Summit for Undergraduate Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity (URSCA). Five of our students submitted research projects in History, and an additional two of our students worked in the related field of Classics. In the Humanities and Fine Arts Oral Presentations session, Molly Buffington, triple major in History, German, and Latin,  presented A War of Words: The Lutheran-Calvinist Debate on Acts 3:21 and the Eucharist. Her work, a project she […]

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