CofC Professor Receives S.C. Governor's Award in the Humanities

^{Above: Julia Eichelberger addresses the audience at the Oct. 21, 2024, ceremony commemorating three African American cemeteries formerly found at Rivers Green. (Photo by Catie Cleveland)}

College of Charleston English professor Julia Eichelberger received a South Carolina Governor’s Award in the Humanities at the 33rd annual South Carolina Awards in the Humanities Luncheon and Ceremony in Columbia, South Carolina, on Wednesday, Oct. 23, 2024.

Established in 1991, the S.C. Governor’s Awards recognize outstanding achievement in humanities research, teaching and scholarship; institutional and individual participation in helping communities in South Carolina better understand our cultural heritage or ideas and issues related to the humanities; excellence in defining South Carolina’s cultural life to the nation or world; and exemplary support for public humanities programs. 

Eichelberger certainly fits the bill.

Currently the Marybelle Higgins Howe Professor of Southern Literature, Eichelberger has taught at the College of Charleston since 1992, focusing on African American literature, Southern literature and culture, Charleston writers, as well as courses in writing and literary interpretation. She serves as the director of the College’s minor in Southern studies, which she helped co-found in 2016.

She also helped to establish the Center for the Study of Slavery in Charleston at the College in 2018, co-chaired the Historical Review Taskforce that President Andrew T. Hsu convened in the summer of 2020, and has co-chaired the College’s Committee on Commemoration and Landscapes since 2021, presenting more honest and complete stories of the College and the surrounding neighborhood through historical signage, in-person tours and the Discovering Our Past website.

RELATED: Read about the College’s recent soil-collecting event at Rivers Green.

Eichelberger was named a Faculty Champion in 2019 by the South Carolina chapter of the American Association of University Professors for her research and promotion of more equitable employment practices for adjunct faculty.

In Charleston, she has been a member of the interfaith Charleston Area Justice Ministry, representing their work in op-eds and public negotiations for restorative practices in Charleston County schools, decreased racial bias in policing and mobile clinics that bring primary health care to more residents.

Her experiences within and beyond the College of Charleston have fueled her scholarship and public history on Charleston writers, activists and ordinary citizens who lived and worked on sites that are now part of the campus.

The mission of S.C. Humanities is to enrich the cultural and intellectual lives of all South Carolinians. Established in 1973, the organization is governed by a volunteer board of directors comprised of community leaders from throughout the state. It presents and supports literary initiatives, lectures, exhibits, festivals, publications, oral history projects, videos and other humanities-based experiences that directly or indirectly reach more than 250,000 citizens annually.