CONWAY, Ark. (May 9, 2018) – Dr. Jonathan Hancock, assistant
professor of history at Hendrix College, has been selected as one of 14
scholars in the first cohort of the new Bright Institute at Knox College, a program for
professors who teach early American history at liberal arts colleges.
For three years, participating scholars will attend a two-week,
in-residence summer seminar on the Knox campus. Each year’s seminar will be
co-hosted by an eminent professor of American history before 1848 and a
pedagogical consultant who will help participants turn their research into
incisive classroom opportunities. Lodging and expenses will be covered; in
addition, each participant will receive $3,000 in research support during each
year of the seminar.
Hancock is currently completing a book manuscript that considers
how people sought to explain the New Madrid Earthquakes of 1811-1812 at a time
when prophets and civil authorities offered competing visions of nationhood in
the United States and among Native American nations. He will use the three
years of research support to begin a new project on the history of American
Indian communities in and around Charleston, South Carolina, from the eve of
contact with Europeans through the 19th century. Drawing from
archival material in South Carolina and Washington D.C., colonial newspapers, and
anthropological studies, the project will focus on their historical
experiences.
“Charleston was an important colonial capital in British North
America, and while its centrality to the slave trade, plantation slavery, and
the U.S. Civil War is well-known, the tribal communities that have remained in
the South Carolina Low Country to this day have been less recognized in historical
scholarship,” he said.
Hancock looks forward to the seminar’s field-specific focus.
“It’s not often that I get to discuss research and teaching with
Early Americanists at other liberal arts colleges, and I am eager to exchange
classroom strategies for the kinds of early American history courses that we
all teach,” he says. The seminar also will emphasize ways that scholars can
incorporate their own research into the undergraduate classroom.
About Hendrix College
A private liberal arts college in Conway, Arkansas, Hendrix
College consistently earns recognition as one of the country’s leading liberal
arts institutions, and is featured in Colleges That Change Lives: 40
Schools That Will Change the Way You Think About Colleges. Its academic
quality and rigor, innovation, and value have established Hendrix as a fixture
in numerous college guides, lists, and rankings. Founded in 1876, Hendrix has
been affiliated with the United Methodist Church since 1884. To learn more,
visit www.hendrix.edu.