Speaking of ... College of Charleston

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Scott Persons, College of Charleston assistant professor of geology and curator of the Mace Brown Museum of Natural History, and a team of researchers generated a lot of excitement when they discovered the Serpentisuchops (sur-pen-ta-soo-kops), a previously unknown prehistoric marine reptile in 2022.

Persons knew he wanted to be a paleontologist from the time he was two and a half years old. To test his determination, Persons’ parents lied about his age (he was 12 years old) to enroll him in a dinosaur hunting exhibition in Wyoming’s Glenrock Badlands.

“My parents were very concerned about this career path I’d chosen,” explains Persons. “They thought, we'll send him to this camp, throw him into the deep end in the hot Wyoming sun with a shovel and pickaxe for a couple of weeks, and we'll see if he still wants to stick with it. And as it happened, I fell in love with the work and the environment.”

Since that initial expedition, Persons has returned to the Badlands without exception every single summer. Now, CofC students join him on a fossil expedition at the College’s Paleontology Field School in Glenrock. After listening to Persons on this Speaking Of ... podcast episode, you’ll be eager to hop on a plane and head to the Badlands.

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W. Scott Persons grew up on a rural farm in the mountains of North Carolina. He first became a “dino-maniac“ at the age of two-and-a-half when his father bought him his first dinosaur book. Since then, he has joined fossil hunting expeditions in Mongolia’s Gobi Desert; the volcanic ash beds of Liaoning, China; Africa’s Olduvai Gorge and throughout the American and Canadian West. Persons has had the honor of studying and working under his two biggest childhood heroes -- world-renowned paleontologists Robert Bakker and Philip Currie. His research focuses on understanding dinosaur ecology and the evolution of dinosaur locomotion. His work has been featured on the National Geographic and Discovery channels and in the Smithsonian and Discover magazines. In addition to his role as assistant professor, Persons serves as curator of the Mace Brown Museum of Natural History. So far, Persons has “hunted for fossils and eaten pizza on six continents.’

Resources

CofC Paleontologists Uncover Strange New Prehistoric Sea Monster

No Bones About It: CofC’s Paleontology Field School is Way Cool
CofC Professor, Alum Help Identify New Species of ‘Tyrannosaurus’

Personal Website: http://scottpersons.org/

Department of Geology and Environmental Geosciences at CofC

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On this episode of Speaking Of...College of Charleston speaks with acclaimed author Bret Lott about his 34 years of teaching writing, his writing process and upcoming non-fiction book and the international writing program he established in Bahrain. Lott shares moments from his life, including the infamous story of becoming an overnight, international best-selling author when his book Jewel was chosen as an Oprah's Book Club selection.
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Bret Lott is the author of fourteen books, most recently the essay collection Letters and Life: On Being a Writer, On Being a Christian (Crossway, 2013) and the novel Dead Low Tide (Random House, 2012). He received his MFA in fiction from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in 1984, studying under Jay Neugeboren and James Baldwin.
From 1986 to 2004 he was writer-in-residence and professor of English at The College of Charleston, leaving to take the position of editor and director of the journal The Southern Review at Louisiana State University. Three years later, in the fall of 2007, he returned to The College of Charleston and the job he most loves: teaching.
He has spoken on Flannery O'Connor at the White House, and served as Fulbright Senior American Scholar to Bar-llan University in Tel Aviv, Israel. From 2006 to 2013 he served as a member of the National Council on the Arts. From 2010 to 2022 he was director of the Spoleto Summer Study Abroad program in English at the College.
Resources on this Episode
Michael Connelly, Bosch Series
Barbara W. Tuchman: The Guns of August, The Proud Tower

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This episode of Speaking Of...College of Charleston is a special edition about cannabis legislation in South Carolina. The program is hosted by Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker. Guest panelists include South Carolina State Senator Tom Davis, Gary Hess, the founder and executive director of the veterans alliance for holistic alternatives and Pawleys Island attorney Margaret Ann “Muffy” Kneece.
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Kathleen Parker writes a weekly column on politics and culture. In 2010, she received the Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Commentary "for her perceptive, often witty columns on an array of political and moral issues. gracefully sharing the experiences and values that lead her to unpredictable conclusions.” A Florida native, Parker started her column in 1987 when she was a staff writer for the Orlando Sentinel. She joined the Washington Post Writers Group in 2006. She is the author of Save the Males: Why Men Matter, Why Women Should Care (2008).

“Parker writes with grace, wit and style and is always prescient, prophetic, ahead of the curve.” Doug Marlette, Political cartoonist & author (1949-2007)

HONORS & AWARDS

Ernie Pyle Lifetime Achievement Award

South Carolina Academy of Authors

2010 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary

1993 H.L. Mencken Writing Award

Parker divides her time between Washington, DC, and South Carolina —and points beyond. When she isn‘t immersed in writing, she enjoys interior design, an array of fur and winged friends, and long pauses with nature.

Senator Tom Davis has lived in Beaufort, South Carolina, since 1985, practicing law at the firm of Harvey & Battey, P.A. He is the managing partner in the firm’s real estate department. Sen. Davis obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree from Furman University in 1982, obtained a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Maryland School of Law in 1985. He served in Gov. Mark Sanford’s administration as senior policy advisor, co-chief of staff, deputy chief of staff and chief of staff from 2003 to 2007. In November 2008, he was elected State Senator for South Carolina Senate District 46 and was re-elected to second and third four-year terms in 2012 and 2016.

Gary Hess is the founder and Executive Director of the Veterans Alliance for Holistic Alternatives (VAHA), CEO of Teleleaf, and Partner of Dynamic Growth Solutions – organizations he founded to help destigmatize and provide access to medical cannabis.

Gary served in the Marine Corps for 11 years, both enlisted and as an Infantry Officer. After serving during the heaviest levels of fighting in Irag, Gary experienced the challenges of living with PTSD, traumatic brain injury, chronic pain, and pharmaceutical dependency first-hand. He used cannabis not only to manage his conditions safely on his path to recovery, but also to catalyze and expedite Post-Traumatic Growth. He is now an advocate and activist for the use of medical cannabis in post-traumatic recovery – both for veterans and trauma survivors.

Margaret Ann “Muffy” Kneece

In 1992 Muffy received a Bachelor of Arts Degree from the University of South Carolina, with a major in History. She received her Juris Doctor from The University of South Carolina School of Law in 1995. After law school Muffy was employed with the Fifth Circuit Solicitor’s Office.

Muffy initially worked in the Family Court Division and was the Chief Prosecuting Attorney for the Fifteenth Circuit Family Court when she returned to her true passion as a General Sessions Assistant Solicitor for Georgetown County. It wa

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Mari Crabtree, associate professor of African American Studies at the College, joins us on this episode of Speaking Of... to talk about her latest publication, My Soul Is a Witness: The Traumatic Afterlife of Lynching.
The book, which was published by Yale University Press, provides an intimate look at the aftermath of lynching as seen through the personal accounts of Black victims and survivors who lived through and overcame the trauma. Crabtree speaks with Matthew J. Cressler, associate professor of religious studies at the College, about her research.

“I wanted my book, to be kind of resting on the foundation of that work (from the Equal Justice Initiative), and focus on stories of individual people, because those lives are the reason the numbers matter, ultimately and that was something I didn’t want to lose,” says Crabtree. “So that’s why I wanted to invite the reader into these particular communities, and kind of weave these communities, these stories, these families into the book. (...) I wanted people to feel the full weight, or as much of the weight as they could carry, of the personal side of these of these lynchings.”

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Mari N. Crabtree is a writer and an associate professor of African American Studies at the College of Charleston. Her research seeks to excavate Black life beyond the binary of suffering or resistance by exploring how culture provides a lens for understanding the struggle for Black liberation but also Black ingenuity, joy, and love. Her book, My Soul Is a Witness: The Traumatic Afterlife of Lynching, was published in 2022 by Yale University Press as part of the New Directions in Narrative History series. She also has published essays in Raritan: A Quarterly Review, Rethinking History, Contemporaries, Chronicle of Higher Education, and elsewhere.

Matthew J. Cressler is associate professor of religious studies at the College of Charleston. He is the author of Authentically Black and Truly Catholic: The Rise of Black Catholicism in the Great Migrations (NYU Press, 2017) and has written for America, The Atlantic, National Catholic Reporter, Religion News Service, The Revealer, Slate, U.S. Catholic, andZocalo Public Square. He is a member of the Charleston Area Justice Ministry, a grassroots coalition of more than thirty congregations coming together to make the Lowcountry a place that is just and equitable for all.

Resources:

My Soul Is a Witness: The Traumatic Afterlife of Lynching (Yale University Press, 2022)

Mari Crabtree's Website

Review in The New Republic of My Soul Is a Witness:

James Baldwin’s collected essays, The Price of the Ticket

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Paul Schwager, dean of the School of Business, talks about program growth in the School of Business, partnerships with local and regional businesses, student internships and more. The host is Mike Robertson from University Communications.