Stay in De Boat, a short but powerful film made by College of Charleston students and alumni, will premiere on Thursday, October 27, 2011 at 5:30 p.m. in room 235 of the Robert Scott Small building. The film grew from a class project in Anthropology 490: Research Methods in Expressive Culture. The premiere is free and open to the public.
“Stay in De Boat is unique and special in the world of anthropological film because it features the voices of the Gullah/Geechee community without either an intertext or an authorial anthropological voice, says Dr. E. Moore Quinn, Associate Professor of Anthropology. “This kind of approach harks to the call for conducting ethnographic research and visual anthropology in new ways. It promises to be an important contribution to the field.”
Michael Broderick ’10, Morgan Furr ’09, Jack Neligan ’11, and Zane Tharp ’15 worked on the project for more than a year, interviewing Elder Carlie Towne, Ron Daise, Carolyn “Jabulile” White, and “Queen Quet,” among others. In the film, the Gullah/Geechee people talk about their experiences, dreams, and hopes for the future of their people, their language and their culture.
The Gullah/Geechee people are descendents of enslaved Africans from various ethnic groups of west and central Africa. Brought to the New World and forced to work on the plantations of coastal South Carolina, Georgia, North Carolina and Florida, Gullah/Geechee people have retained many aspects of their African heritage due to the geographic barriers of the coastal landscape and the strong sense of place and family of Gullah/Geechee community members.
The film is supported by a grant from the South Carolina National Heritage Corridor with matching funds from the College of Charleston.
For more information, contact E. Moore Quinn at 843.953.7306 or at quinne@cofc.edu.
