MEDIA CONTACT: Candace Brasseur USCB Public Information Director 843-208-8030 brasse@uscb.edu
USCB History Professor Awarded $200,000 NEH Grant to Teach Teachers about Reconstruction in the South August 6, 2014
BLUFFTON, SC – A history professor at the University of South Carolina Beaufort has been awarded a grant of nearly $200,000 by the National Endowment for the Humanities to conduct a three-‐week institute for school teachers on the history of Reconstruction and its aftermath along America’s Southeastern coast. J. Brent Morris, Ph.D., an assistant professor of history in the Department of Humanities and Fine Arts at USCB, in partnership with the City of Beaufort, The Beaufort Museum, Penn Center, and the USC College of Education, will share in a total of $34 million in grants awarded by the NEH for 177 humanities projects nationwide. Dr. Morris earned a B.A. degree magna cum laude in History and English Language and Literature at the University of South Carolina in 2001, and an M.A. degree in History at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., in 2008. He earned a Ph.D. at Cornell in 2010, specializing in United States and African-‐American History. Dr. Morris’s research and academic interests involve Nineteenth Century United States History; South Carolina History; Slavery, Abolition and Antislavery; the Civil War and Reconstruction; and African-‐American History. As an undergraduate at USC, Dr. Morris earned a Palmetto Fellows Scholarship each year from 1997 through 2001. The South Carolina Commission on Higher Education established the Palmetto Fellows Scholarship to recognize talented high school seniors and provide financial support through their college careers. He also earned a research fellowship from the University of South Carolina Institute for Southern Studies for 2009 through 2012. He received three fellowships and two research grants while doing post-‐graduate work at Cornell, and then went on to earn a research fellowship from Oberlin College and an NEH research grant. In the latest NEH award, announced July 21, the University of South Carolina Columbia will receive an outright grant of $199,157 to fund a three-‐week institute in the summer of 2015 for 30 K-‐12 teachers