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Jun. 30 | 2012 Bode-Pearson Prize
Nominations for the 2012 Bode-Pearson Prize for Outstanding Contributions to American Studies due
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Resources: Abstracts of American Studies Dissertations
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Rosengarten, Dale. "Social Origins of the African-American Lowcountry Basket," American Civilization Program, Harvard University, May 1997.
For as long as people of African descent have lived in the Carolina lowcountry they have made baskets. Coiled grass “fanner” baskets were used to separate rice from its chaff on the colony’s first plantations, in the early 1690s. The lowcountry basket, at once a common vessel and a valued tool, has become a symbol of the city and the region, and is enjoying a revival as a work of art. This work surveys basket traditions found in areas of West and Central Africa—in particular, Angola, the Congo, and Senegambia—which sent significant numbers of people into slavery on these shores. It places the lowcountry basket in a global setting and investigates Africans’ encounters with other cultures in America. It brings the story of coiled basketry into the 1990s by analyzing the impacts of markets and missions—the major agents of change in basket-making communities in Africa and South Carolina. This work comments on the role of invention, borrowing, and memory in the production of coiled baskets everywhere.
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