Freedom for Whom? Events
This expansive programming is designed to generate conversations across campus and within the Charleston community, provide educational opportunities, and engage our colleagues, students, and neighbors in both the historical and modern debates around freedom, all within the spirit of the Revolutionary Age.
Upcoming Events
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March 6-7: Dark Water by Complexions Contemporary Ballet
Event Title: Dark Water by Complexions Contemporary Ballet
Location: Gaillard Center
Date & Time: March 6-7, 2026 at 7:30 p.m.
About the Produciton: Conducted by Ming Luke
The Charleston Gaillard Center and Charleston Symphony proudly present the world premiere of Dark Water, a bold new ballet by acclaimed choreographer and Complexions co-founding artistic director Dwight Rhoden with an original score by Charleston composer Edward Hart.
Inspired by the Lowcountry’s most defining element—its dark, mysterious waters—Dark Water moves in mystery, tracing a choreographic journey through the harbors, swamps, tidal creeks, rice fields, and shoreline that shape the region.
Hart’s sweeping composition provides a dense, ever-shifting soundscape that mirrors the power and beauty of these environments, and the ecological challenges they face. Rhoden’s choreography—fluid, physical, and emotionally resonant—emphasizes transformation, as a large ensemble of artists forms and re-forms like a flock, conjuring images that blur the line between abstraction and vivid realism.
With Complexions’ signature athleticism and expressive artistry, the work evokes both the natural landscapes and layered histories of South Carolina’s coast, while exploring themes of time, memory, and the human impact on the environment. The program will also include a repertory work by Rhoden for Complexions, the boundary-pushing company he co-founded with the legendary Desmond Richardson.
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March 19: Dr. Greg Brooking Lecture
Event Title: The Slave Trading Origins of Henry Laurens, presented by Dr. Greg Brooking.
Location: Addlestone 360, College of Charleston campus
Date & Time: March 19, 2026 at 4:00 p.m.
About Dr. Greg Brooking: Dr. Brooking is an award-winning historian of early America, the American Revolution, and the colonial South. He received his PhD in History from Georgia State University and is the author of From Empire to Revolution: Sir James Wright and the Price of Loyalty in Georgia (University of Georgia Press, 2024). He has taught high school and college since 1994, joining the staff of North Springs High Schools (Atlanta, Fulton County, GA) in 2015. Dr. Brooking is currently working on his second book, Henry Laurens: A Southern Founder.
Sponsored by the Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World Program.
Past Events
September 10, 2025
Becoming Harriet Tubman
Location: Gibbes Museum of Art
Natalie Daise, former host of Nick Jr.'s Gullah Gullah Island, award-winning artist, and storyteller presented "Becoming Harriet Tubman," a one-person, five-character show that shared the story of Araminta Ross's evolution into Harriet Tubman.
September 19, 2025
Sailing to Freedom: Maritime Dimensions of the Underground Railroad
Location: Addlestone Library, 3rd Floor outside Special Collections
Self-emancipation along the Underground Railroad was not entirely by overland routes. What has been largely overlooked by historians is the great number of enslaved persons who made their way to freedom using coastal water routes along the Atlantic seaboard.
Scholars Marcus Rediker (Professor of History; University of Pittsburgh), Michael Thompson (Associate Professor of History; University of Tennessee) and Timothy Walker (Professor of History; University of Massachusetts) joined in conversation about this hidden history. Introduction by Dr. Shannon Eaves (Associate Professor of History; College of Charleston).
An exhibit viewing and reception followed the conversation.
Sponsored by the College of Charleston Friends of the Library and the Carolina Lowcountry and Atlantic World Program.September 24, 2025
Picturing Resistance: The Evolving Imagery of Harriet Tubman
How can art shape the face of resistance? And what separates the mythology of a movement from the individuals who lived it? Inspired by the exhibition Picturing Freedom, this conversation will focus on the evolution of the imagery and language used to describe Harriet Tubman.Guests include Janell Hobson, Professor of Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies at the University at Albany and Terry Plater, artist featured in the exhibition.
Location: Gibbes Museum of Art
Date & Time: Wednesday, September 24 from 6:00-7:00 p.m.
Tickets: Free, Advanced Registration is Required
October 4, 2025
Harriet Tubman and the Combahee River Raid
Inspired by Picturing Freedom: Harriet Tubman and the Combahee River Raid, we will discuss the Pulitzer Prize winning book Combee: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom During the Civil War by Dr. Edda L. Fields-Black.
Location: Gibbes Museum of Art
Date & Time: Saturday, October 4 from 10:30-12:00.
Tickets: Free, Advanced Registration is Required
Please note: This is a traditional book club style conversation and the author will NOT be attending.
- October 30, 2025
Huguenots in Early South Carolina: A Conversation between Professor Bertrand Van Ruymbeke (University of Paris VII) and Professor Owen Stanwood (Boston College).
Location: SNES 129 (MACE Auditorium, CofC Campus)
Date & Time: Thursday, October 30 at 4:00 p.m.
Tickets: Free
Sponsored by: CLAW, Huguenot Society of South Carolina, SCHS, and Charleston Library Society
- November 16, 2025
Sunday brunch with Adam Jortner: "Oy Vey, King George! American Jews and the Revolution."
Location: Jewish Studies Center, Arnold Hall (JSC 100). 96 Wentworth St.
Date & Time: Sunday, November 16 at 9:00 a.m.
Adam Jortner is the Goodwin-Philpott Eminent Professor of Religion in the Department of History at Auburn University. He specializes in the history of religion in the American Revolution and the early nation, with particular emphasis on religious liberty, patriotism and piety, theology, and new religious traditions. Jortner will discuss his book A Promised Land: Jewish Patriots, the American Revolution, and the Birth of Religious Freedom with Pearlstine/Lipov Center for Southern Jewish Culture Director Ashley Walters.
- November 18, 2025
Documentary Screening: Inhabitants: Indigenous Perspectives on Restoring Our World
Location: Maybank Hall Room 100, CofC Campus
Date and Time: November 18th at 6:00 p.m.
This event is FREE and open to the public! Light snacks provided.
Sponsored by: The SC Commission for Minority Affairs, CLAW, Carolina Ocean Alliance, and the Office of Collaborative Campus Programming.
- January 22, 2026
Event Title: South Carolina Women's Wars for Independence, presented by Dr. Lorri Glover.
Location: Addlestone 360, College of Charleston campus
Date & Time: January 22, 2026 at 4:00 p.m.
About the Speaker: Lorri Glover is the John Francis Bannon Endowed Chair in the History Department at Saint Louis University. Her books include Founders as Fathers: The Private Lives and Politics of the American Revolutionaries (Yale University Press, 2014); The Fate of the Revolution: Virginians Debate the Constitution (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016); and Eliza Lucas Pinckney: An Independent Woman in the Age of Revolution (Yale University Press, 2020). Glover has served as president of both the Southern Association for Women Historians and the Southern Historical Association.
February 19, 2026
Event Title: The Battle for Black History: Profiles in the Memory of Slavery, presented by Dr. Vincent Brown.
Location: Simons 380, College of Charleston campus
Date & Time: February 19, 2026 at 4:00 p.m.
About the Speaker: Vincent Brown is Charles Warren Professor of American History and Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. He teaches courses in Atlantic history, African diaspora studies, and the history of slavery in the Americas.
Brown is the author of The Reaper's Garden: Death and Power in the World of Atlantic Slavery (Harvard University Press, 2008) and Tacky's Revolt: The Story of an Atlantic Slave War (Belknap Press, 2020), and he is producer of Herskovits at the Heart of Blackness (2009), an audiovisual documentary broadcast on the PBS series Independent Lens, and the short video series The Bigger Picture (2022) for PBS Digital Studios.