James Oscar Farmer,
Jr.
June Rainsford Henderson Professor of Southern and Local History
University
of South Carolina
Aiken
471 University Parkway, Aiken,
SC 29801
(803)641-3339Fax
(803)641-3461 JimF@usca.edu
2043
Lorraine Drive, Aiken SC
29801
(803-642-8778)
Education
B.S. in History, East
Carolina University,
l965
M.A. in History, University
of South Carolina, l969
Ph.D. in History, University
of South Carolina, l982
Employment
Secondary Social Studies teacher in Florence,
SC, l965-l967
Instructor in History, East Carolina University, 1969-1970
Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, and Professor of
History, University of South Carolina-Lancaster, l973-l991
Henderson
Professor of Southern History, University
of South Carolina Aiken, 1992-
Professional Memberships
Southern
Historical Association
South
Carolina Historical Association
South
Carolina Academy
of Religion
South
Carolina Historical Society
Aiken
County Historical Society
Edgefield
County Historical Society
St.
George Tucker Society(Southern Studies)
The Southern Intellectual
History Circle
The Historical
Society
Pi Gamma Mu
Courses Taught
Surveys:
Western Civilization (1973-1991)
American History
Upper level courses:
Colonial, Revolutionary, Early National, Antebellum, Civil War,
Reconstruction, Gilded Age, and Modern America; Old South, New South,
African-American, South Carolina, The Civil Rights Movement, Aiken County, The
South on Film, The Scope and Methods of History, Independent Study, Senior
Thesis.
Non credit course developed and taught:
History of Edgefield
County, History of Aiken County,
Southern history
Scholarly Work
Master's Thesis:
"The End of the White Democratic
Primary in South Carolina: A Southern State's Fights to Keep its Politics White," MA
Thesis, University of South Carolina, 1969.
Doctoral Dissertation: "The Metaphysical
Confederacy: James Henley Thornwell and the Synthesis
of Southern Values," PhD dissertation, University
of South Carolina, 1982.
Publications:
The Metaphysical
Confederacy; James Henley Thornwell and the Synthesis
of Southern Values, Mercer University Press, 1986. Second edition with new
Preface, 1999.
African Americans in South Carolina,
secondary school textbook co-authored with Carol Botsch,
Robert Botsch, and Calvin Smith; published by the
South Carolina Department of Education, 1994.
"James Henley Thornwell and the Mind of the Old South," Proceedings
of the South Carolina Historical Association, 1985.
"Southern Presbyterians and Southern
Nationalism; a Study in Ambivalence," Georgia
Historical Quarterly, Summer 1991.
"A Collision of Cultures: Aiken,
South Carolina Meets the Nuclear Age,"
Proceedings of the South Carolina
Historical Association, 1995.
"Erskine
Caldwell and the [Horse Creek] Valley," Journal of the Aiken County
Historical Society, Fall, 1998.
"The Cherokee War" in The Encyclopedia of North American History, Salem
Press, 1998.
"James Henley Thornwell," in American National Biography.
ed. John A. Garrity and
Mark C. Carnes, 24 vols. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).
"Another Look at the Redshirts,"
Journal of the Aiken County Historical Society, Fall,
1999.
"Aiken" and "Aiken
County" in The Encyclopedia
of South Carolina (forthcoming from the USC Press)
"Doing Contrary to My Raising: Emma
Anderson Dunovant and the Woman Suffrage Movement in
South Carolina," chapter in Warm Ashes: Issues in Southern History at
the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century, ed. Winfred M. Moore, Jr., and David
H. White,Jr. University of South Carolina Press,
forthcoming.
Papers Presented at
conferences:
"Clearing the First
Hurdle; The End of the White Primary in South Carolina,"
Citadel Conference on Southern History, March 1978.
"Mary Boykin Chesnut's South," Conference sponsored by the South
Carolina Committee on the Humanities, Lancaster, SC, October
1978.
"The Preacher-Sage, Evangelical Piety and
Southern Nationalism," South Carolina
Academy of Religion,
February 1988.
"Southern Presbyterians and Southern
Nationalism; a Study in Ambivalence," Southern Historical Association,
October 1989.
"James Henley Thornwell
and Human Rights," American Society of Church History, January 1992.
"Southern Hospitality Meets the Cold War;
Aiken, South Carolina and the Savannah River Plant in the 1950's,"
Southern Studies Institute Lecture, University of South Carolina, April 1994.
"A More Benign Invasion?Aiken, South Carolina
and the Coming of the Savannah River Plant,
1950-1953," American Culture Association of the South, Savannah,
GA, October 1996.
"Women of Faith- Women of Suffrage," Columbia
College Symposium on Women and
Religion, Columbia SC,
April 1999.
"Mild-Mannered Militant: Emma Anderson Dunovant and the Woman Suffrage Campaign in South
Carolina," Citadel Conference on Southern
History, Charleston, April 2000.
(Accepted for publication in the volume based on the
Conference)
"The Evolution of the College American
History Textbook," The Historical Society, Boston,
June 2000. This paper has been submitted to The History Teacher.
"Doing Local History in South
Carolina,"South
Carolina Historical Association meeting, Columbia,
March, 2001.
"The Reenactment of the Battle of Aiken, South Carolina:
Its Participants, Its Audience, Its Meaning," American Culture Association
meeting, Philadelphia, April, 2001.
"South Carolina's
Constitutional History Through 1895," lecture sponsored by Institute for
Public Affairs, University of South
Carolina, Columbia,
June 2001.
"Emma Dunovant
and Edgefield's Woman Suffragists," Summit Conference on Edgefield
County History, October 2001.
"James Henley Thornwell
on Education," Symposium on Thornwell sponsored
by the USC Bicentennial Commission, Columbia,
October, 2001.
"Visitors Will Find a Welcome: Aiken,
South Carolina and the Yankees,
1869-1890," The Historical Society, Atlanta,
May, 2002.
Comments on papers at scholarly
conferences:
"Unto God and to Caesar: Slavery and
Southern Religion," session commentator, Citadel Conference on Southern
History, March 1981.
"Racial Violence in South
Carolina," session chairman and commentator,
Trustees' Symposium on South Carolina,
Coastal Carolina
University, 1983.
"The History of Black
Education in South Carolina," commentator, South Carolina Historical Association, March 1988.
"Race and Politics in Postbellum South Carolina," session commentator, South
Carolina Historical Association, March 1991.
"Health, Well Being, and
the State of South Carolina, 1820-1865," Session chair and commentator, South Carolina Historical
Association, March, 1993.
"Evangelical Religion,
Politics, and Society in the Antebellum South" session commentator,
Southern Historical Association, November, 1996.
"The Idea of the Thing:
Women and the Material Culture of the Planter Household," comments on
paper by Joan Cashin, The St. George Tucker Society,
June 1997.
"Doctrine and Devotion
in the Colonial and Antebellum South," session commentator, Southern Intellectual History Circle,
Bloomington, IN, February 2001.
"King Solomon's Dilemma -- and the
Confederacy's," comment on a paper by Eugene
Genovese, St. George Tucker Society, June 2002.
Book Reviews in
The American Historical Review
The Journal of
American History
The Journal of
Southern History
The Georgia
Historical Quarterly
South
Carolina Historical Magazine
Civil War
History
The Alabama
Review
H-South (on-line list serve on southern history)
several
newspapers.
Service
Activities Related to Academic Life:
Editor of the Proceedings
of the South Carolina Historical Association - 1977, 1978.
Lancaster County Historical Commission,
1986-1990.
Committee to select the best
book on South Carolina history for 1996, awarded by the South Carolina
Historical Society.
Confederate Era Symposium,
USC Aiken, 1997, 1998, 1999. I developed and coordinated this series of
symposia which were co-sponsored by the Sons of Confederate Veterans in
conjunction with the reenactments of the Battle of Aiken, held every February.
Aiken County Historical
Society Executive Board. 1998-present. My
service on this board enables me to contribute to the ongoing study and
presentation of local history to the Aiken community.
Southern Intellectual History Circle meeting,
February 1999, Edgefield South Carolina.I was one of
three organizers and coordinators for this conference.
South Carolina Review Board, National Register
of Historic Places, member 2000-
Anonymous reviewer of several manuscripts for
publishers including the University of South Carolina Press, University of
Alabama Press, and the Journal of Southern History.
Numerous talks to various
civic and fraternal organizations on a variety of historical topics.
Editorial Board of the South Carolina
Historical Magazine. 2001-
Summit Conference on Edgefield County History,
October, 2001.I obtained a grant to help fund this conference, helped organize
the program and the event, and presented at the conference.
Consultant for the South Carolina Heritage
Corridor, 2000-2001.
Talks on local history topics to area organizations
Tour guide for public school group tour of
historic sites in Aiken, January 2002.
Academy of Lifelong Learning course on Southern
History, USC Aiken, March-April, 2002
Continuing Education course
on Aiken County History, USC Aiken, March 2002.
Current Research Projects
A history of Aiken
County
A history of
Edgefield County
A study of the
impact of the Savannah River Plant on Aiken
in the 1950s
Pride and Piety: A
study of religion and the culture of
violence in antebellum Edgefield
District
The
Woman Suffrage movement in South Carolina, 1910-1920.
Grants and Scholarly Awards
The Brewer Prize, for the best manuscript in religious
history, awarded by the American Society of Church History in 1984, for
"The Metaphysical Confederacy" (PhD dissertation)
University of South Carolina Research and
Productive Scholarship Grant, 1988-89.
June Rainsford
Henderson Chair in Southern and Local History, awarded by USC Aiken 1991,
renewed 1996, 1998, 2000.
Institute of Southern Studies
Research Fellowship, University of South Carolina, 1994, 1998.
African Americans and the Palmetto State
awarded recognition as one of the ten best works published by the state of
South Carolina, 1995.
University of South Carolina
Bicentennial Grant for a conference on "The Savannah River Site at Fifty."This
conference was scheduled for the Spring of 2000 at USC
Aiken, but due to insufficient paper proposals was canceled. As an alternative,
I arranged a lecture in September 2001 by Richard Rhodes, an expert on the
history of nuclear weapons development, at USC Aiken. This lecture was funded
by the USC Bicentennial Commission.
Edgefield History Summit Conference, October 2001.I
received a grant from the USC Bicentennial Commission to help fund this
conference.
Ellison Durant Smith Award presented by the
South Caroliniana Society to support research in
modern South Carolina history, 2001.
Other
Academic and Community Service
at the University of South Carolina Aiken, 1992-
Courses and Curriculum Committee, 1992-1995.(chair 1994-95)
Tenure and Promotion Committee, 1992-93.
Etherredge Center Orchestra Board,
1994-96
Pickens Salley
House Steering Committee, 1992-93.
Community Action Board advisor, 1995-96.
Ad Hoc Committee on Graduate Program in Education, 1996-98.
Honors, Awards and Scholarships Committee, 1995-98. (chair 1997-98)
Student Media Board, 1994-
University Planning Committee, 1994-97
Honors Program Steering Committee, 1996-
Habitat for Humanity house construction,
1996.
South Carolina Heritage Corridor planning committee, 1997.
USC Aiken Fortieth Anniversary Committee, 2001
Adopt-a Highway trash pick-up program, 1999-
USC Aiken Financial Aid committee, 2001-
USC Aiken Strategic Planning sub-committee on demographic
trends, 2001-2002
Judge for National History Day (secondary
school students' history projects), several years.
Judge for Daughters of the American Revolution essay
contest, several years.
"Into the Streets" USC Aiken
service project, several years.
Speaker for the following organizations:
Kiwanis, Rotary, Friends of the Aiken
County Library,
Aiken-Barnwell Geneological
Society, First Presbyterian Church, "Leadership Aiken," Aiken County
Historical Society, Edgefield County Historical Society, Sons of the American
Revolution, The Student Club of Aiken, The Academy of Lifelong Learning, Sons
of Confederate Veterans, Aiken Women's Club.
Media:
Interviewed by South Carolina ETV regarding Ken Burns'
series "The Civil War," 1990
Interviewed by WJBF TV, Augusta, regarding historical
topics, 1996-
Interviewed by The State,
The Augusta Chronicle, The Charlotte Observer, The Aiken Standard, The
Boston Globe, regarding topics in South Carolina
and local history, guest on the SCETV program "Our Palmetto State,"
broadcast to schools throughout the state, March 2002, discussing Aiken
County's history and current topics
of interest.
Personal-
I enjoy reading, music, travel, sports.
Member of First Presbyterian Church- Elder, choir member and
Sunday School teacher.
I am married to Judy Keen Farmer, and we have two daughters,
Elizabeth and Erin.