This week we are diving into resources about water . This week's email is the final installment of Thinking in Place. Thank you for exploring digital humanities resources with us for the past 14 weeks! Our monthly e-newsletters will be reformatted to include some elements from Thinking in Place so stay tuned.

SC Humanities, in cooperation with the Smithsonian Institute’s Museum on Main Street program, is pleased to present the traveling Smithsonian exhibit  Water/Ways  in South Carolina . Thanks to support from Dominion Energy, Water/Ways  will tour six small communities in South Carolina from June 2020 to April 2021. The exhibit will have i ts public opening in South Carolina at  Hickory Knob State Park , hosted by the McCormick County Chamber of Commerce, on Saturday, June 27. 

Pamela L. Martin , the state scholar for Water/Ways , joins us this week to offer a book recommendation. Pamela is a Professor in the Department of Politics at Coastal Carolina University and the Executive Director for Georgetown RISE, a United Nations RCE for Sustainable Development.
Did you know you can adopt a South Carolina stream? The Center for Watershed Excellence at Clemson University and SCDHEC have partnered on a new award-winning program to protect South Carolina's waterways. South Carolina Adopt-a-Stream creates a network of watershed stewardship, engagement, and education through involvement. You do not need to be an environmentalist, fisherman, or scholar to join this effort - all are welcome!
Between the Waters is an interactive website supported by SC Humanities that showcases the cultural history of Hobcaw Barony . The story of tidal rice production and its impact on the natural and cultural landscapes of coastal South Carolina are the themes of the digital Rice Cultivation trail . Enslaved Africans and their descendants carved rice fields from cypress swamps, and the rice they cultivated under dangerous, difficult conditions produced enormous wealth for white rice planters.
Throughout the 1930s, Louise Arner Boyd partnered with the American Geographical Society to explore uncharted regions. These expeditions generated new data in the fields of geology, oceanography, botany, and glaciology. Boyd mapped previously uncharted regions of Greenland, filmed and photographed topography, sea ice, glacial features, and land formations. Boyd's photographic record provides critical information to climate change researchers today, helping them to understand how ice has changed over the course of the last century. SC Humanities supported the UNLADYLIKE2020 project in 2019.
How well do you know South Carolina's waterways? Scroll to the bottom of the email for the answers!

đź’§The ACE Basin consists of around 350,000 acres in the watershed of three rivers. Name the three rivers!

đź’§South Carolina's state fish can be caught year-round, often weighs between 25-30 pounds, and is often found in the state's rivers during the spring spawning season. Can you name the fish?

đź’§South Carolina has thirty-five barrier islands, more than any other state except Florida. What is the state's largest barrier island?

đź’§All of the large lakes in South Carolina were created during the twentieth century when energy companies built damns on nearly all of the major river systems to produce hydroelectric power. One of the state's first large lakes is located in northern Kershaw and eastern Fairfield Counties and covers 13,700 acres. Can you name the lake?
Book Drop with Pam Martin
Somerville, Margaret. 2020. Riverlands of the Anthropocene: Walking our Waterways as Places of Becoming . London and New York: Routledge.
Margaret Somerville’s walk along the riverlands of Western Sydney, Australia connects us all to the timelessness of the river’s edge and the mixing of old and new worlds we confront when we venture onto riparian shores. Just as the river changes the soil and rock beds, Somerville reminds us that we too “become” when we sit in stillness to notice the waterways around us. And, as the rivers change, they also offer a stillness and peace within the chaos of our Earth, particularly during times of COVID and social unrest. With a mix of the science of rivers and how humanity is part of that fluid system, the reader becomes enmeshed by the rivers and their connections well beyond ourselves to the greater planet around us.

South Carolina waterways offer many of us peace and release during our current challenges, but also speak to us of the heritage and past from Native American tribes to the vast changes to their banks by the hands of slaves for rice production. Rivers are the subjects of our culture, our music, the source of our foods, a means of transportation, and a respite for many today. Rivers and their wetlands provide buffers from flooding during storms and hurricanes, and they alert us to the impacts of new development to their/our health. 

Riverlands of the Anthropocene is the perfect read to encourage us all to get lost in the flow of the river and experience its boundless sense of time. Through personal experiences, poetry, and ecological analysis, Somerville weaves the story of rivers into something deeper: a search for hope amidst the time of the Anthropocene, when so much seems to be changing, and a reminder that we are all connected to something larger. As you visit the Waterways exhibit this summer and throughout the next year, bring along a copy of Riverlands and get lost in the waters edge. 

Pamela L. Martin, Ph.D. is a Professor in the Department of Politics at Coastal Carolina University and the Executive Director for Georgetown RISE, a United Nations RCE for Sustainable Development. Martin is serving as the State Scholar for Water/Ways , a Smithsonian exhibit touring 6 small communities in South Carolina from 2020-2021.
The Smithsonian’s  Water/Ways  exhibition dives into water–an essential component of life on our planet, environmentally, culturally, and historically. 

Water/Ways  will tour six small communities in South Carolina from June 2020 to April 2021. The exhibit will have its public opening in South Carolina at  Hickory Knob State Park , hosted by the McCormick County Chamber of Commerce, on Saturday, June 27 .
Water/Ways  is a part of  Museum on Main Street , a unique collaboration between the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service (SITES), state humanities councils across the nation, and local host institutions. Support for Museum on Main Street has been provided by the U.S. Congress. Support for the South Carolina tour of  Water/Ways  has been provided by Dominion Energy . 
Trivia Answers
đź’§The ACE Basin consists of around 350,000 acres in the watershed of three rivers. Name the three rivers!


đź’§South Carolina's state fish can be caught year-round, often weighs between 25-30 pounds, and are often found in the state's rivers during the spring spawning season. Can you name the fish?


đź’§South Carolina has thirty-five barrier islands, more than any other state except Florida. Can you name the state's largest barrier island?








đź’§All of the large lakes in South Carolina were created during the twentieth century when energy companies built damns on nearly all of the major river systems to produce hydroelectric power. One of the state's first large lakes is located in northern Kershaw and eastern Fairfield Counties and covers 13,700 acres. Can you name the lake?
The ACE Basin consists of around 350,000 acres in the watershed of the Ashepoo, Combahee, and Edisto Rivers in the South Carolina lowcountry, which drains one-fifth of the state. 


The striped bass , or ocean rockfish ( Morone saxatilis ), became the official state fish in legislation signed by Governor John C. West on June 2, 1972. Anglers appreciate the striper’s large size and fierce nature, and it is a table delicacy. The largest recorded catch was 125 pounds, with a maximum length of six feet.



Barrier islands , which run parallel to the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, are so named because they shield the mainland (as well as inland Sea Islands) from damage caused by sea storms. Among South Carolina’s major barrier islands (from north to south) are Waites, Pawleys, Debordieu, North, South, Cedar, Murphy, Dewees, Isle of Palms, Sullivan’s, Morris, Folly, Kiawah, Seabrook, Botany, Harbor, Hunting, Fripp, Hilton Head, and Daufuskie. Hilton Head, the state’s largest barrier island , actually consists of an erosion remnant island as well as a barrier island; the two are separated by Broad Creek.


Lake Wateree was the first of the state’s large lakes, formed when the Duke Power Company built a hydroelectric dam on the Wateree River in 1919.

The formation of these lakes had a profound impact on the geography of the state. The hundreds of thousands of acres now under water were once inhabited; many small towns, crossroads, and communities have been wiped off the map. Lexington Water Power Company moved around five thousand people, six churches, and two schools in 1930 when Lake Murray was formed in the Midlands.
South Carolina Humanities