The Mask of Memory
September 15 @ 6:00 pm - 7:00 pm
Having recent acclaim in places such as the Met and High Museum for his work with Hear Me Now: Black Potters of Old Edgefield, South Carolina, University of Michigan professor Jason Young teaches and researches in the fields of Nineteenth-Century United States History, African American History, and the African Diaspora. Given his specialty across history of art, religion, and folk culture, we are honored to host Jason along with Dr. Bernie Powers to discuss his latest book The Mask of Memory, which explores the persistence of myths that framed the historical memory of slavery through a focus on the elite white who created them.
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About the Book
How Southern white elites shaped the historical memory of enslavement. Many of the sights and sounds that Americans associate with slavery are rooted in a grandiose historical myth. The image of the Big House, sitting atop carefully manicured rolling green hills, is in large part a fantasy—as is the idea of the plantation as an expansive family home to chivalrous planters and content slaves. Still, these myths persist. Jason R. Young explores the persistence of these myths and the historical memory of slavery by focusing on the elite white mythmakers who helped shape our understanding of slavery. In the early twentieth century, a group of white writers, artists, and performers from the cultural hub of Charleston, South Carolina, created and curated a highly sanitized view of slavery. They imagined a once and future plantation society that would reestablish them as the proper heirs of the slave past. In the process, they crafted a set of dangerously durable and virulent stereotypes about slavery. Focusing on literature, art, and performance, Young examines both the power and the folly of these ideas. In uncovering their origins, The Mask of Memory resists these racial fantasies and challenges their stubborn resurgence in our own time.
About Jason R. Young
Jason R. Young is a Professor of History at the University of Michigan. He teaches and researches in the fields of Nineteenth-Century United States History, African American History, and the African Diaspora. He specializes in the history of art, religion, and folk culture. Jason Young is the author of Rituals of Resistance: African Atlantic Religion in Kongo and the Lowcountry Region of Georgia and South Carolina in the Era of Slavery, an exploration into the religious and ritual practices that linked West-Central Africa with the Lowcountry region of Georgia and South Carolina. He is also the co-editor, with Edward J. Blum, of The Souls of W.E.B. Du Bois: New Essays and Reflections, a collection of articles that examines Du Bois’s personal religious convictions along with his scholarly examinations of religion. Jason Young is also the Co-Curator of Hear Me Now: The Black Potters of Old Edgefield, South Carolina, a touring exhibition that opened at the Metropolitan Museum (MET) in 2022 before traveling to the Museum of Fine Art (MFA), Boston, the University of Michigan Museum of Art (UMMA) and the High Museum. Young has published articles in The Journal of African American History, The Journal of Africana Religions, and The Journal of Southern Religion, among others. His latest book project, The Mask of Memory: White Racial Fantasy after the Civil War will be published in 2026 by the University of North Carolina Press.
About Dr. Bernard Powers
Bernard Powers, professor emeritus of history at the College, is the inaugural director of the Center for the Study of Slavery in Charleston. Dr. Powers taught in the Department of History from 1992 to 2018, serving stints as department chair and director of the master’s program in history. He has published numerous works on African-American social and cultural history. His book Black Charlestonians: A Social History 1822-1885 (University of Arkansas Press, 1994) won a Choice Award for Best Academic Books. He also co-authored We Are Charleston: Tragedy and Triumph at Mother Emanuel (Thomas Nelson, 2016). His latest book is 101 African Americans Who Shaped South Carolina (USC Press, 2020). Powers is a member of the board of directors and interim CEO of the International African American Museum (IAAM), which is scheduled to open in Charleston in 2022. As a member of both CSSC and IAAM, Powers is developing a working relationship between both entities, with the goal of establishing joint public programs and academic partnerships.
About the Center for the Study of Slavery in Charleston
Understanding slavery and its complex legacies, the College of Charleston’s Center for the Study of Slavery in Charleston fosters a deeper public understanding of slavery and its complex legacies. It supports academic research and teaching that examine the role of slavery in the history of the College and our region. The Center engages its community, area residents, and the general public in collaborative programming and dialog to disseminate new knowledge and to promote social justice, racial healing, and reconciliation.