{"id":539,"date":"2019-03-12T14:59:04","date_gmt":"2019-03-12T14:59:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/clemson.world\/research\/?p=539"},"modified":"2019-11-18T18:36:36","modified_gmt":"2019-11-18T18:36:36","slug":"susanna-ashton","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/research\/susanna-ashton\/","title":{"rendered":"Susanna Ashton: Authenticating Ignored Voices"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id='fullscreen_slider_1'  class='avia-fullscreen-slider main_color   avia-builder-el-0  el_before_av_hr  avia-builder-el-first   container_wrap sidebar_right' style=' '  ><a href='#next-section' title='' class='scroll-down-link av-control-default' aria-hidden='true' data-av_icon='\ue877' data-av_iconfont='entypo-fontello'><\/a><div   data-size='no scaling'  data-lightbox_size='large'  data-animation='slide'  data-conditional_play=''  data-ids='540'  data-video_counter='0'  data-autoplay='false'  data-bg_slider='true'  data-slide_height='100'  data-handle='av_fullscreen'  data-interval='5'  data-class=' '  data-el_id=''  data-css_id='fullscreen_slider_1'  data-scroll_down='aviaTBscroll_down'  data-control_layout='av-control-default'  data-custom_markup=''  data-perma_caption=''  data-autoplay_stopper=''  data-image_attachment='scroll'  data-min_height='0px'  data-stretch=''  class='avia-slideshow avia-slideshow-1 av-slider-scroll-down-active av-control-default av-default-height-applied avia-slideshow-no scaling av_fullscreen   avia-slide-slider '  itemprop=\"image\" itemscope=\"itemscope\" itemtype=\"https:\/\/schema.org\/ImageObject\" ><ul class='avia-slideshow-inner ' style='padding-bottom: 66.6666666667%;' ><li style='background-position:top center;' data-img-url='https:\/\/clemson.world\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2019\/03\/Susanna-Ashton.jpg' class=' av-single-slide slide-1 ' ><div data-rel='slideshow-1' class='avia-slide-wrap '   ><div class='av-section-color-overlay' style='opacity: 0.1; background-color: #000000; '><\/div><\/div><\/li><\/ul><\/div><\/div><div id='after_full_slider_1'  class='main_color av_default_container_wrap container_wrap sidebar_right' style=' '  ><div class='container' ><div class='template-page content  av-content-small alpha units'><div class='post-entry post-entry-type-page post-entry-539'><div class='entry-content-wrapper clearfix'>\n<div  style='height:50px' class='hr hr-invisible   avia-builder-el-1  el_after_av_fullscreen  el_before_av_one_full  avia-builder-el-first '><span class='hr-inner ' ><span class='hr-inner-style'><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<div class=\"flex_column av_one_full  flex_column_div av-zero-column-padding first  avia-builder-el-2  el_after_av_hr  el_before_av_hr  \" style='border-radius:0px; '><section class=\"av_textblock_section \"  itemscope=\"itemscope\" itemtype=\"https:\/\/schema.org\/BlogPosting\" itemprop=\"blogPost\" ><div class='avia_textblock  av_inherit_color '  style='font-size:25px; color:#000000; '  itemprop=\"text\" ><p style=\"color: #f66733; font-size: 19px; font-weight: bolder; text-align: center; text-transform: uppercase; margin-bottom: -50px;\">Susanna Ashton<\/p>\n<p style=\"font-size: 64px; font-weight: bolder; text-align: center; line-height: 1.1em;\">Authenticating Ignored Voices<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n<div  style='height:1px; margin-top:-50px'  class='hr hr-invisible   avia-builder-el-4  el_after_av_one_full  el_before_av_one_full '><span class='hr-inner ' ><span class='hr-inner-style'><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<div class=\"flex_column av_one_full  flex_column_div av-zero-column-padding first  avia-builder-el-5  el_after_av_hr  el_before_av_hr  \" style='border-radius:0px; '><div  style=' margin-top:30px; margin-bottom:30px;'  class='hr hr-custom hr-center hr-icon-no   avia-builder-el-6  avia-builder-el-no-sibling '><span class='hr-inner   inner-border-av-border-thin' style=' width:1100px;' ><span class='hr-inner-style'><\/span><\/span><\/div><\/div>\n<div  style='height:1px; margin-top:-50px'  class='hr hr-invisible   avia-builder-el-7  el_after_av_one_full  el_before_av_one_full '><span class='hr-inner ' ><span class='hr-inner-style'><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<div class=\"flex_column av_one_full  flex_column_div av-zero-column-padding first  avia-builder-el-8  el_after_av_hr  el_before_av_hr  \" style='border-radius:0px; '><section class=\"av_textblock_section \"  itemscope=\"itemscope\" itemtype=\"https:\/\/schema.org\/BlogPosting\" itemprop=\"blogPost\" ><div class='avia_textblock  av_inherit_color '  style='font-size:25px; color:#000000; '  itemprop=\"text\" ><p style=\"font-weight: lighter; text-align: center;\">Ashton provides a platform for slave narratives<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n<div  style='height:1px; margin-top:-50px'  class='hr hr-invisible   avia-builder-el-10  el_after_av_one_full  el_before_av_one_full '><span class='hr-inner ' ><span class='hr-inner-style'><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<div class=\"flex_column av_one_full  flex_column_div av-zero-column-padding first  avia-builder-el-11  el_after_av_hr  el_before_av_one_full  \" style='border-radius:0px; '><div  style=' margin-top:30px; margin-bottom:30px;'  class='hr hr-custom hr-center hr-icon-no   avia-builder-el-12  avia-builder-el-no-sibling '><span class='hr-inner   inner-border-av-border-thin' style=' width:1100px;' ><span class='hr-inner-style'><\/span><\/span><\/div><\/div>\n<div class=\"flex_column av_one_full  flex_column_div av-zero-column-padding first  avia-builder-el-13  el_after_av_one_full  avia-builder-el-last  column-top-margin\" style='border-radius:0px; '><section class=\"av_textblock_section \"  itemscope=\"itemscope\" itemtype=\"https:\/\/schema.org\/BlogPosting\" itemprop=\"blogPost\" ><div class='avia_textblock  av_inherit_color '  style='font-size:19px; color:#000000; '  itemprop=\"text\" ><p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">A<\/span><span class=\"s2\">fter joining Clemson\u2019s faculty<\/span><span class=\"s1\"> in 1998, something turned Susanna Ashton\u2019s attention from popular 19<sup>th<\/sup>-century literary authors to writers of narratives that society and time had ignored.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">\u201cHere I was on a plantation, and nobody wanted to talk about it,\u201d says Ashton, now chair of the Department of English at Clemson University, which is located on the former plantation of John C. and Anna Calhoun Clemson. \u201cNobody knew how to talk about it. Scholars understood Wharton\u2019s Gilded Age. Americans were acquainted with Twain\u2019s life aboard a steamboat. But what of the people who built the farmhouses and worked the ground?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">\u201cI decided to start asking those questions myself and with my students and discovered that so few enslaved people in South Carolina had their stories told,\u201d says the Brooklyn, New York, native. \u201cOf the people who miraculously managed to survive or escape and share their stories, their books were largely out of print.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">The daughter of a nonprofit attorney and a rare-books librarian, Ashton has wrapped her arms around social justice and truth telling and brought them together in her work. She has co-authored and co-edited several books, including <em>I Belong to the South: South Carolina Slave Narratives\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0<em>Approaches to Teaching the Works of Charles W. Chesnutt<\/em><i>,<\/i> which won the 2018 Sylvia Lyons Award from the Charles W. Chesnutt Society. She\u2019s currently working on <em>A Plausible Man: The Life of John Andrew Jackson<\/em><i>.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">Ashton recently received considerable attention for discovering the true identity of Samuel Aleckson, the pen name of a former slave who, at 9 years old, was forced into service to a Confederate officer during the Civil War. The writer eventually moved to Vermont and wrote <em>Before the War, and After the Union<\/em><i>,<\/i> in which he recounts the harrowing life of a slave in South Carolina.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">Aleckson\u2019s name never appeared in historical documents. After a newspaper story appeared about Ashton\u2019s book, a relative from California contacted Ashton with the author\u2019s real name: Samuel Williams. \u201cIt was a student who pointed out that the [author\u2019s] father\u2019s name was Alex,\u201d Ashton says. Samuel Williams, Alex\u2019s son, had become Sam Aleckson.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">Aside from name changes to protect their identities, the level of detail in slave narratives gripped Ashton from the start. They were included not so much as literary device, but to ward off challenges that the narratives were fictionalized \u2014 and challenges were constant, even from white people sympathetic to the cause.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">\u201cAlmost every enslaved person who wrote a narrative, the front page says \u2018written by himself\u2019 or something similar to that. White authors didn\u2019t have to do that. Only black writers talking about slave-society America had to do that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">\u201cWhen you\u2019re an editor and a reader and a scholar of this period, it just jumps out at you the different ways in which people have to prove their authenticity and their truth,\u201d she says.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">Slaves and former slaves took accuracy to the extreme. Ashton opens a book to read from a narrative by former slave James Matthews, who wrote about a slave trader who lived in Charleston.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">\u201cHe says, \u2018He lived on the left hand of King Street when you\u2019re coming down from the railway station.\u2019 [The author] felt it was important that you understood the side of the street,\u201d Ashton says.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\">Slave narrative authors \u201ctook great danger to share their witness, and it\u2019s humiliating to have to defend your own truth like that,\u201d Ashton says. \u201cThey absorbed that humiliation in order to make that testimony because it was so important to them.<\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">\u201cI feel really good about again and again going into these unknown, unauthored narratives and saying, \u2018This person was real,\u2019 and, \u2018This person survived,\u2019 and, \u2018This is what happened to this person,\u2019 and, \u2018Their story was not given the respect it should have been given at that time,\u2019\u201d she says.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p3\"><span class=\"s1\">\u201cTruth telling is still under siege, now more than ever with amplified methods to drown out anyone who challenges authority,\u201d she says. \u201cThe question is, in 150 years, will society look back and ask why people were not believed? How we understand historical witness can teach us how to listen to people around us today.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":540,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[178,100,98,143,101],"coauthors":[16],"class_list":["post-539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-faculty-profiles","tag-2019-faculty-profiles","tag-english","tag-slave-narratives","tag-susanna-ashton","tag-truth-telling"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/research\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2019\/03\/Susanna-Ashton.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9IEky-8H","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/539\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=539"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/research\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}