Athens, Ga. – Paul Pressly, a prominent Georgia historian and educator, will give a talk titled “Colonial Georgia: Caribbean Influences and the British Atlantic World” on Feb. 20 at 4 p.m. in the University of Georgia Chapel. The talk is part of the 2014 Global Georgia Initiative, a program of the Jane and Harry Willson Center for Humanities and Arts.
Pressly’s book, “On the Rim of the Caribbean: Colonial Georgia and the British Atlantic World,” was published in 2013 by the University of Georgia Press, which is a co-sponsor of the event. The press’s director, Lisa Bayer, will introduce Pressly’s talk at the Chapel.
In “On the Rim of the Caribbean,” Pressly uses recent scholarship in transnational and economic history to examine anew Georgia’s relationships to the other American Colonies and the larger Atlantic world.
“Balancing scholarly analysis with attention to lived experience, Paul Pressly finds that Colonial Georgia was much more than an extension of the Carolina lowcountry,” Bayer said. “His argument that post-trustee Savannah was, in effect, a Caribbean town is one worth hearing.”
Pressly is a recipient of the Governor’s Award in the Humanities from the Georgia Humanities Council, a former Rhodes Scholar and former headmaster of the Savannah Country Day School. He is director of the Ossabaw Island Education Alliance, a partnership of the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources and the Ossabaw Island Foundation.
The Global Georgia Initiative is a series of lectures and conversations organized by the Willson Center. Its goal is to present global problems in local context by addressing pressing contemporary questions, including the economy, society and the environment, with a focus on how the arts and humanities can intervene.
The final guest in the 2014 series will be acclaimed author and filmmaker Xiaolu Guo, who will present a screening and discussion of her film, “UFO in Her Eyes,” at Ciné on Feb. 27, and a public talk on campus on Feb. 28.
For more information on the Global Georgia Initiative, see http://willson.uga.edu/programs/public-programs/global-georgia-initiative/.
Willson Center for Humanities and Arts
The Jane and Harry Willson Center for Humanities and Arts is a unit of the Office of the Vice President for Research at UGA. In the service of its mission to promote research and creativity in the humanities and arts, the Willson Center sponsors and participates in numerous public events on and off the UGA campus throughout the academic year. It supports faculty through research grants, lectures, symposia, publications, visiting scholars, visiting artists, collaborative instruction, public conferences, exhibitions, and performances. For more information, see http://willson.uga.edu/.