Follow Me
Dr. Williams has been a member of the South Carolina Humanities Council Speakers Bureau for the past 15 years. He is available for any of the following presentations and is funded by the Humanities Council. If you would like to contact Dr. Williams for a presentation, his email address and phone number are listed below. If your organization is located in South Carolina, click on the link below to make arrangements to book Dr. Williams' presentation at least a month in advance.
Dr Williams began his folklore research in the Gullah community of Coastal South Carolina after reading the works of the late Dr. Charles Joyner, the preeminent Historian and Folklorist whose seminal study entitled Down by the Riverside: A South Carolina Slave Community, provides a detailed reconstruction of "life in one slave community----All Saints Parish, Georgetown District, in the South Carolina lowcountry. . . ." In this book Joyner, a fellow Folklorist and a dear friend, combines the folk beliefs, customs and unique folklife and language of this African-American diaspora. Drawing on his own recorded oral histories and interviews from government projects in the 1930's along with information in songs and stories,
Stories and Oral Histories from the Gullah community on the Sea Islands of South Carolina
Dr. John R. Williams
folklorist and public speaker
The folklore of South Carolina is extremely rich and varied like the topography of the state. From the Appalachian mountains to the Charleston seacoast, the state embodies some the most interesting and exciting folk cultures of the country. Dr. John R. Williams is a professional Folklorist with a PhD in Folklore and English Literature from Indiana University. A resident of Spartanburg, an upstate community, Dr. Williams is a retired professor of English Composition and Literature. He is currently a member of the South Carolina Humanities Council Speakers Bureau. Dr. Williams served two years in Tehran, Iran with the United States Army as part of a military advisory group to the Shah of Iran. While in Tehran he learned to speak the Persian language (Farsi), often served as a translator, and traveled widely in Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, and Syria. Dr. Williams is a major contributor to Folklore studies including the book, Our Appalachia: An Oral History which resulted from his work as English Professor and Director of the Appalachian Oral History Project in Breathitt County, Kentucky. In addition, his dissertation research in inner city Cincinnati, Ohio, was published in the Folklore study entitled Usable Pasts: Traditions and Group Expressions in North America, edited by Tad Tuleja. Along with a PhD in Folklore Dr. Williams holds a Masters Degree in English from the University of Kentucky and a B. A. in English from Centre College of Kentucky.
Any of the following presentations by Dr. John R. Williams may be tailored to meet the needs of your organization.
Stories From Our Mountain Heritage
An entertaining storyteller, Dr. Williams portrays the characters from folk tales collected from Appalachian migrants in Cincinnati, Ohio. He highlights the migrants’ deep-seated sense of place as he recreates characters in Appalachian dialect. Especially moving is his version of Cinderella as a poor girl living up a hollar in the Kentucky mountains whose painted fingernails are her glass slipper. He weaves tales of real life moonshiners venting the smoke out the chimney of a tenement house, saloon keepers robbed so many times they put up a sign for the robbers to take what they want, and farmers whose dogs became notorious snake killers. Similar to the stories of mill workers in South Carolina, these tales reflect the problems created by cultural conflict in Appalachian Kentucky and Cincinnati.
Tales From the Mill Villages
The Folklore and oral traditions from the mill villages are rapidly changing as the they go the way of the coal camps in the mountains. Storytelling itself, the connective tissue of the community, has been drastically affected by this change. Dr. Williams has collected stories from mill workers in the Upstate, and he weaves a tapestry of yarns from colorful raconteurs such as Powerhouse Hawkins, a once infamous Spartanburg baseball pitcher. With the aid of Powerhouse, Dr. Williams recreates the larger than life mill baseball league and peoples it with great ball players of the past like Shoeless Joe Jackson and Dizzy Dean. In addition, he recreates life in the villages through children’s games and nursury rhymes along with foodways and workers’ tales. Dr. Williams highlights his own oral history collection with an archeological study of Sampson Mill Village in Greenville County, SC which uncovered unique family artifacts when they excavated this mill village. By recreating actual families from a mill village through their stories, Dr. Williams brings the village to life once more. The audience is encouraged to participate in this animated presentation.
Legends and Ghost Stories from the South
The South has a rich tradition of folk literature that draws upon oral tradition and colorful language for its substance. Legends, folk history, songs, foodways, customs, and unique dialects permeate the ghost stories of South Carolina and other Southern states. Dr. Williams draws upon the numerous collections of ghost stories and scary tales to create an evening of haunted enjoyment for young and old. Not just a Halloween event, this presentation promises to inform and delight and maybe evoke a few screams from all participants. Beginning with brief spellbinding recitations from Coleridge and Poe, Dr. Williams discusses the cathartic power of fear and horror in the human experience. Citing the night riders of southern history as examples of “real ghosts,” Dr. Williams discusses the use of fear as a psychological tool to control an ethnic minority group. All the usual “haints” are here too. Dr. Williams summons up all the ghosts that appear along the Atlantic seacoast from Georgia to the Carolinas beginning with the uncanny spectral ships that were often seen in Charleston Harbor. You are bound to hear the voice of a ghost from your neighborhood, so be prepared to jump out of your skin!
The Rise of ISIS and the Sunni/Shiite Schism
This presentation focuses on the differences between the beliefs and customs of Shiite Moslems in Iran and those of their neighbors, the Sunnis in Iraq. Focusing on the theoretical underpinnings of these two extreme branches of Islam, Dr. Williams discusses the historical changes which gave rise to ISIS in the light of the historical role of the Caliphate in the Middle East. Dr. Williams spent two years in Iran studying the language and customs of this 2500-year-old nation, and his Ph.D studies include Middle Eastern Folklore. He describes in detail some ancient Shiite traditions, such as their most famous holy day, Ashura, when mourners beat and cut themselves as part of a procession reenacting the death of Husein, a Shiite martyr. Understanding the roots of this and other bleak customs together with the Zoroastrian new year celebration in which young men leap over fires to celebrate Spring helps us appreciate the differences between Western Christian customs and Muslim Middle Eastern ones. The discussion concludes with an overview of various terrorist groups and their allegiances.
How To Collect Your Community Stories
This presentation focuses on Oral History and its value to a community. Dr. Williams will share stories from two projects which he directed: the Appalachian Oral History Project and the Great Smoky Mountains Project. In the late 19970s Dr. Williams was one of the campus directors for an oral history project which covered four states in Appalachia. Funded by a grant from Rockefeller, Ford, NEH and other agencies, the AOHP was responsible for collecting thousands of interviews with mountain people. As a result, the book Our Appalachia: An Oral History was published. The Smoky Mountain Project took place in 1983 when Dr. Williams was part of a team in Tennessee who were hired by the state to collect Folklore traditions. Dr. Williams and others set up recorders and copy stands in Sevierville and invited family members who had been displaced from the Park to return with their stories and photographs. In this technical presentation Dr. Williams will discuss the theory and techniques behind designing a similar project in your own community using modern technology. A major focus is grant – writing and other forms of fundraising. Participants will be asked to share their personal stories and to suggest ideas for oral history projects in their neighborhoods.
Jack Tales from the Richard Chase Collection
In 1983, while working as a scholar-in-residence for the Tennessee Committee for the Humanities, Dr. Williams had the opportunity to travel around the mountains with Richard Chase, the famous Jack Tale collector. During that time, he discussed Chase’s dialect renditions of the Jack Tales along with a number of old English fairy tales which Chase discovered in the mountains. The clever Jack of these tales always outwits his stronger adversaries from Bears and Bulls to Robbers and Giants. Familiar to all ages is the tale of “Jack and the Bean Stalk,” but told in mountain dialect it becomes funnier than ever. Also, “Jack and the Robbers,” a rendition of “The Bremmen Town Musicians,” keeps the audience howling, especially when the robbers mistake all the animal sounds for human ones. Dr. Williams also taught English in Appalachian Kentucky in the 1970’s where he studied Appalachian speech. He combines the stories Chase collected with his appreciation of mountain dialect to present Jack Tales in a highly entertaining fashion. He also adds a degree of scholarship to this presentation as a trained academic folklorist.