From Hwaet to the Ring Shout: Lorenzo Dow Turner

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What does Beowulf have to do with the linguistics of African-American history? The same man studied them both… and his scholarship on medieval literature helped frame his search for linguistic communities.  This podcast examines the career of Lorenzo Dow Turner, celebrated linguist known as the Father of Gullah Studies. Turner studied the language, ideas, and culture of Black island communities in the southeastern United States, and created recognition for that culture in so doing.

Podcaster: Lucy

Further Reading

Amistad Research Center, Lorenzo Dow Turner Papers. 

Alcione M. Amos, “Lorenzo Dow Turner: Connecting Communities Through Language.” The Black Scholar 41, no. 1 (2011): 4-15.

Anne C. Bailey, The Weeping Time

Emory S. Campbell, "Gullah Geechee Culture: Respected, Understood and Striving: Sixty Years after Lorenzo Dow Turner’s Masterpiece, Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect." The Black Scholar 41, no. 1 (2011): 77-84. 

P. Djèlí Clark, Ring Shout

Melissa L. Cooper, Making Gullah: A History of Sapelo Islanders, Race, and the American Imagination 

Margaret Wade Lewis, Lorenzo Dow Turner: Father of Gullah Studies

Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon

Joseph Opala, The Gullah: Rice, Slavery, and the Sierra Leone-American Connection. 

——————, “Sierra Leone: Bunce Island and the ‘Gullah Connection’”

Lorenzo Dow Turner, Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect

Matthew X. Vernon, The Black Middle Ages

Word, Shout, Song: Lorenzo Dow Turner: Connecting Communities Through Language. 

Music: "Evening Melodrama" by Kevin Macleod (www.incompetech.com)