From the Jazz Age to the Digital Age: Pulitzer Prize Winners in South Carolina

Hosted by South Carolina Humanities and SCETV
Celebrating Pulitzer Commentary with Kathleen Parker and Jim Hoagland 

There will be three, 30-minute programs produced with grant funds.  The first will feature South Carolina’s living Pulitzer Prize commenters and columnists. Those expected to participate are Kathleen Parker and Jim Hoagland, both of The Washington Post.  The second 30-minute program will feature three of South Carolina’s living Pulitzer Prize winning reporters: Glenn Smith, Jennifer Berry Hawes and Natalie Caula-Hauff, whose series on domestic violence won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize in Public Service at The (Charleston) Post and Courier. The third program will examine the significance and lasting impact of the late Julia Peterkin, South Carolina’s only recipient of the Pulitzer Prize in literature.

All three programs will be taped in front of a studio audience in spring 2016 and will air on SCETV. The first two programs will be moderated by Charles Bierbauer, Dean of the USC College of Information and Communications and former CNN reporter. The honorees will participate in lively studio discussion and provide insight on the significance of the Pulitzer Prizes they have received.  They will also discuss the dedication and demands of award-winning journalism and how their work has resulted in a positive social impact.

The third, literature-focused program featuring Peterkin will be moderated by SCETV’s Beryl Dakers and is expected to feature Gayla Jamison, producer/director of the film “Cheating the Stillness: The World of Julia Peterkin,” Peterkin biographer Susan Millar Williams and Peterkin scholar Margaret Washington of Cornell University. The program is expected to broaden audiences for the high-quality writing exemplified by Peterkin, who won the Pulitzer in 1929, and bring her story to a new generation of writers and readers.  They will talk about her gifts as a storyteller—she was a well-to-do white woman writing about African Americans in a way that made most readers assume she was also African American—and they will address her remarkable achievements in the context of the culture, the times and the expected roles of women in society during the Jazz Age.

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Mark your calendars—you won’t want to miss the three lively, enlightening and thought-provoking programs in the From the Jazz Age to the Digital Age: Pulitzer Prize Winners in South Carolina limited television series airing soon on SCETV.

Produced in collaboration with South Carolina Humanities, the half-hour programs were taped in front of studio audiences last week.  They will air on successive Thursdays in May and be available for viewing online.

The first, “Celebrating Pulitzer Commentary with Kathleen Parker and Jim Hoagland” airs Thursday, May 5, at 8 p.m. Parker and Hoagland, both of The Washington Post, talk about politics, this year’s presidential race, how they evolved from reporters into commentators and how they approach their craft. The moderator is Charles Bierbauer, Dean of the USC College of Information and Communications.   

Next is Celebrating Pulitzer Public Service Journalism with The Post and Courier and their talented reporting team, which airs Thursday, May 12. Panelists will be discussing their 2015 Pulitzer-winning series on domestic violence.

The featured journalists are Natalie Caula-Hauff, Jennifer Berry Hawes and Glenn Smith. They discuss the research, teamwork and determination that resulted in their series, “Til’ Death Do Us Part.” The conversation, also moderated by Bierbauer, is both disturbing and informative. Their story is a vivid example of how community journalism is still viable, valuable and necessary in today’s media-saturated communications landscape.

Program three is Celebrating Pulitzer Novelist Julia Peterkin,” which airs Thursday, May 19. This fascinating discussion examines the significance and lasting impact of the late Julia Peterkin, South Carolina’s only recipient of the Pulitzer Prize in literature. The program’s panelists make the audience want to learn more about the life and high-quality writing of Peterkin, who won the Pulitzer in 1929, as they bring her story alive to a new generation of viewers, writers and readers.

Panelists include Gayla Jamison, producer/director of the documentary“Cheating the Stillness: The World of Julia Peterkin”; Peterkin scholar Dr. Margaret Washington of Cornell University; and Peterkin biographer Susan Millar Williams, author of “The Devil and a Good Woman Too.” The enthralling discussion about this groundbreaking author is moderated by SCETV’s Beryl Dakers. 

They talk about her gifts as a storyteller—she was a well-to-do white woman writing about African Americans in a way that made most readers assume she was also African American—and they speak frankly about her remarkable achievements in the context of the culture, the times and the expected roles of women in society during the Jazz Age.

These three public television programs are supported by a Pulitzer Prize Board partnership with the Federation of State and Territorial Humanities Councils, and funded by grants from the Carnegie Corporation and the Mellon, Ford and Knight foundations for “From the Jazz Age to the Digital Age: Pulitzer Prize Winners in South Carolina,” a series of programs to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Prizes in 2016 through Pulitzer’s Campfires Initiative.

The Pulitzer Prize Centennial Campfires Initiative seeks to focus on journalism and the humanities, to imagine their future, and to inspire new generations to consider the values represented by Pulitzer Prize-winning work. 

SC Humanities publicly thanks our partners who have helped to make these programs possible—SCETV and the University of South Carolina College of Information and Communications.

 

Photographer credit:  Mark Adams, SCETV

Beryl Dakers, Gayla Jamison, Dr. Margaret Washington and Susan Millar Williams

 Charles Bierbauer, Kathleen Parker, Jim Hoagland

 Charles Bierbauer, Kathleen Parker, Jim Hoagland

Charles Bierbauer, Natalie Caula-Hauff, Jennifer Berry Hawes and Glenn Smith

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