Slackwater

“Slackwater is when the tide is changing from one to another,” the Southern Maryland fisherman Neal Robrecht explained in an oral history given to the Southern Maryland Documentation Project twenty five years ago.

It’s that moment of calm before the tide reverses course. An apt metaphor to describe historical inflection points, those moments that change things in some important way. It is this change that is at the heart of both SlackWater: A Journal on Environmental and Cultural Change in Southern Maryland and its online companion, SlackWater Online.  

Both are public-facing extensions of work done through the SlackWater Center at St. Mary's College of Maryland, a consortium of students, faculty, and community members focused on documenting and interpreting the region's changing landscapes. The Center encourages cross-disciplinary collaboration and, most importantly, public outreach and debate. Oral histories are at the core of what the Center does; since the early 1980s, students at St. Mary’s College have ventured beyond campus to interview Southern Marylanders about their life and work. Those interviews are kept in the SlackWater Archive, which now houses over 500 interviews. Beyond oral histories, the SlackWater Center aims to provide students with meaningful research experiences through which they explore the region's landscapes through historical documents, images, literature, and scientific and environmental evidence.

Most recently, students working on SlackWater projects have been producing podcasts. As a result of this, we will launch a new website in fall 2021, which will include many of these efforts, including podcasts on topics ranging from bluegrass music in the region and the local challenges of organic farming, to a look back at a mid-century black vacation enclave and a discussion of policing in St. Mary’s County. For all of this, and more, check back in September.

And finally, also coming this fall, we will launch our eighth volume of SlackWater: A Journal on Environmental and Cultural Change in Southern Maryland, which will focus on movement in and out of Southern Maryland--including people, animals, plants, even the land itself. This issue has been generously supported by a Maryland Traditions grant from the Maryland State Arts Council. More information coming soon about an event at the college to celebrate this publication. Past issues of the journal may be purchased online at the St. Mary's College Campus Store.