Andreas Lixl, Professor of German

University of North Carolina at Greensboro

College of Arts and Sciences

Dept. of German, Russian, and Japanese Studies

Arts and Humanities Research Project

Carolinian Immigrant Memory Project

Immigrant Autobiographies, Diaries, Letters, Narratives, Photographs, and Records

The goal of the Carolinian Immigrant Memory Project (CIMP) is to create a window into Carolinian immigrant history, and current events, in North and South Carolina and the broader region of the American South. By collating together the newest technologies and serious research methods, CIMP wants to take southern immigrant history off the shelf, and bring it into your homes, classrooms, community forums, libraries, book clubs and organizations. Whether you are an immigrant or not, whether you come from Europe, Africa, or the Middle East, or from South or Central America, Mexico, the Caribbean, or North America, I am confident that you will find this site interesting and stimulating.

The Carolinian Immigrant Memory Project focuses on the collection, translation, publication, and exhibition of immigrant heritage in the Carolinas and the American South. The project focuses on personal narratives, diaries, letters, photographs, oral histories, and multimedia accounts of immigrants since the colonial period. The multilingual and multidisciplinary scope of the research involves English as well as foreign language accounts, oral histories, folkloric records, visual portraits, and photographs to document the private and public lives of "new Carolinians" across a broad historical, cultural, ethnic, and linguistic spectrum.

Multilingual records and narratives in numerous archives across the Carolinas will be utilized to document and reconstruct the transnational acculturation and assimilation strategies of immigrants to the region, and to reconstruct their diverse histories. CIMP documentation focuses on autobiographical accounts and exhibits that describe the cultural, ethnic, intellectual, political, religious, and social experiences of immigrants. This includes the struggles of isolated individuals, their support by educational organizations, citizens’ collectives, and women's groups, their work experiences as legal or undocumented aliens, and their resettlement in the Carolinas.

The broad range of CIMP related initiatives includes the preparation of a book anthology of immigrant narratives since colonial times, various web exhibits of North and South Carolina’s immigrant heritage, a collection of current immigrant perspectives, and a searchable online library of Carolinian immigrant texts and pictures, and the memories that go with them.

Right now, this project is emerging from the planning stages. We are in the process of building a contemporary archive of CIMP texts and multimedia files at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. For that purpose, we are contacting immigrant organizations as well as individuals living in the Carolinas, and asking them to share with us their immigrant experiences, legacies, as well as selections of their records, texts, or photographs, and their stories or memories about those photographs.

To inquire about further details concerning the Carolinian Immigrant Memory Project, or to give us your feedback, please click here. I will respond to every email as soon as I can.

Thanks for visiting us. Come back soon, and often.

Andreas Lixl, PhD
Carolinian Immigrant Memory Project Director