Presentation: William McNeill July 29, 2010

William McNeill celebrates a vanishing relic of Americana: the handheld church fan in “Fannin’ the Heat Away: A Celebration of the Art and Social History of the Handheld Church Fan”. McNeill uses a sampling from his extensive collection of vintage church fans to explore how fans have served as devotional icons, and illustrates their role in advertising and in the kitsch visual culture of the American South. The fans trigger brief anecdotes that capture the flavor of the 1950s congregation of Singletary Methodist Church, the country church of his Bladen County youth. Offering fragments of a vanished world, this informative and entertaining program resurrects a time gone by – a warmer and more innocent time before the cooling breezes of air conditioning.

William McNeill (M.A., Appalachian State University) is a musician and a collector of Southern Americana, a recorder of oral and social history, an avid reader, world traveler, theatre buff, and environmentalist who advocates the preservation of old trees. He has presented multimedia programs on music and art at conferences around the country. This project is made possible by a grant from the North Carolina Humanities Council, a statewide nonprofit and affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.