September 2022
The Place of the Urban Past before “Public History,” 1850-1960
Historians that have studied the experience of modernity have often looked to periods of industrialisation and urbanisation in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Many approaches and definitions of modernity co-exist, but, in general, an element of rupture – a distinctive and often conscious break with the past – has dominated. Yet ‘the past’ did not necessarily disappear with urban transformations. Both the historic environment, and civic understandings of history within that space, could be used as a way to…
Details »New Approaches for an Expansive 250th Commemoration
Annual Meeting: Right Here, Right Now, The Power of Place Revolutionary Narratives: New Approaches for an Expansive 250th Commemoration Idea Studio This session invites public historians of diverse backgrounds, including those working outside the traditional temporal and spatial boundaries of the American Revolution, to discuss research and interpretation in relation to the approaching US semiquincentennial. Attendees will work to develop new approaches to research, curation, and interpretation for an inclusive commemoration.
Details »October 2022
Alexandria Community Remembrance Project Pilgrimage
The Alexandria Community Remembrance Project (ACRP) will be making a pilgrimage to the Equal Justice Initiative’s National Memorial for Peace and Justice and Legacy Museum, October 6-10, 2022. As a community, ACRP will deliver soil collected from locations that symbolically reflect the lives of Alexandria’s two known lynching victims – Joseph McCoy and Benjamin Thomas. This pilgrimage will also include visits to Montgomery and Selma civil rights sites, as well as evening programs.
Details »George Washington’s Places: Touring Alexandria and South Fairfax County
Using the new guidebook, A History Lover’s Guide to Alexandria and South Fairfax County, historian and writer Laura A. Macaluso will take participants on a tour of the places that preserve and remember the life and legacy of the general and president. Follow the tour from Old Town Alexandria, along the George Washington Parkway, to Mount Vernon and beyond. Starting in the Port City, visit Carlyle House, the scene from which Gen. Edward Braddock led an ill-fated campaign to Fort…
Details »Public Accountability through Public Art
The Maryland Institute College of Art is excited to act as the institutional host for the 78th annual meeting of SECAC in Baltimore, MD, from October 26-29, 2022. Based at the Renaissance Baltimore Harborplace Hotel and informed by the theme Watershed, the conference seeks to foster thoughtful analyses of the myriad intersections between art, art history, education, and social and environmental justice. To that end, more than 130 individual sessions will be supplemented by a keynote address by the artist,…
Details »November 2022
History Camp America 2022
Presentation of my talk, "George Washington's Mount Vernon."
Details »January 2023
Craft Essay Presentation in Creative Nonfiction
Wroxton Writing Residency
Details »February 2023
Maps and Social Justice
Are you or your organization doing work that uses maps, GIS or other geospatial approaches to teach about social justice topics? Is your work open to anyone to use and have applications for the K-12 classroom? If so, then we want to connect with you! U-Spatial at the University of Minnesota, the Leventhal Map & Education Center, and New American History are hosting a virtual convening to connect like-minded institutions and organizations.
Details »March 2023
Real and Imaginary: Plantation Images of the Enslaved in Lynchburg, Virginia
Self-emancipated from a plantation in Maryland, the most photographed man in the 19th century, Frederick Douglass, once stated “It is evident that the great cheapness and universality of pictures must exert a powerful, though silent, influence upon the ideas and sentiment of present and future generations.” Thinking about plantation images, real and imaginary – where is the line between fact and fiction? In what ways do the plantation images out of Lynchburg, Virginia act as tools through which the city…
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