Participants

Lexington City Council / City Council Member and Vice Mayor

Examples of Project s & Activities of Past or Current Interest:
Championed effort to recognize MLK Day as an official holiday for Lexington City Schools. One of 4 council members in support of banning the display of Confederate flag from city owned flag poles. Diversity in the Workplace-Initiated development of group of local leaders to engage in changing the local workplace landscape to more diverse and inclusive workplaces in Lexington area business establishments.

Possible Future Projects/ Interest in Collaboration:
An exciting new project is emerging out of the Diversity in the Workplace effort with the theme of “Diversity.Period,” to address diversity and inclusion challenges not only in hiring but community event planning, providing services, criminal justice, financial planning, housing needs and more.

Washington and Lee University / Associate Professor of Anthropology

Examples of Projects & Activities of Past or Current Interest:
Material culture in Virginia, 18th c. to present; race, class, agency and structural inequality, narrative, personhood, humanistic anthropology. The Differently Dead: Changing Cemetery Practice in the Valley of Virginia (book MS in process)

Possible Future Projects/ Interest in Collaboration:
1) Cemetery at Western State Hospital (formerly "Lunatic Asylum") in Staunton; anonymous graves (white washed and once numbered); social contest over who "counts" as fully human; humanistic narratives. 2) Longdale Mining Community in Alleghany County (19th c. "rented" enslaved laborers,& archaeology of domestic sites, race, gender, class, workers' stories, changes to the environment, capitalism)

> More information about Alison Bell

Virginia Tech / Associate Professor of Sociology

Examples of Project s & Activities of Past or Current Interest:
20th c. to present. Environmental justice, gender and environment, social movements, fossil fuel industries' cultural manipulation efforts to demobilize social movements, climate change. Author of Fighting King Coal: The Challenges to Micromobilzation in Central Appalachia (MIT Press, 2016) and Our Roots Run Deep as Ironweed: Appalachian Women and the Fight for Environmental Justice (University of Illinois Press, 2013)

Possible Future Projects/ Interest in Collaboration:
(1)Mountain Valley Pipeline in VA: resistance movement; counter-tactics by MVP and state; unacknowledged social impacts of pipeline (2) Fostering communication across political difference; healing partisan vitriol in the general public

> More information about Shannon Bell

Washington and Lee University / Assistant Professor University Library and Digital Humanities Librarian

Examples of Projects & Activities of Past or Current Interest:
Digital public humanities methods and collections. Courses on data in the humanities, scholarly editing, and digital archives.

> More information about Mackenzie Brooks

Washington and Lee University / Class of 2021

Examples of Projects & Activities of Past or Current Interest:
Anticipated majors in Anthropology and Japanese, minor in Cultural Heritage and Museum Studies

Possible Future Projects/ Interest in Collaboration:
Immigrant cultures in the United States, maintaining and adopting cultural frames; intersections of race and sexuality

Washington and Lee University / Associate Professor of History

Examples of Projects & Activities of Past or Current Interest:
19th and 20th c., Brown v. Board of Education, race, community history

Possible Future Projects/ Interest in Collaboration:
Memoir, school desegregation

> More information about Ted DeLaney

Randolph Street United Methodist Church / Pastor

> More information about Reginald Early

Staunton Mennonite Church / Pastor

Examples of Projects & Activities of Past or Current Interest:
Interreligious dialogue; role of social location in peacemaking/nonviolent resistance

Possible Future Projects/ Interest in Collaboration:
Race and Religion, Pacifism

> More information about Kevin Gasser

Washington and Lee University / Research Archaeologist and Instructor of Anthropology

Examples of Projects & Activities of Past or Current Interest:
Woodland period to the 19th century. Property ownership, land use, production, exchange, consumption. Physical sciences, quantitative methods, and mapping equipment/software for the analysis of archaeological deposits, cultural landscapes and environmental transformation. Post-revolutionary adoption of slave-based labor in the Valley

Possible Future Projects/ Interest in Collaboration:
Rise of slavery in the Valley of Virginia; identifying members of diasporic descendant communities associated with formerly enslaved people from Rockbridge County; daily life and experiences of enslaved people; public archaeology

> More information about Donald Gaylord

Washington and Lee University / Professor of Cultural Anthropology

Examples of Projects & Activities of Past or Current Interest:
19th c. African American communities, narrative, home places, emotion, fiction, incarceration

Possible Future Projects/ Interest in Collaboration:
Developing ways to collaborate on gathering, analyzing, and presenting to the public examples of present and past exclusions based on race, religion, sexuality, and class

> More information about Sascha Goluboff

Washington and Lee University / Class of 2021

Examples of Projects & Activities of Past or Current Interest:
Sophomore majoring in Environmental Studies and Biology. A Johnson Endeavor Grant recipient who worked with UNHCR at Rohingya Refugee camps in Bangladesh this summer. Navid is also a Thomas G. Nye undergraduate fellow in field biology researching on Bison grazing and grassland productivity in Yellowstone National Park.

Possible Future Projects/ Interest in Collaboration:
Navid wants to work with climate refugees in the future and extend on his research on Rohingyas in Myanmar.

Washington and Lee University / Director of Jewish Life

Examples of Project s & Activities of Past or Current Interest:
Jewish and multi-faith community building on college campuses and beyond, informal, experiential and immersive learning, birth work with parents from marginalized identities

Possible Future Projects/ Interest in Collaboration:
Inter- and multi-faith communities, intersectional justice, racism and other forms of discrimination within Jewish and other religious communities, community organizing and activism

College of William and Mary / Distinguished Professor of Anthropology

Examples of Project s & Activities of Past or Current Interest:
16th through 20th c. historical archaeology; relationship between archaeology and contemporary identity; people dislocated for creation of Shenandoah National Park. In the Shadow of Ragged Mountain: Historical Archaeology of Corbin, Nicholson, and Weakley Hollow. Future directions for historical and contemporary archaeology; integration of archaeology with conflict transformation; ethics and public engagement; incorporation of Native American perspectives on colonial histories; vernacular architecture in Virginia; 20th-century archaeology of Appalachia

> More information about Audrey Horning

Virginia Military Institute / Professor of History

Examples of Projects & Activities of Past or Current Interest:
19th c. social and economic history of the Shenandoah Valley; agriculture, esp. commercial wheat farming; slavery and its aftermath; history of everyday life.

Possible Future Projects/ Interest in Collaboration:
1) Functioning of slavery in a wheat economy (as opposed to cotton or tobacco). 2) History of farm laborers (both black and white), as a disadvantaged, impoverished underclass of rural society (temporal focus is final third of nineteenth century and early decades of twentieth)

> More information about Kenneth E. Koons

UnMonumental, With Good Reason at Virginia Humanities, Radio IQ (NPR) / Public Media Producer/Community Storyteller

Examples of Project s & Activities of Past or Current Interest:
How we remember the past (e.g. in Richmond VA). Documentary production, public memory as it relates to race, community radio, multimedia production, podcasting, radio documentary, community storytelling

Possible Future Projects/ Interest in Collaboration:
Community storytelling; audio/oral history training; documentary; public media; events; people-powered publishing

> More information about Kelley Libby

Washington and Lee University / Assistant Professor of Spanish

Examples of Projects & Activities of Past or Current Interest:
Poetry, state violence, carcerality, detention of migrants. Dreaming America: Voices of Undocumented Youth in Maximum-Security Detention (Settlement House, 2017)

Possible Future Projects/ Interest in Collaboration:
Any intersection of poetry, discrimination, torture, state violence, carcerality

> More information about Seth Michelson

National Public Radio / Co-Founder of Invisibilia

Examples of Project s & Activities of Past or Current Interest:
Community care for people with disabilities and/or mental health issues, living legacy of 20th c. eugenics, compulsory sterilization, Lynchburg Colony for Epileptics and Feebleminded/Central Virginia Training Center

Possible Future Projects/ Interest in Collaboration:
Oral histories of victims of sterilization, raising awareness about financial recompensation available to victims of sterilization, Eugenics museum? Traveling eugenics exhibit?

> More information about Lulu Miller

University of Virginia / Assistant Professor of History

Examples of Project s & Activities of Past or Current Interest:
20th c. US; capitalism, how organized interest groups and everyday Americans influence government policy and the terms of political debate; environmental and occupational health, gender and whistleblowing. Smoke and Ashes: From Corporatism to Neoliberalism in Tobacco's Twentieth Century

Possible Future Projects/ Interest in Collaboration:
Eugenics in history and memory. Occupational and environmental whistleblowers (especially women).

> More information about Sarah Milov

Virginia Military Institute / Professor of History

Examples of Projects & Activities of Past or Current Interest:
18th, 19th c. race and social structure in Rockbridge and Augusta Counties. The Road to Black Ned’s Forge: A Story of Race, Sex, and Trade on the Colonial American Frontier. Statistically intensive social analysis of civil litigation in colonial Virginia

Possible Future Projects/ Interest in Collaboration:
Future projects: property seized to satisfy debts west of the Blue Ridge before American Revolution. Collaboration: can support long-term studies of land ownership patterns with Augusta County real estate data from 1730s to 1770.  Same data might also help underpin study of ecological changes in Valley of Virginia.

> More information about Turk McCleskey

James Madison University / Associate Professor, Department of Integrated Science & Technology and Director, Shenandoah National Park Environmental Archaeology Program

Examples of Project s & Activities of Past or Current Interest:
Prehistory to the present – human and ecological histories of Shenandoah National Park, displacements; climate change, sustainability, Native Peoples, Resilience Theory, science and the public

Possible Future Projects/ Interest in Collaboration:
Archaeology of boom towns and immigrant workers; archaeology of post-Civil War African American life; the Newtown Cemetery (Harrisonburg) as an axis mundi for the Northeast Neighborhood; the "case of the disappearing Indians": why is it difficult to find evidence of historic period Native Americans in much of western Virginia?

> More information about Carole Nash

Washington and Lee University / Assistant Professor of Sociology

Examples of Projects & Activities of Past or Current Interest:
Social Movements, Inequality, Political Participation, Working Class Culture. Proletarian Lives. Daily Routines and Political Commitment among Unemployed Argentineans (Book Manuscript in Progress)

Possible Future Projects/ Interest in Collaboration:
1) Undocumented communities and political activism; DREAMers 2) Fieldwork in Jujuy, Argentina.

> More information about Marcos Perez

Washington and Lee University / Assistant Professor of Ethics and Poverty Studies and Director of the Shepherd Program for Poverty Studies

Examples of Projects & Activities of Past or Current Interest:
Ethics, poverty and distributive justice, modern individualism and philosophical/theological anthropology, and modern religious thought

Possible Future Projects/ Interest in Collaboration:
1) Regional correctional facilities; 2) Local interfaith and religious organizations

> More information about Howard Pickett

Sweet Briar College / Dean of the College, Director of the Tusculum Institute for Public History

Photo by Brian Palmer

Examples of Projects & Activities of Past or Current Interest:
19th, 20th c. African-American cemeteries, Sweet Briar plantation, segregated schools, poor farms/poor houses. Books include Hidden History: African American Cemeteries in Central Virginia. Virginia and the Great War. Invisible Founders: How two centuries of African American families transformed a plantation into a college; "Sweet Briar College" (an illustrated history)

Possible Future Projects/ Interest in Collaboration:
locating poorhouses in Virginia and creating a database of the inhabitants; continuing to locate information about WWI memorials in Virginia

> More information about Lynn Rainville

Richard Knox Robinson Films / Filmmaker and Photographer

Examples of Projects & Activities of Past or Current Interest:
Rothstein's First Assignment: A Story about Documentary Truth (Cinema Guild 2011) (eugenics, Shenandoah National Park, involvement of New Deal photographer); Orwell's Revolution, interviews with Noam Chomsky et al. on how the media operate in times of war; The Beekeepers (Cinema Guild 2009) on why bees are dying (Colony Collapse Disorder).

Possible Future Projects/ Interest in Collaboration:
Immigrants and Photography. From Bertillon and Galton to Facial Recognition. A journey through Brussels exploring the use of images in documenting the 'étranger.'

> More information about Richard Robinson

Roanoke College / Assistant Professor of Public History

Examples of Projects & Activities of Past or Current Interest:
Southwest Virginia LGBTQ+ History Project – 20th c. to present, public history and humanities, urban studies, gentrification, working-class studies, queer studies, trans studies, community organizing, scholar-activism. Project website: lgbthistory.pages.roanoke.edu Book MS in progress: Queer This City: Making Space for LGBTQ History in an Urban Renaissance

Possible Future Projects/ Interest in Collaboration:
Anything LGBTQ related! I'm part of a statewide consortium of LGBTQ public history / public humanities projects, and I'm working broadly in LGBTQ activism, history, heritage, preservation, etc.

> More information about Gregory Rosenthal

Washington and Lee University / Assistant Professor of Theater

Examples of Projects & Activities of Past or Current Interest:
Theatre in Community, Disability and Theatre, Social Justice Documentary Film and Theatre. The Greatest Gift: A Celebration of L'Arche International's 50th Anniversary (multi-media play in process, to be performed March 2019 in Toronto)

Possible Future Projects/ Interest in Collaboration:
1) Social Justice Theatre/Documentary on Domestic Violence in Collaboration with Project Horizon, Lexington, VA. 2) Verbatim Documentary Theatre on Washington and Lee's Historical Legacy with regard to race, gender, and class

> More information about Stephanie Sandberg

College of William and Mary / Doctoral Candidate

Examples of Projects & Activities of Past or Current Interest:
Historical Archaeology – 19th c., doctoral work on Buffalo Forge plantation (Rockbridge County); archaeology, enslaved women; southeastern United States; architectural history; flotation and small artifact analysis; spatial analysis; gender and identity; agency and autonomy; public archaeology

Possible Future Projects/ Interest in Collaboration:
1) Longdale Mining Community 2) current issues affecting Rockbridge County (esp. Glasgow, VA/Buffalo Forge area)

> More information about Erin Schwartz

Washington University, St. Louis /  Professor of Anthropology and Environmental Studies

Examples of Projects & Activities of Past or Current Interest:
Smallholder food production, household economy, and politics; areas of research include Nigeria, India, Philippines, and Appalachia. Current research topics include household economies, nutrition, and rights abuses in the Blue Ridge. Vulnerability of Economy and Body in Corbin Hollow

Possible Future Projects/ Interest in Collaboration:
Glenn Stone's research is mainly in political ecology, with foci on the ecology and politics of smallholder food production, on GM crops, and on alternative agricultural movements. His current writing projects include a book on the history of capitalist agriculture in the US and articles on the Green Revolution and on Depression-era Blue Ridge peasants. In recent years he has been president of the Anthropology & Environment Society and a John S. Guggenheim Fellow.)

> More information about Glenn Davis Stone

Virginia Tech / Associate Professor of History, Associate Dean for Undergraduate Academic Affairs, College of Liberal Arts & Human Sciences

Examples of Projects & Activities of Past or Current Interest:
late 19th and early 20th c., postbellum African American communities in Montgomery County, establishing communities (schools, homes); racism, outmigration. Facing Freedom: An African American Community in Virginia From Reconstruction to Jim Crow (Charlottesville, 2017)

Possible Future Projects/ Interest in Collaboration:
1) Identifying slaves held at Smithfield, in Montgomery County, and tracing them and their descendants from the Antebellum Era to the present. 2) Organizing a reunion of descendants of Smithfield slaves. 3) locating cemeteries and other physical traces of African Americans in Montgomery County.

> More information about Daniel Thorp

First Baptist Church / Pastor

Rockbridge Historical Society; VA Association of Museums / Executive Director; Director for History Museums

Examples of Projects & Activities of Past or Current Interest:
RHS Mission: "preserve and promote the histories of the Rockbridge area through public programs, publications, exhibits and educational outreach." 1) Diversify community history programs to foreground race & gender; 2) socioeconomic histories of rural Rockbridge: farming, early industrial labor; schools; 3) Wider range of 'street bios' of Righteous and Rascals of Rockbridge: RRRockbridge.org

Possible Future Projects/ Interest in Collaboration:
Establishing new permanent County History Exhibit for our (small) museum's 21st century 're-boot' with new themes/ priorities. Greater use of artifacts and videos to frame more inclusive 'Rockbridge bios' (see RRR); Digital Media projects involving local Arts & Culture, and digital gallery/ documentary on 'Rockbridge Flags' (Colonial-> Civil War -> Civic Standards Today). Community Research Programs with WLU, VMI, SVU Students; Natural Bridge State Park Programming

> More information about Eric Wilson

Monacan Indian Nation; Virginia Humanities / Enrolled member of the Monacan Indian Nation; Director of the Virginia Indian Heritage Program at Virginia Humanities

Examples of Projects & Activities of Past or Current Interest:
Karenne Wood holds an MFA in poetry and a PhD in linguistic anthropology. She has worked at the National Museum of the American Indian as a researcher and at the Association on American Indian Affairs as a repatriation specialist. In 2015 she was honored as one of Virginia’s Women in History. Wood is the author of two poetry collections, Markings on Earth (2000) and Weaving the Boundary (2016). Her poems have appeared in such journals as The Kenyon Review, Orion, and Shenandoah.

> More information about Karenne Wood

Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, NPR (WVTF, WCVE, WMRA), C-Ville Weekly, Columbia Journalism Review, The New Yorker / Journalist, Research Fellow

Examples of Projects & Activities of Past or Current Interest:
Mapping racially restrictive neighborhood covenants from 1903-1968 in Charlottesville & Albemarle; Mapping racial disparities in: health, education, wealth, income, home ownership, law and enforcement; Conducting Charlottesville's first African-American Oral History Project; Building high school curricula around racist history in the physical world; Producing an art-installation that focuses on reclaiming the places razed through Urban Renewal; Producing a 9-part podcast with refugees on the resettlement process; Producing a race-in-physical-space walking tour for Charlottesville High School; Producing a multimedia series on the redevelopment of the largest government-assisted neighborhood in Charlottesville's downtown area.

Possible Future Projects/ Interest in Collaboration:
Race, whiteness, affluence & poverty, liberal and progressive racism, historical and structural racism, environmental racism, urban planning, affordable housing.

> More information about Jordy Yager