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2009 Virginia Forum Spotlights VCDH Projects, Scholarship, Outreach
Six representatives of VCDH projects featuring scholarship, teaching, and outreach participated in the 2009 Virginia Forum, held at Longwood College on April 24-25. Devoted to all aspects and time periods of Virginia history, the Virginia Forum brings together historians, teachers, writers, archivists, museum curators, historic site interpreters, librarians, and others engaged in the study and interpretation of Virginia history to share their knowledge, research, and experiences.
Thomas Costa, Associate Professor of History at the University of Virginia's College at Wise and director of The Geography of Slavery project, presented a paper titled, "Tracking Down Runaways: Building Biographies of Bound Laborers in Virginia, 1736-1815." Costa's work will be featured on an upcoming Virginia Public Radio program, With Good Reason; check the WGR website for listings.
VCDH Director of Education and Outreach Andy Mink chaired a session entitled, Lessons from the Teaching American History Grants. This panel discussion featured Fellowship programs in two VCDH-led Teaching American History projects. Each model featured best practice examples of scholar-informed, teacher-created scholarship and classroom resources. Dr. Marian Mollin, Associate Professor and Associate Chair of History at Virginia Tech, shared her work as the lead instructor of the History Scholars Program in the "Perspectives, Legacy, and Identity" Teaching American History grant that serves four Roanoke-area school divisions. This cadre of teachers explored the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement in state and local history by conducting original research based on Television News of the Civil Rights Era, 1950-1970 archive. Chris Bunin, Director of the Teaching Fellows Program in "The Virginia Experiment" Teaching American History grant, highlighted VCDH's work to integrate geospatial technology into classroom teaching. Serving five school divisions in central Virginia, this cadre of teachers created GIS modules to help teachers and students map episodes of history, understand the relationship between time and space, and visualize change over time in a dynamic fashion.
Also in the News…
Virginia Center for Digital History Launches
Virginia Emigrants To Liberia Website
October 1, 2008: Virginia Emigrants to Liberia, a new website directed by scholars affiliated with the Virginia Center for Digital History, opens a window into the lives of free black and enslaved Virginians, the trans-Atlantic world they inhabited, and the African nation they helped to found.
Between 1820 and 1865, some 3,700 African Americans left Virginia for Liberia, the West African settlement founded by the American Colonization Society (ACS). About one-quarter of these emigrants were free blacks, the rest newly manumitted slaves, most freed upon the condition of their voluntary resettlement in the ACS-governed colony (1820-1847) and independent black republic (1847-present) across the Atlantic. More than two hundred white Virginians emancipated slaves for emigration.
