Program for the 2024 Virginia Forum

at Virginia Museum of History and Culture

in Richmond, VA

on April 4 to 6, 2024

​

**Registration WALK-UP ONLY as of April 4**

​

Hotel Information:

• Graduate Richmond - 301 W Franklin St, Richmond, VA 23220

  • $199/night

  • Reservation Link

• Quirk Richmond - 201 W Broad Street, Richmond, VA 23220

  • $189/night on Thursday, $269/night on Friday + Saturday

  • Reservation Link

• Linden Row

  • Reservation Link

• Richmond Marriott Downtown - 500 East Broad Street, Richmond, VA 23219 (NOTE: new expiration date of April 4!)

  • Reservation Link​

​

CONFERENCE PROGRAM:

​

Thursday, April 4

 

4:00 to 6:00 pm: Registration

​

5:30 to 6:45 pm: Welcome Remarks and Keynote

Jim Ambuske of R2 Studios at George Mason University: “Turning Worlds Upside Down: Challenging Public Assumptions about the Past through podcasting”

​

Jim Ambuske is a Historian and Senior Producer at R2 Studios. A historian of the American Revolution, Scotland, and the British Atlantic World, he received his Ph.D. in history from the University of Virginia in 2016. He is the author and co-author of several publications on the American Revolution, transatlantic legal history, and King George III, including “The law of loyalism: The Campbell family, the court of session, and the price of loyalty in the revolutionary Atlantic world” (Atlantic Studies, 2023), and with Randall Flaherty, “Reading Law in the Early Republic: Legal Education in the Age of Jefferson” in The Founding of Mr. Jefferson’s University (2019). He is currently at work on a book titled The Fury of Emigration: Scotland, The American Revolution, and the Fate of Empire.

 

At R2 Studios, Ambuske is the creator, writer, and narrator of Worlds Turned Upside Down, a narrative podcast about the history of the American Revolution. He also serves as executive producer of The Green Tunnel podcast, a series about the history of the Appalachian Trail, and Your Most Obedient & Humble Servant, a series about eighteenth and nineteenth-century women and the letters they wrote. Before joining R2 Studios, Ambuske led the Center for Digital History at the Washington Library at George Washington’s Mount Vernon.

​

7:30 to 8:45 pm: Evening Event

Cheers, Virginia Forum!: A Discussion with Richmond Beeristoric
Moderator: Paige Newman, Virginia Museum of History & Culture, and Lee Graves & Mike Gorman, Richmond Beeristoric

​

Friday, April 5

​

8:00 am: Registration opens

Complimentary coffee, tea, and light snacks

​

8:30 to 10:00 am: Session I

​

Panel 1: Moving Towards Justice: A History of Medical Racism & Institutional Accountability at Virginia Commonwealth University

​

Moderator: Christine Cynn, Virginia Commonwealth University

​

“Remembrance and Reverence: Contextualizing the East Marshall Street Well Project”

• Margaret Unverzagt Goddard, Virginia Commonwealth University

​

“Student Research Spotlight: Oral History as Memorialization”

• Michael Verner and Sunday Wright, Virginia Commonwealth University

​

“Race, Resistance, and Anatomical Dissection: Symbolic Justice for the Victims of Medical Graverobbing”

• Daniel Sunshine, Virginia Commonwealth University

​

“Combating Systemic Bias: Creating the VCU Racism and Health Guide”

• Erica Brody, Virginia Commonwealth University

 

Panel 2: Inheritance: Slavery & The Cost of “Motherhood”

​

Moderator: George Oberle, George Mason University

​

“Not Satisfied with the Provisions Made for Her: Elizabeth Mary Ann Barnes Hooe, the Mason Family, and the Transfer of Property in Early Virginia”

• David Armstrong, George Mason University

​

“Partus Sequitur Ventrum & Infanticide among Enslaved Black Women in Virginia”

• Shemika Curvey, George Mason University

​

“Motherhood On the Run: Enslaved and Enslaving Women Defining Womanhood in Antebellum Virginia”

• Annabelle Spencer, George Mason University

​

Panel 3: This is What Democracy Looks Like: Virginians as Activists

​

Moderator: Emilie E. Raymond, Virginia Commonwealth University

​

“Richmond Jews in Social Activism, 1970s to Present Day: What roles has the Jewish community played in shaping Richmond?”

• Tracy Herman, Virginia Commonwealth University

​

“Modeling Citizenship: Black Parents Confront Virginia’s Pupil Placement Board, 1957-1965”

• Angela Lehman, Frontier Culture Museum of Virginia

​

Panel 4: Advocating for Change: Institutional (In)justices in the Twentieth Century

​

Moderator: Stanley K. Arnold, Northern Illinois University

​

 “Lucian Louis Watts, Advocate for Virginia’s Blind”

• Nadia Bukach, Virginia Commonwealth University

​

“The Legacy of June Purcell Guild: Social Worker, Attorney, and Civil Rights Advocate”

• Alice Woodworth Campbell, Virginia Commonwealth University Libraries

​

“Challenging the Racial Classification of Virginia Indians in the Military Selective Service System”

• Mika Endo, George Mason University

​

 “White Coats and Black Shrouds: The Role of Virginia's State Anatomical Board in the Jim Crow Era”

• Kevin Hegg, James Madison University's Libraries

​

10:00 to 10:15 am: Break

Complimentary coffee, tea, and light snacks

​

10:15 to 11:45 am: Session II

 

Panel 5: Making and Unmaking Virginians: Eugenics at 100

​

Moderator: Peter M. Hedlund, Virginia Humanities

​

 “Eugenics at the University of Virginia”

• P. Preston Reynolds, University of Virginia

​

“Elite Political Pressure and the Making of Eugenics”

• Patricia Miller, Virginia Humanities

​

“Eugenic Sterilization in Virginia”

• Elizabeth Catte, Passel LLC - Applied History Consultants

​

“The Paper Genocide in Virginia”

• Ashley Atkins Spivey, Kenah Consulting LLC

​

Panel 6: Teaching Virginia Histories as DEI

​

Moderator and Commentator: Dwana Waugh, Sweet Briar College

​

“Tarter and Dabney Compared: Teaching Virginia History as DEl”

• Tom Costa, University of Virginia's College at Wise

 

“Using Virginia History to Introduce Students to DEI”

• Mathias D. Bergman, Randolph-Macon College

​

Panel 7: Roundtable on After Emancipation: Racism and Resistance at the University of Virginia

​

Moderators: Kirt von Daacke, University of Virginia, and Andrea Douglas, Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, editors of After Emancipation

​

Participants:

• Ashley Schmidt, Academic Program Officer, President’s Commission on the University in the Age of Segregation at the University of Virginia

• Countess Hughes, University of Virginia alumna and UVA employee in Housing & Residence Life

• Leslie M. Scott-Jones, Curator of Learning Engagement & Public Programs at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center

• Ty’Leik Chambers (UVA ’22), Community Outreach Coordinator for the Getting Word African American Oral History Project at Monticello and Youth & College President Of The Virginia State Conference NAACP

• Jay Pun, music teacher at Renaissance School and Advisory Board member of the Eko Ise Music Program at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center

​

Panel 8: Remembering and Forgetting in Virginia

​

Moderator: Sheri Ann Huerta, George Mason University

​

“Finding Belinda Brown in Unexpected Places: Traces of a Black Wife, Mother, and Independent Thinker in a Lost Cause Narrative”

• Catherine E. Saunders, George Mason University

​

“Commemoration versus Community: The Establishment of the National Park Service’s Chimborazo Medical Museum in Richmond, Virginia in the 1950s”

• Laura Brannan Fretwell, George Mason University

​

“Who curates and comprises William & Mary’s History?: T-Shirts as Tools of Remembering and Forgetting”

• Tyler Goldberger and Mitzy Colligan, William & Mary

​

11:45 am to 1:30 pm: Lunch Break

Boxed lunches available for registered attendees

 

12:15-1:15 pm: Virginia Forum Board Meeting

Open to all registered attendees (Harry M. Bluford Classroom)

​

1:30 to 3:00 pm: Session III

​

Panel 9: Slavery, Law, and Power in Virginia and the British Atlantic World: Digital Humanities Research and Best Practices

​

Moderator: Holly Brewer, University of Maryland

​

“Virginia’s 1705 Slave Code in British Imperial Context”

• Michael J. Becker, William & Mary

​

“Manuscript Codes and Virginia Slave & Servant Laws, 1690-1706”

• Holly Brewer, University of Maryland

​

“The Power of Collaboration: SLP and the Humanities Lab Model”

• Dylan Bails, University of Maryland

​

“Search Engines, Tags, and User Interfaces: Making SLP Accessible to All Audiences”

• Alexandra Kadis, University of Maryland

​

Panel 10: “But I’m trying to carry on as normal now:” A Roundtable Discussion on the State of Post-Pandemic Secondary Education

​

Moderator: Anna Kiefer-Douglas, Mount Tabor High School and Laurel Ridge Community College

​

Participants:

• Jennifer Pisini-Martin, Mount Tabor High School

• Meredith Wooten, Mount Tabor High School

• Heather C. Oberle, Prince William County Public Schools

​

Panel 11: Women and the Civil War from 1862 to 2023

​

Moderator: Warren E. Milteer, Jr., George Washington University

​

“Negotiating the Lost Cause: Women and Reform in Progressive Era Virginia”

• Clayton McClure Brooks, Mary Baldwin University

 

“Resistance to Reconstruction: White Virginia Women’s Resentment in 1862-1870”

• Madeleine Stout, Florida State University

 

“Living History and the U.S. Supreme Court: Challenges in Portraying the Civil War”

• Joshua M. Howard, Passel LLC - Applied History Consultants

 

Panel 12: Telling the Stories of Indigenous and Black Virginians at the Library of Virginia

​

Moderator: Brent Tarter, Library of Virginia (retired) and co-author of Justice For Ourselves: Black Virginians Claim Their Freedom After Slavery

​

Participants (all from the Library of Virginia):

• Barbara C. Batson, Exhibitions Coordinator, Indigenous Perspectives

• Ashley Ramey Craig, Community Engagement & Partnerships Specialist, Indigenous Perspectives

• John G. Deal, co-author, Justice For Ourselves: Black Virginians Claim Their Freedom After Slavery

• Marianne E. Julienne, co-author, Justice For Ourselves: Black Virginians Claim Their Freedom After Slavery

 

3:00 to 3:15 pm: Break

Complimentary coffee, tea, and light snacks

​

3:15 to 4:45 pm: Session IV

​

Panel 13: The Intertwined Histories of Black and White Virginians Across Three Centuries: A Roundtable on Latest Books and Newest Trends

​

Moderator: Nadine Zimmerli, University of Virginia Press

​

Participants:

• Marvin T. Chiles, Old Dominion University, author of The Struggle for Change: Race and the Politics of Reconciliation in Modern Richmond

• Gianluca De Fazio, James Madison University, editor of Lynching in Virginia: Racial Terror and its Legacy

• Christopher Alan Graham, American Civil War Museum, author of Faith, Race, and the Lost Cause: Confessions of a Southern Church

• Tom Shoop, public historian, author of A Place Called Ilda: Race and Resilience at a Northern Virginia Crossroads

• Daniel B. Thorp, Virginia Tech, author of In the True Blue’s Wake: Slavery and Freedom among the Families of Smithfield Plantation

 

Panel 14: Virginians and the Path Forward After Gun Violence: A Roundtable

​

Moderator: Thomas P. Kapsidelis, University of Richmond

​

Participants:

• Megan Doney, New River Community College, author of Unarmed (October publication), an essay collection on safety in the shadow of tragedy

• Thomas P. Kapsidelis, University of Richmond, author of After Virginia Tech

• Joseph Samaha, Victim Advocacy and Outreach Director for VTVCare, a mission of the VTV Family Outreach Foundation

​

Panel 15: Virginian and European: Three Lives in the Early Republic

​

Moderator: J. Jefferson Looney, Thomas Jefferson Foundation

​

“Jean Miller Skipwith: Rooted in Scotland and Virginia”

• Gaye S. Wilson, Thomas Jefferson Foundation

​

“A Virginian Outside of Virginia”

• Megan R. Brett, Thomas Jefferson Foundation

​

“A Jewish Immigrant and his Mixed-Race Family”

• Olivia Brown, Thomas Jefferson Foundation

​

Panel 16: Beyond the Scenic Blue Ridge: Stories of the Displaced Families of Shenandoah National Park

​

Moderator: Marina E. Curry, Rockingham County Circuit Court

​

“The Creation of Shenandoah National Park”

• Megan Schoeman, Rockingham County Circuit Court

​

“The Histories Along the Blue Ridge (HBR) Project: Digitization Intricacies, Funding, and Evolution”

• Sydney Ring, James Madison University

​

4:45 to 5:45 pm: Historical Walking Tour of the VMHC and VMFA Campus

​

5:45 to 7:00 pm: Plenary, with Reception to follow

Jon Kukla on “250 Years Later: Some Pivotal Events in Virginia of 1774”

​

Jon Kukla (Ph.D. University of Toronto) is an elected member of the American Antiquarian Society and his recent books aspire to present first-rate historical scholarship accessible for general readers. He is currently reassessing the origins of the American Revolution in a book entitled Rehearsal for Revolution: The Stamp Act Rebellion, 1764-1766. Kukla’s most recent book, Patrick Henry: Champion of Liberty (Simon & Schuster, 2017) won the Slatten Award for Biography from the Virginia Museum of History and Culture and was a finalist for the George Washington Prize as well as the Library of Virginia’s People’s Choice Award. His previous books include Mr. Jefferson's Women (Knopf, 2007) and A Wilderness So Immense: The Louisiana Purchase and the Destiny of America (Knopf, 2003) – both Book-of-the-Month and History Book Club selections.

​

Saturday, April 6

​

8:30 to 10:00 am: Session V

​

Panel 17: Beyond the Big House: Teaching Plantation History Through Virtual Reality

​

Moderator: Joseph M. Rizzo, Wilton House Museum

​

“What Once Was: Opportunities and Challenges of the Virtual Past”

• Nathan R. Prestopnik, Wes Brown, Joey Miciotta, and Tyler Dossat, Shenandoah University

​

“Research and Interpretation for Relocated Historic Home”

• Erica Blake, Wilton House Museum

​

Panel 18: A Roundtable on A People’s Guide to Richmond and Central Virginia: Telling Virginians’ Stories of Power and Resistance through Public and Community-Engaged Histories

​

Moderators: Melissa Ooten, University of Richmond, and Jason Sawyer, Old Dominion University, authors of A People’s Guide to Richmond and Central Virginia

​

Participants:

• Cheryl Groce-Wright, Kaleidoscope Collaborative RVA LLC

• Kim Lee Schmidt, Kim Lee Photography

• Cathy Woodson, Virginia Organizing (retired)

​

Panel 19: The Limits of Being a Virginian: Race and Power in the Old Dominion

​

Moderator and Commentator: Cassandra Newby-Alexander, Norfolk State University

​

“Accounting as Social Control: The 1836 Census of Free Blacks in Norfolk, Virginia”

• Charles H. Ford, Norfolk State University

​

“‘So that her usefulness may be a blessing to her race’: The Legacy of Alexandria Teacher Jane Solomon Crouch”

• Amy Bertsch, Independent Scholar

​

“From the Old Dominion to the Lone Star State: Albert F. Keeble and the Myth of the Frontier in Early American History”

• Jeffrey L. Littlejohn, Sam Houston State University

​

Panel 20: Geographies of Inequity in Northern Virginia

​

Moderator: Krystyn R. Moon, University of Mary Washington

​

“Fade to White – Ilda and the Right to Remain”

• Mandy Katz, George Mason University

​

“Separate, But Self-Determined: Black Education & Community in Occoquan”

• Stephanie Martinez, George Mason University

​

“Bridgett Town: How Hostile Nostalgia Obscured its Memory and how Henri Lefebvre's Production of Space Could Bring It Back”

• Kristina Nohe, George Mason University

​

10:00 to 10:15 am: Break

Complimentary coffee, tea, and light snacks

​

10:15 to 11:45 am: Session VI

​

Panel 21: Uncovering the Narratives of Enslaved People Who Built Virginia Universities and Colleges – UVA Descendant Project and The Lemon Project: A Journey of Reconciliation

​

Moderators: Jody Allen, William & Mary and Carolyn M. Dillard, University of Virginia

​

Participants:

• Jajuan Johnson, Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Research Associate at William & Mary

• Shelley Viola Murphy, Descendant Project Researcher at the University of Virginia

​

Panel 22: Telling Virginia Labor History through Material Culture

​

Moderator: Anna Kiefer-Douglas, Mount Tabor High School and Laurel Ridge Community College

​

“Laboring in Revolutionary Virginia’s Public Armory”

• Joel Cameron Anderson, Independent Public Historian

 

“Workers in the Margins, the 'Hidden Hands' in the Trade Shops of Virginia in the eighteenth Century: Searching for the Identities of Indentured ad Enslaved Laborers in Colonial Virginia”

• Jacqueline A. Delisle, General Counsel for BSC America

 

 “'I Come Creeping': Untold Women from the Battle of Blair Mountain”

• Adrienne E. Robertson, Independent Historian

 

Panel 23: “A ‘Perfectly Novel’ Solution to a Thorny Constitutional Problem: Virginians, Pennsylvanians, and the Creation of the Federal Executive at the Philadelphia Convention, 1787”

 

Moderator: Terri Halperin, University of Richmond

 

Presenters:

• Warren R. Hofstra, Shenandoah University

• Kevin R. Hardwick, James Madison University

 

Panel 24: New Histories of Civil War in the Old Dominion: Representation and Remembrance

 

Moderator: James J. Broomall, Shepherd University

 

“Pardoned by Two Presidents: Charles Cowlam’s Pardons from Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis”

• Frank W. Garmon, Jr., Christopher Newport University

 

“‘Demoting’ Davis: Resistance, Activism, and the Rhetorics of Museum Display”

• Nicole Maurantonio, University of Richmond

 

“Reverie in Richmond: Women Artists Reimagine Virginia’s Past”

• Paige Sellars, Virginia Museum of History and Culture

 

“Picturing Wartime Virginia: Visual Culture of the Civil War Soldier”

• James Brookes, Virginia Museum of History and Culture

 

11:45 to 1:15 pm: Lunch Break

Boxed lunches available for registered attendees

 

1:30 to 3:00 pm: Session VII

​

Panel 25: Community Stories: Virginia in Microhistory

 

Moderator: Phillip Hamilton, Christopher Newport University

 

“Displaced but not Forgotten: Translocal Citizenship and the Significance of Community Ties in the Green Valley neighborhood of Arlington, Virginia”

• Delario A. Lindsey, Marymount University

 

“Old Commonwealth, New Communities: A Look at the Virginia Piedmont’s Small-Town Jewish Experience”

• Matthew S. Gottlieb, Virginia Department of Historic Resources

 

“‘Registered and numbered in a book . . .’: the Rediscovered Early Register of Free Blacks for Orange County, Virginia and Related Research on the Regional Antebellum Free Black Community”

• Ann L. Miller, Virginia Transportation Research Council

 

“Local Histories & Social Network Analysis in Virginian Cities & Counties”

• Lynn Rainville, Historic Consultant

 

Panel 26: The American Dream: Land in Early Virginia

 

Moderator: Jon Kukla, Richmond, Virginia

 

“Washington's Sheepshead: Revolutionary Virginia Leaders and the Biological Environment of the Chesapeake Estuary”

• Albert H. Tillson, Jr., University of Tampa, Emeritus

 

“Red Land, Black Labor, White Colleges: Virginia, 1850s–1950s”

• Peter Wallenstein, Virginia Tech

 

‘The White Male Land Ownership Question in Antebellum Virginia”

• John J. Zaborney, University of Maine at Presque Isle

 

Panel 27: Yearning to be Free: Slavery and Abolition in Antebellum Virginia

 

Moderator: Joe Stinnett, retired editor, The Roanoke Times and the Lynchburg News & Advance

 

“Black legal culture in slavery in Antebellum Virginia”

• David Lacy, University of Toledo

 

“Virginians in Liberia”

• Deborah A. Lee, Independent Scholar

 

 “‘The Last Sayings of Sarah Terrell’ and Its Impact on Revolutionary-era Quaker Abolitionism in Virginia”

• Rebecca Pickard, South River Quaker Meeting House and Burial Ground Committee

 

“Interpreting the Architecture for Enslaved Households in Virginia: Period Evidence and Modern Preservation Issues”

• Douglas W. Sanford, Virginia Slave Housing Project

 

Panel 28: Virginia in Three Centuries: Complicating Historical Notions of Race across Time and Space

 

Moderator: Steven Harris-Scott, George Mason University

 

“East Indians and Mobility in Virginia, 1635-1750”

• Jason R. Sellers, University of Mary Washington

 

“The Honesty Family of Northern Virginia, 1740s-1900s”

• Heather K. Bollinger, Tudor Place

 

“The Creation of NOVA and Black Commuters from Falls Church, Virginia, 1890s-1950s”

• Krystyn R. Moon, University of Mary Washington