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June 12, 2025

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Archives Education Education WC

Washington College’ Starr Center Begins Planning Public Artwork Commemorating African American History in Chesapeake Tidewater Region

June 13, 2024 by Washington College News Service

Earlier this spring, the Washington College Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience was awarded a $10,000 Public Art Across Maryland (PAAM) grant from the Maryland State Arts Council to begin planning for a major artwork of national significance that engages African American history and culture in the Chesapeake Tidewater region.

The planning grant will fund a wide array of activities open to the public, including regional bus tours, public presentations by experts in art and African American history, and community forums. These events will ensure that all interested members of the local community will have the opportunity to contribute meaningfully to the process of commissioning the artwork. The artwork will be installed outside the historic Custom House in Chestertown, MD, near the bank of the Chester River.

The project grows out of Chesapeake Heartland: An African American Humanities Project, a restorative community curation initiative launched by the Starr Center in 2020 that chronicles the region’s Black history in collaboration with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History & Culture and a coalition of community groups. Situating the Chesapeake Bay watershed as a national heartland of African American history and culture, Chesapeake Heartland has digitized more than 5,000 documents, images, artifacts, and recordings spanning almost 400 years; provided grants and internships to dozens of artists, researchers, and writers; and hosted over 200 public programs. The archives are free to view online.

In addition to the initial PAAM planning support, the Town of Chestertown has awarded $5,000 to the effort and Washington College’s Department of Art & Art History has given $3,000—totaling $18,000 towards stakeholder engagement for the initial planning effort.

This project will continue to strengthen Chestertown’s commitment to public art. Starting with a National Endowment for the Arts-funded master plan adopted by the Town Council in 2014, Chestertown has increased its public art through commissioned artworks and the donation of the Woicke Collection, a group of 24 contemporary sculptures.

A public artwork along Chestertown’s waterfront is envisioned by both the Master Plan and the Chestertown Unites Against Racism framework adopted in 2020, which called specifically for a work along the Chester River addressing African American history.

“An artwork of remembrance such as this needs to be pursued with great care and wide community engagement from its inception. We are developing a highly inclusive planning process working with stakeholders across the Upper Shore, the Delmarva Peninsula, and the College to identify and articulate the scope and goals of the effort,” said Jaelon T. Moaney, deputy director of the Starr Center and project lead. “The African diasporic history and culture unique to the Chesapeake region is sacred, and it is our intention to engage these enduring legacies with respect.”

Beginning in fall 2024, regional bus tours will engage with aligned works of public art from Philadelphia to Annapolis and across Maryland’s Eastern Shore to build community with the visionaries involved in their creation and continuing use. Registration will be required to join due to space limitations.

Additionally, during winter 2024 and early 2025, the Starr Center will host a series of public presentations and discussions with experts in contemporary public art, art history, and the stewardship of cultural heritage and historic resources to provide space for a deeper understanding of the full range of possibilities for the project. Brent Leggs, African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund executive director and senior vice president of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, will launch the series on Monday, November 4. Time and location to be announced.  Those interested in joining the bus tours and public meetings should sign up for the Starr Center’s newsletter to receive notifications and sign up for more details before each event.

Next spring, the Starr Center will also host community forums to provide space for facilitated public discussion, exploring the current understanding of the regional African American experience and how a public artwork might address intergenerational memory making.

Focal to the process has been convening a 10-person planning committee with diverse disciplinary and geographic representation to inform each phase. Members of the planning committee include: Jana Carter, Charles Sumner Post #25, Grand Army of the Republic; Prof. Arlisha Norwood, University of Maryland Eastern Shore; Kate Dowd, Chestertown Public Arts Committee; Christalyn Grandison; Prof. Ada Pinkston, Maryland Commission on African American History and Culture; Vince Leggett, Blacks of the Chesapeake Foundation, Inc.; Matt Kenyatta, University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design; Ashley Chenault, Maryland Tourism Development Board; DeLia Shoge, Kent County Public Schools; and Jason Patterson, Washington College.

 

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Filed Under: Archives, Education, WC

Tracking Native American Cultural Heritage on Maryland’s Upper Eastern Shore

January 8, 2024 by Washington College News Service

Dr. Julie Markin, associate professor of anthropology and archaeology and director of archaeology at Washington College, was recently awarded a $40,000 grant through the Maryland Historical Trust to study the indigenous cultural heritage of Maryland’s Upper Eastern Shore and its inhabitants’ social landscapes prior to contact with European settlers and explorers. The grant will provide for an archaeological survey and excavation of the watershed, conducted by the Washington College Archaeology Lab, as well as paid internships for students, public programming and presentations, and open lab opportunities which will be open to volunteers from the public at large.

Dr. Julie Markin

Dr. Markin’s project unites archaeological data with geographic information, environmental reconstruction and historical accounts, with the goal of developing a more robust database from which to ask questions about the nature and complexity of civilizations on the Chesapeake Bay’s Eastern Shore, an area that has historically received less study and attention than its counterpart chiefdoms across the Bay.

“The research proposed by Dr. Markin will help fill a critical gap in our knowledge about pre-contact indigenous history on Maryland’s Eastern Shore,” said Maryland Historical Trust Chief Archeaologist Dr. Matthew McKnight, who notes that most of the archaeological work in the state requires consideration of cultural resources and archaeological sites in project planning.
“In areas like the Upper Choptank watershed that have seen less development, our understanding of prehistory is much more limited than places where more publicly funded construction is taking place. We are happy to have assistance from Washington College in documenting the important resources of the region for the Maryland Inventory of Historic Properties,” said McKnight.
Dr. Markin views archaeology as a means by which we can ask, and attempt to answer, when and why inequalities arise. She notes that even though the Eastern Shore received limited attention from early English settlers, mid-17th-century accounts describe Eastern Shore groups living in chiefdoms headed by hereditary leaders receiving tribute from subordinate groups. Traditional markers of complex chiefdoms – structures with status indicators and maize agriculture – are absent however, suggesting that Eastern Shore complexity has a different flavor.
“In terms of historical records, we don’t know much of what the social and economic landscape looked like before John Smith made his way to the Chesapeake and modern-day Maryland,” noted Markin. “Extensive archaeological investigation can help construct a better social geography of the Late Woodland/Contact period in the Upper Choptank.”
Six paid internships will be made available and employ students as field crew members, lab assistants, and research assistants, allowing them to gain valuable professional experience, something near and dear to Markin’s heart.
“I am very focused on applied anthropology and archaeology – giving students hands-on opportunities that contribute to the communities we engage with and that foster research that can be employed to create spaces for conversation and the development of thoughtful policies around the lands that are important to many different stakeholders, particularly descendant Indigenous groups,” says Markin.
In addition to the excavations and fieldwork, Dr. Markin has plans to develop public programming that will engage students and community volunteers in open lab sessions throughout the 2024-2025 academic year. Volunteers from the community and other regional schools will also be invited to participate in archaeological investigations conducted over the next two summers and fieldwork conducted throughout the academic year.
The grant will also allow for the development of public presentations and talks to community organizations about the project and its findings as well as an exhibit at the Caroline County Historical Society building in Denton, Maryland, which would bring together project interns, the Caroline County Historical Society, and Washington College students minoring in museum, field, and community education.
“The research grant to Professor Markin is not only a testament to her stature as a scholar but also to the innovativeness of her approach to addressing important knowledge gaps,” said Washington College Provost and Dean Kiho Kim. “Moreover, with the grant, she will be able to provide students with opportunities to work on real-world problems and contribute to a better understanding of the history of this region. Such opportunities are transformative for our students. I thank Professor Markin for her dedication to her scholarly pursuits and our students.”
Those wishing to follow along with the research and find out how to participate as a volunteer are encouraged to follow the Washington College Department of Anthropology webpage and Instagram account at @wacanthropology for blogs, short videos, and updates from the field.
The Department of Anthropology & Archaeology at Washington College allows students to directly engage with contemporary anthropological topics and applied research through an individualized program that sets them up for success. Celebrating the diversity of cultural experiences and pathways students at Washington College “learn by doing” and are offered numerous opportunities for fieldwork, paid internships, and experiential learning. Learn more at www.washcoll.edu.

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Filed Under: Education, WC

George Washington Book Prize of $50,000 Goes to Maya Jasanoff

June 5, 2012 by Washington College News Service

Washington College President Mitchell Reiss and Washington Prize winner Maya Jasanoff.

One of the nation’s largest literary awards, the annual George Washington Book Prize, has been awarded to Maya Jasanoff forLiberty’s Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World (Knopf, 2011). Jasanoff, a professor of history at Harvard University, received the $50,000 prize on Monday evening, June 4, at a black-tie dinner at George Washington’s Mount Vernon Estate, Museum & Gardens.

While it has long been said that history is written by the victors, Jasanoff vigorously challenges that idea in her powerful account of the lives of those who fought against the American Revolution. Liberty’s Exiles is a riveting story of the losers in America’s struggle for independence, loyalists who found themselves in a world turned upside down. Yet Jasanoff also describes how these exiles – who fled their lost colonies for the distant corners of the globe, from Nova Scotia to West Africa to India – helped shape the future of the British Empire.

The Washington Prize, honoring the year’s best book about America’s founding era, is sponsored by a partnership of three institutions devoted to furthering historical scholarship: Washington College, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, and George Washington’s Mount Vernon. It particularly recognizes well-written books that speak to general audiences and contribute to a broad public understanding of the American past.

“Maya Jasanoff vividly tells the stories of individual people swept up in the treacherous – and sometimes fatal – currents of history,” says Adam Goodheart, director of Washington College’s C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, which administers the prize. “She brings the past to life by putting readers in the shoes of these characters, from wealthy merchants to African-American slaves.”

From left, Gilder Lehrman president James Basker, Mount Vernon Regent Ann Bookout, winner Jasanoff, and C.V. Starr Center director Adam Goodheart.

“Told through the eyes of American loyalists, Liberty’s Exiles is a masterful combination of archival research and narrative storytelling,” adds James G. Basker, president of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, which funds the award. “Jasanoff delivers brilliant insight into the lives and motives of the 60,000 loyalists who sought refuge around the world after independence, depicting the global impact of that mass exodus and providing a fresh and engaging perspective on the American Revolution.”

Liberty’s Exiles has received many accolades since its publication, including the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award for General Nonfiction. It was shortlisted for the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize in Nonfiction.

Jasanoff was educated at Harvard, Cambridge and Yale, and is currently Professor of History at Harvard University. Her first book, Edge of Empire: Lives, Culture, and Conquest in the East, 1750-1850, was awarded the 2005 Duff Cooper Prize and was a book-of-the-year selection in numerous publications, including The Economist, The Observer and The Sunday Times. She has contributed essays to The London Review of Books, The New York Times Magazine, The New York Review of Books and other publications.

In praising Liberty’s Exiles, the Washington Prize jury applauded the book’s “impressive archival research, its sweeping conceptualization, perspectives and aims, its enviable prose style and the penetrating insights it yields into its characters’ lives.”

The Mount Vernon event also celebrated the works of the two other finalists for this year’s prize: John Fea’s Was America Founded As A Christian Nation?: A Historical Introduction (Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), and Benjamin H. Irvin’s Clothed in Robes of Sovereignty: The Continental Congress and the People Out of Doors(Oxford University Press, 2011).

Finalists were selected by a three-person jury of distinguished American historians: Richard Beeman, the John Welsh Centennial Professor of History emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania and the 2010 winner of the George Washington Book Prize, who served as chair; Thomas Fleming, distinguished historian and author; and Marla R. Miller, author and professor of history at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Jasanoff’s book was named the ultimate winner by a panel of representatives from each of the three institutions that sponsor the prize, plus historian Barbara Oberg of Princeton University.

For more information about the George Washington Book Prize, please go to www.gwbookprize.washcoll.edu.
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Filed Under: Archives

Historian Striner Explores Lincoln’s Racial Attitudes, Political Savvy in New Book

April 16, 2012 by Washington College News Service

Was Abraham Lincoln a racist? In his compelling new book, Lincoln and Race (Southern Illinois University Press), Washington College history professor Richard Striner weighs the evidence and concludes that, not only was Lincoln free of racial bias, but he also was a political genius willing to deceive his opponents about his racial attitudes in order to further the cause of human rights.

“With lawyerly precision, Richard Striner mines the speeches and writings of our 16th president to make a compelling case for a President Lincoln who, contrary to contemporary belief, had a long and abiding commitment, not just to the end of slavery, but also to equality before the law for all men, whatever the color of their skin,” writes Clay Risen of The New York Times.

The author of five previous books, two of them about Lincoln, Striner has been writing and thinking about the Civil War president since he was a graduate student in history at the University of Maryland in the late 1970s. He says that writing Lincoln and Race gave him a chance to explore in depth one of the themes of his first major work on Lincoln, Father Abraham (Oxford, 2006).

“Was Lincoln, emancipator and champion of liberty, actually a conflicted soul struggling to overcome his own racial prejudice? As I worked my way through the issue in Father Abraham, I thought it quite unlikely for a number of reasons, but most of all because, studying his statecraft and politics, it became clear to me that Lincoln was a moral Machiavellian, an idealist with street smarts,” Striner says.

“Lincoln chose to employ deception a number of times during his White House years, in ways that are easy to document. He had to craft a very careful strategy in order to prevent all sorts of worst-case contingencies, including a white supremacist backlash that would have set back the antislavery cause for God knows how many decades.”

Striner structured Lincoln and Race as a sort of detective yarn, a courtroom drama. He even invokes Dashiell Hammett’s classic

Washington College Historian Striner's new book, Lincoln and Race, explores Lincoln’s racial attitudes and political savvy

detective novel The Thin Man in his introduction. Assembling the evidence piece by piece, affording all sides of the debate a fair hearing, he has one end in mind: that “any satisfactory theory should make greater sense than the others.”

Striner became fascinated with Lincoln’s statecraft when he was in graduate school, “looking at the past in order to find my own bearings in terms of political philosophy, looking for inspiration. Lincoln struck me powerfully in many ways, not least because of the way he harmonized a great idealism with a very tough realism. Later, when I worked as a grassroots historic preservationist in Washington, I came to appreciate him even more because, trying to summon power to my cause, I realized I was trying at a very low level to do what he did so brilliantly on a grand scale.”

Striner’s habit of mining the past for inspiration has informed his numerous articles, including recent pieces about Lincoln for the popular New York Times “Disunion” series on the Civil War, and a cover story in The American Scholar in which he urges the administration to consider Lincoln’s strategy of printing greenbacks as a possible cure for contemporary economic woes. His 2011 book, Lincoln’s Way: How Six Great Presidents Created American Power, examines how Lincoln and five subsequent presidents pushed forward large-scale public projects and policies.

Striner is currently working on a book about Woodrow Wilson, who, “unlike Lincoln, was a terrible strategist,” he says. “Wilson was narcissistic and foolish in ways that make him Lincoln’s operational opposite. If democracy is going to work, it demands leadership, and if the world is going to be made better, it will be by people who know how to deliver real results and not just pose on a soapbox demonstrating how perfect they are in their attitudes. That’s nice, but it doesn’t free any slaves.”
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Filed Under: Arts

New Book by WC Professor Examines Work of Activist Pauline Hopkins

April 3, 2012 by Washington College News Service

Alisha Knight

A new book by Alisha Knight, associate professor of English and American Studies at Washington College, offers the first full-length critical analysis of pioneering African American writer Pauline Hopkins. Just released by the University of Tennessee Press, Knight’s Pauline Hopkins and the American Dream: An African American Writer’s (Re)Visionary Gospel of Success will provide literary scholars and historians alike with insight into the life and writings of a woman who openly confronted discrimination at the turn of the century.

“Pauline Hopkins broke the mold of the domestic tradition of nineteenth-century women’s writing, choosing instead to use self-made African American men and women to critique the racism and sexism that prevailed in American society,” says Knight, a resident of Elkton.

A prolific writer, Hopkins published four novels, seven short stories, and numerous articles for the Colored American Magazine, where she also worked as an editor, in just the four-year period between 1900 and 1904. The Maine native lost her position at the magazine because of her habit of challenging authority figures with her then-revolutionary ideas about how literature should be used to advocate racial and gender equality in a Post-Civil War America. Her “Famous Men” and “Famous Women” series for the Colored American Magazine offered African American models of success, but her fiction often depicted African American heroes who either failed to achieve success at home because of societal barriers, or found success only after leaving the United States.

“I’ve always been interested in authors who have been underrepresented in the canon and in the classroom,” Knight explains, “and being able to study Pauline Hopkins at length has been fulfilling. I’m pleased that Hopkins has been gaining attention, and I hope my book helps make her work more accessible to students and everyday readers. Hopkins wanted her writing to reach a broad audience, and she worked hard to produce material that was both straightforward and intellectually engaging. I would like to think that my book does likewise.”

Dr. Knight is a summa cum laude graduate of Spelman College who went on to earn a master’s from Rutgers and both a master’s and doctorate from Drew University. In addition to teaching at Washington College, she directs the Black Studies Program, which encourages a greater understanding of black culture and a new appreciation for the impact people of African descent have made on world cultures and human history.

Among Dr. Knight’s published articles are “Furnace Blasts for the Tuskegee Wizard: Revisiting Pauline E. Hopkins, Booker T. Washington, and the Colored American Magazine” (American Periodicals) and “One and One Make One: A Metacritical and Psychoanalytic Reading of Friendship in Toni Morrison’s Sula” (College Language Association Journal). Recipient of a prestigious Career Enhancement Fellowship from the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship Foundation in 2007, she is currently working on a study of late 19th and early 20th century African American book publishing practices.
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Filed Under: Arts

Talbot County Council Members “Disheartened” By Board of Elections Action

January 15, 2012 by Washington College News Service

At a community meeting Saturday in Bozman, Council Member Corey Pack said that the Council was “disheartened” by the Election Board’s decision to close three Talbot County polling places. Pack said the Council had met in December with the Election Board Members and urged them to keep all polling places open.  Following the announcement last week that the Elections Board will no longer offer voting in Tilghman, Bozman and Royal Oak, the Council instructed the county manager to draft a letter asking the Board to reconsider its decision and offering to make up the $5,200 shortfall the Board is attempting to save by closing the polling places. Pack urged people to write to the Elections Board and to attend the Board’s next meeting on February 8 at 9:30 am at 142 North Harrison Street.
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Filed Under: Archives

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