Ashely Whitehead
ashleybelle17@gmail.com
M.A. Student
Major Field: History
Other Fields: Nineteenth century & American Civil War; Public History
Advisor: Peter Carmichael
Research Interests: I am a second year Masters student in nineteenth-century
history, with a concentration in public history. My academic interests include the
social roles, “self-performance,” and cultural identity of politically
elite Confederate women during the Civil War. I also am interested in
issues of cultural paternalism and benevolence among the South’s
politically-active upper class, with a particular focus on the
numerous and often conflicting expectations which elite men and women
held for each other and for their First Lady, Varina Davis, during and
immediately following the war. I recently completed an internship
this summer as a seasonal park guide at Richmond National Battlefield
Park for my public history concentration. As part of that internship,
I focused on expanding and enriching programming at the Park, helping
better to link academic scholarship with the stories we tell at public
history sites, and incorporating historical theories, such as
postmodernism, into my tours in order to “update” interpretation at the Park
and challenge visitors’ preconceptions and perspectives on Civil War history.
Ultimately, I would like to pursue a doctoral degree and work for the
Park Service as a Chief of Interpretation at a Civil War site.
