News

On October 11 the public history classes took a field trip to the West Virginia Capitol in Charleston. Students in these classes had the opportunity to learn from professionals working in the public history field in various capacities. Our Public History classes this semester contain a mix of MA students with a concentration in Public History, MA students from other historical fields, and PhD graduate students from varied fields. 

Students visited the West Virginia State Archives and learned about their highway marker program. Students in HIST 750: Public History Methods have the option of writing a highway marker as a class project. Joe Geiger, Director of WV State Archives, provided a tour of the archives and an inside look at the collections. 

Dr. Michele Stephens supports students in Bolvia and Peru

Aaron Hollis, a Public History MA student, speaks about his summer internship. 

Kara Gordon, second-year Public History MA, has always found historic textiles to bring more meaning and authenticity to history.

PhD student Nerissa Aksamit has spent this summer at the Goethe-Institut in Hamburg studying the German language. This experience was funded through a scholarship from Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD). Nerissa was granted a DAAD scholarship last summer as well, but had to turn it down to participate in the Global Humanitarian Research Academy at the University of Exeter and International Committee of the Red Cross in Geneva.

This summer, Public History M.A. Steven Semmel was hired as a seasonal park ranger at Harpers Ferry through the Pathways program. Steven works in the living history department, which conducts their programming wearing nineteenth century clothing.

Our students and former students have been busy this year! Check out some of the exciting accomplishments of our current undergraduate and graduate students and catch up on the news from our amazing alumni:

A team of emerging history professionals connected to the WVU History Department recently collaborated to create an online tour of West Virginia women. The interactive tour was designed for “IN.Exclusive,” a new exhibit at Arts Monongahela designed to commemorate Women’s History Month (celebrated during the month of March). The exhibit and interactive tour aim to highlight contributions and accomplishments of women in West Virginia that may have been overlooked in mainstream culture and historical interpretation previously.

To Ph.D. student Marc Sanko, his historical research is not just about the past. It involves working with living communities and enabling them define their own heritage. This is why he is excited to join Latitude 36, an audio-visual production company out of London, for work on a community project looking at global Maltese migration. The fall, Marc was recruited to be the lead historian for North American Maltese migration by Latitude 36 as they prepare to run exhibits as part of Valletta 2018.

Justin Power, a fourth year Ph.D. candidate, spent this past summer researching at the Pequot Museum, through a program known as the Graduate Humanities Internship. This program not only provided him hands on experience in archives, it also allowed him the perfect opportunity to conduct research for his dissertation.