Jessica Mack Receives Grant for Project on Universities and Power

Our postdoctoral fellow, Dr. Jessica Mack, has received funding from the 4VA consortium for her digital project Mapping the University: A Digital Resource for Studying Virginia Campus Histories. Her project is an interdisciplinary, collaborative research project that will analyze the histories of Virginia campuses using university archives, digital mapping, and aerial photographs.

 Mapping the University is a timely inquiry into the planning, construction and expansion of the campus at George Mason and Old Dominion University. In a collaborative effort that will prioritize building undergraduate and graduate research skills, students at the two universities will work with university archivists, historians, and digital scholars to better understand student life on campus, academic priorities, historical exclusions, and town-gown relations, and to contextualize recent discussions about building naming, monuments and memorialization on campus. In collaboration with Mason’s Special Collections Research Center at Fenwick Library, RRCHNM, the Department of History and Art History, the Geography and Geoinformation Science Department, and colleagues at ODU, the project will provide training for students in archival research methods, digital history tools, and spatial analysis of materials such as maps, architectural plans, and aerial photographs. The result will be an open access, interactive website that will provide access to digitized archival documents alongside digital maps and interpretive content.