History Labs

Fall 2025 Labs

• Accounting for Life

  • Tuesdays, 1:00-1:50 p.m. with Dr. Sarah McCartney 

  • Students will study and transcribe the account books of Virginia merchant Francis Jerdone as a way to understand various aspects of eighteenth-century life. In addition to learning the methods and process of document transcription, students will study both Jerdone's physical account books and the objects listed within them as material objects which reflect the culture and society in which they were created and used. As the project develops, students will consider ways to make the transcription available to researchers and present aspects of the project digitally to a public audience.

• Museum Ethnography, 

  • Fridays, 10:00-11:50 a.m. with Dr. Julie Richter 

  • Students will use the space in the Milliner’s and Mantua-maker’s Shop at Colonial Williamsburg, conversations with the shop’s tradeswomen, and the objects on display to think critically about how changes in the physical space, the material objects, and the interpretation impact the visitor’s experience. The History Lab will give students time and space to think about and read spaces for the role that curation plays in teaching and sharing history. In addition, students will talk with guests about their experiences in the shop, how their attention might be drawn or distracted by certain things, what takeaways they left with and how those might change depending on how the space/people/material objects are utilized.  

    History Lab Photographs

Spring 2025 Labs

• Accounting for Life

  • Thursdays, 11:00-11:50 a.m. with Dr. Sarah McCartney 

  • Students will study and transcribe the account books of Virginia merchant Francis Jerdone as a way to understand various aspects of eighteenth-century life. In addition to learning the methods and process of document transcription, students will study both Jerdone's physical account books and the objects listed within them as material objects which reflect the culture and society in which they were created and used. As the project develops, students will consider ways to make the transcription available to researchers and present aspects of the project digitally to a public audience.

• Memorials and Icons 

  • Fridays, 9:00-9:50 a.m. with Dr. Robyn Schroeder

  •  Students will investigate modes of memorialization in contemporary culture alongside individual topics in campus history, to propose ways of remembering the recent and distant past. This class will use the StoryMaps platform for projects, and will analyze contemporary public historical writing to promote the development of writerly authority in non-academic and quasi-academic contexts. Students in this class are affiliated with the Committee to Contextualize Landmarks & Iconography.