Events

Past Events

View recordings of past lectures, seminars, tours and workshops, as well as helpful training videos on how to use various records in our collections in our free online Presentation Library.

October Virtual Lunch and Learn - Real Learning, Real Impact: The Digital Scholarship in Museum Partnerships Project

Join Raven Bishop, Dr. Sara Clarke-De Reza, and Dr. Julie Markin,the directors of the Digital Scholarship in Community Partnerships (DSMP) initiative at Washington College as they describe the ways in which they are leveraging emerging technologies in community-engaged digital scholarship work on the Eastern Shore.

The DSMP project engages Washington College students in authentic learning experiences by embedding technology-enhanced museum partnership projects into learning sequences across the curriculum. Through this project, students work with local museums to develop technology-rich outreach resources including virtual tours and augmented-reality enhanced interpretive panels which help convey the message of the museum within and beyond the community. Working with the museum affords students the opportunity to apply concepts and best practices learned in the classroom to a project that makes a real impact for the local community.

In this session Washington College professors and staff will discuss the DSMP model and the ways in which they are leveraging emerging technologies in community-engaged digital scholarship work on the Eastern Shore.

Raven Bishop is the Assistant Director of Educational Technology at Washington College. As part of the Educational Technology team, she works to research, promote and support best-practices where technology and pedagogy come together to promote a student-centered learning experience. Bishop explores AR & VR in instruction and leads the Virtual/Augmented Reality Digital Imaging Studio [VARDIS] in Washington College’s Miller Library.

Sara Clarke-De Reza, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Education and Director of the Museum, Field, and Community Education program at Washington College in Chestertown, MD. She teaches courses in the historical and cultural foundations of American education, as well as in educational research and design. Her scholarship explores collaborative design for learning at the intersections of formal and informal learning environments, like schools and museums.

Julie Markin, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Anthropology and Director of Washington College Archaeology. Her work examines political and economic inequality in the Pre-Columbian United States with a focus on how environmental abundance, settlement location and subsistence production intersect to fuel (or preclude) the rise of socially and politically complex societies. Markin has also worked with several archaeological and historical museums, which instilled a desire to partner with communities in developing exhibit stories and curation strategies.

November Lunch and Learn: Saint George's Island, 1776: Historical, Archaeological and Landscape Analysis of an Overlooked Battle of the American Revolution

Learn about the largest Revolutionary War battle fought in Maryland, when British troops under the governor of Virginia, John Murray, Lord Dunmore, landed on Saint George’s Island in the Potomac River in St. Mary’s County on July 17, 1776.

New work reveals that it was a larger and more protracted battle than previously thought, involving American regular troops and militiamen facing off against regular British soldiers and Loyalist militia soldiers, as well as over 70 British naval vessels.

Washington College archaeologists have worked with Kennon Williams Landscape Studio, under contract to Preservation Maryland, to prepare a battlefield and landscape assessment of the island. Dr. John L. Seidel and Charles Fithian will describe the historical research, GIS mapping, and a detailed battlefield analysis that has revealed a far more complex and important episode in the American War for Independence. It is a surprising and little-known story, with unrealized potential for future archaeological research.

Dr. John L. Seidel is the CEO of Historic St. Mary’s City. He has led investigations of the ancient and modern Maya (Guatemala and Belize), conducted marine research for the National Park Service as well as terrestrial and marine archaeology throughout the eastern United Sates. He has taught at Rutgers University, the University of Maryland College Park, Washington College, and St. Mary’s College of Maryland. Despite Dr. Seidel’s wide-ranging geographic experience, his real passion is the Chesapeake region during the 17th and 18th. His current position allows him to explore that interest at one of the country’s premier historic seventeenth-century sites, the location of Maryland’s first capital (1634-1695).

Dr. Seidel received a Ph.D. and M.A. from the University of Pennsylvania, after completing his undergraduate studies at Drew University. He has published more than 80 articles, book chapters, and research monographs, and actively lectures to public and professional groups.

Charles Fithian is a historical archaeologist. From 1986-2014, he was the Curator of Archaeology for the Delaware Division of Historical and Cultural Affairs, where he managed the state’s 4+ million artifact collection and participated in many archaeological projects. From 2013-2023, he was affiliated with Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland as a professor of anthropology and staff archaeologist.

Fithian holds a master’s degree in History from Salisbury University, with a concentration in Colonial and Revolutionary America. He is the author of “‘Master Pope’s Fort’: Archaeological Investigations of a Fortification of the English Civil Wars in St. Mary’s City,” published in 2021. He is currently at work on a social history of the Delaware Regiment during the American Revolution, and the documentation of Delaware’s military and logistical landscape during the American Revolution, as well as a project entitled “‘A System, concise, easy and efficient’: John Dickinson and the Defense of the Delaware State, 1781-1782.” He lives in Dover, with his wife Diane and Tiki the Wonder Cat.

December Lunch and Learn: The Missionary: William Levington, Founder of St. James First African Protestant Episcopal Church

Explore the life and times of the first ordained African American priest in the American South. Professor Lawrence Jackson will describe the life and works of William Levington, the founder of the St. James First African Protestant Episcopal Church in Baltimore in 1824. The church, now known as St. James in Lafayette Square, recently celebrated its 200th anniversary.

Lawrence Jackson is the author of the award-winning books Chester B. Himes: A Biography (W.W. Norton 2017), The Indignant Generation: A Narrative History of African American Writers and Critics (Princeton 2010), My Father’s Name: A Black Virginia Family after the Civil War (Chicago 2012) and Ralph Ellison: Emergence of Genius, 1913-1952 (Wiley 2002). His latest books are Hold It Real Still: Clint Eastwood, Race, and the Cinema of the American West (Johns Hopkins University Press 2022) and Shelter: A Black Tale from Homeland, Baltimore (Graywolf 2022). He teaches English and history at Johns Hopkins University and writes occasionally for Harper’s Magazine.