Contact Information
Biography
Before arriving at Duquesne, Jennifer spent a decade at Coastal Carolina University
and the University of South Carolina teaching courses in history and Southern studies.
However, Jennifer began her history career as a public historian working in museum
education at a plantation. She learned the art of crafting tours and how to develop
public and educational programs while nurturing her disdain for and interest in Moonlight
and Magnolia tourism. In 2014, she developed the semi-guided tour, trained and evaluated
docents, and processed visitor evaluations for the Museum of the Reconstruction Era
in Columbia, SC of as it transformed the Woodrow Wilson Family Home (WWFH) from an
eighty-year-old presidential shrine into the nation's first museum of Reconstruction.
In 2015, the museum received South Carolina's Preservation Award for Tourism and the
American Association of State and Local History's national merit award.
She specializes in public history with expertise in museums, oral history, digital history, and the tensions involved in public history commemorations and interpretation. Her book Rebirth: Creating the Museum of the Reconstruction Era and the Future of the House Museum (University of South Carolina Press, 2025) traces the rebirth of the WWFH as a modern historic house museum, using it, along with docent oral histories, as a lens to analyze inclusivity, white supremacy, and contested history in museums and other public spaces. Rebirth considers how a dated and seemingly outmoded venue for interpretation, the historic house museum, can be reimagined for twenty-first-century audiences. She offers best practices for interpreting issues such as white supremacy and domestic political terrorism for public audiences.
She specializes in public history with expertise in museums, oral history, digital history, and the tensions involved in public history commemorations and interpretation. Her book Rebirth: Creating the Museum of the Reconstruction Era and the Future of the House Museum (University of South Carolina Press, 2025) traces the rebirth of the WWFH as a modern historic house museum, using it, along with docent oral histories, as a lens to analyze inclusivity, white supremacy, and contested history in museums and other public spaces. Rebirth considers how a dated and seemingly outmoded venue for interpretation, the historic house museum, can be reimagined for twenty-first-century audiences. She offers best practices for interpreting issues such as white supremacy and domestic political terrorism for public audiences.
Education
- Ph.D., U.S. History since 1789, Public History, and Women and Gender Studies, University of South Carolina (USC), 2017
- M.A., U.S. History, University of North Carolina at Wilmington, 2006
- B.A, History, Murray State University, 2001
Profile Information
Graduate Courses Taught
- Speaking to the Past: Oral History in Methodology and Practice (PHST 526)
- Digital Humanities for the Historian (PHST 527)
Building Narratives in Public History (PHST 516)
Museums and Society (PHST 512) - Women in American History (HIST 503/WSGS 503)
- Commemoration and Preservation (PHST 514)
Undergraduate Courses Taught
- Shaping the Modern World (HIST 151)
- U.S. Since 1877 (HIST 204)
- Introduction to Oral History (HIST/PHST 206)
- Introduction to Museums (HIST/PHST 230)
- African American History since Freedom (HIST/WGS 305)
- Women in American History (HIST/WSGS 333 and HIST 403/503 WSGS 407/529
Books
Rebirth: Creating the Museum of the Reconstruction Era and the Future of the House Museum, forthcoming (University of South Carolina Press, 2025)
Peer-reviewed Articles
- “Reconstructing Memory: The Attempt to Designate Beaufort, South Carolina the National Park Service’s First Reconstruction Unit,” Journal of the Civil War Era, co-author Page Putnam Miller, Vol. 7, No. 1, (March 2017), 39-66.
- “The Ties That Bind: James H. Richmond and Murray Teachers College during World War II,” Ohio Valley History, Vol. 4, No. 4 (Winter 2004), 49-67.
Peer-reviewed Digital Publications
- “Chatting with ChatGPT: AI’s Perceptions of Oral History,” Oral History Review blog, June 23, 2023.
- Postscript to Journal of the Civil War Era 7, No. 1 "Reconstruction Memory" in journal blog Muster, March 2017
- "Inclusive training at Historic Columbia" from National Council on Public History's blog History@Work, March 6, 2017
Other Publications
- City of Pittsburgh Public Art PODCasts, Historical Podcasts 1-8, March 2019, contract with Public Art + Civic Design Department http://pittsburghpa.gov/pa-cd/index.html
- Reconstructing Reconstruction, my public history blog https://reconstructingreconstruction.wordpress.com/
- Protest in the Port City: The Story of the Wilmington Ten (2006)
- American Coup: The Wilmington Election, Riot and Coup of 1898 (2005)
Book/Digital Reviews
- Curating America’s Painful Past: Memory, Museums, and the National Imagination, by Tim Gruenewald, University Press of Kansas, 2021. Review in
American Historical Review, Vol. 128, Issue 3 (September 2023), 1454-1455 - Reconstructing 360, http://reconstruction360.org/, by Anthony Padgett, Steve Folks, Don Godish, Betsy Newman, and Patrick Hayes of South Carolina Educational Television, in partnership with Freewoods Farm. Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Review in South Carolina Historical Magazine, Vol. 121, No. 1 (January 2020), 54-57
- A New Plantation World: Sporting Estates in the South Carolina Lowcountry, 1900-1940, by Daniel J. Vivian, Cambridge University Press, 2018. Review in Journal of Southern History, Vol. LXXXV, No. 3 (August 2019), 719-720
- The Nashville Way: Racial Etiquette and the Struggle for Social Justice in a Southern City, by Benjamin Houston, University of Georgia Press, 2012. Review in Tennessee Historical Quarterly, Vol. LXXII, No. 4, (Winter 2013), 308-310
- "Domestic Terror and Stolen Elections: Artifacts and Memory in the Museum of the Reconstruction Era at the Woodrow Wilson Family Home" (Organization of American Historians, New Orleans, Louisiana), April 2024
- “Chained to Jim Crow: The Strange Career of Louise Jones DuBose,” panel Power and Privilege: White Southern Conservative Women, 1860-1960 (Southern Association of Women Historians, Lexington, Kentucky), June 2022
- "Moving Stories into the Reparative Archive," roundtable organizer and presenter (Oral History Association, remote), October 2021
- Presenter “Red Shirts to Proud Boys - Museum Artifacts, White Domestic Terror and Election Fraud,” Our Vulnerable Democracy, April 26, 2021
- Pause for the Cause: A Conversation on Oral History and Community-Centered Justice, roundtable presenter (Oral History Association, remote), Oct 2020
- The Historian's Gaze: Moving Images and Visual Texts in Public Interpretation of Social Justice Issues (National Council on Public History, Atlanta, Georgia), March 2020 (accepted but cancelled due to Covid)
- Organization of American Historians, "Good Alternatives: The Intersection of Digital, Oral, and Public History in Graduate Coursework Projects," lightning round Women in Digital and Public History (April 2019)
- “GIS and the City: Podcasting Pittsburgh’s Public Art and Monuments and Building Community Connections,” panel Beyond Granite: New Directions in Commemoration (National Council on Public History), March 2019
- Oral History Association paper "Institutional Oral History in the Classroom: Nostalgia, Politics, and Honest Commemoration in the Digital Age" (October 2018)
- Chair, OHMAR Student Roundtable "Student Vulnerabilities Then and Now: The Challenges of Representing a Student-Led Movement as Novice Oral Historians" (March 2018)
- The Reconstruction Era: History and Public Memory symposium panel "Interpreting Reconstruction: Challenges and Opportunities" (April 2016)
- Southern Historical Association annual meeting panel paper: "Tommy" Wilson's World: a Southern President, Reconstruction, and the Historic House Museum" (November 2015)
- Southern Association for Women Historians Conference panel paper: "A Presidential Shrine: Gender and the Origins of the Woodrow Wilson Family Home" (June 2015)
- National Council on Public History panel The National Park Service: Hedging and Edging Around Inclusivity: "Reconstruction History on the Edge: The Failed Attempt to Construct a Reconstruction National Park Service Site in Beaufort, South Carolina" (April 2015)
- American Historical Association annual meeting, poster session: "Born in Columbia: The Birth of a Nation and Nationalizing a City's Reconstruction Memory" (January 2015)
- South Carolina Council for the Social Studies: "Woodrow Wilson, Columbia, and Reconstruction" workshop and panel discussion (October 2, 2014) and "Reconstruction: Myths and Reality" Presentation (October 3, 2014)
- "Reconstruction and Destruction: Understanding the Intersection of Historic and Visual Representations of the Southern Lady and Mammy in Django Unchained" (USC, April 2014)
- UNCW Department of History and Upperman African-American Center screening of my documentary American Coup: The Wilmington Election, Riot and Coup of 1898 (September 2004)
- Pre-Tenure Faculty Excellence in Teaching Award in the McAnulty
College and Graduate School of Liberal Arts (Duquesne University), April 2024 - Center for Engaged Teaching and Research Racial Equity Grant Program Runner-Up (Duquesne), 2020 “Oral History for Change? Talking about Contemporary Social Justice Issues”
- Presidential Scholarship Award (Duquesne 2018)
- Office of Service-Learning and Community Engagement's Excellence in Service-Learning Award for work with the Woodrow Wilson Family Home (USC, 2016)
- Yale Public History Institute hosted by the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition (2015)