November 7, 2024

Lisa Shutt and her students will talk about introducing students to a variety of Black history topics through the lens of River View Farm, the farm established in 1870 by Hugh Carr with a $100 payment only five years after his emancipation. In Shutt’s advanced seminar, students learn to locate and draw on primary sources in the UVA Special Collections library and the Charlottesville/Albemarle Historical Society and hopefully will expand to Virginia State University and the Library of Congress at some point in the future. After beginning their study of the Carr/Greer/Hawkins family for several weeks – spending time on the site of the farm and traveling around town to sites related to the family— students select a single topic to focus in on further to examine through the lens of the Carr-Greer family and River View Farm. Such possible topics include (but are not limited to) Black education, foodways, land ownership, farming, the Black Extension service and Land Grant University system(s), Black 4-H programs and women’s “demonstration clubs,” kitchen gardens and garden clubs, museum studies and the historicization and preservation of local Black histories in the 21st century. The course has expanded into a successful summer internship program, which had its inaugural summer in 2024 with three exceptional UVA student interns.

Thursday, November 7 at 4 o’clock IN PERSON at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center