UNCG Department of History

08/31/2026

The department welcomed our new graduate students the week before classes began with an orientation and annual gathering at Oden. We love our students, new and returning! We are excited for all that they will learn and community they will build at UNCG.

UNCG College of Arts & Sciences

08/18/2026

Welcome to our returning and new History majors! There are more than 250 of you registered for classes this semester, along with over 50 History graduate students! With another academic year now underway, we remind you of your mission - America Needs Historians!

UNCG College of Arts & Sciences

08/14/2026

Congratulations to our alumnae Abbey Shoaf ('16) for her outstanding work at Colonial Williamsburg! A significant percentage of our majors also major in another discipline, thus enhancing their skills and knowledge. Contact us to find out how you can do the same.

UNCG College of Arts & Sciences

From classroom experiences to career success, see how Abbey Shoaf's journey reflects the impact of a UNCG Arts & Sciences education.

08/14/2026

This summer Public History/Museum Studies M.A. student Amelia Skiles (right in first picture) has been interning at the Charlotte Hawkins Brown Museum State Historic Site. This state historic site is located on the campus of the historic Palmer Memorial Institute. Palmer was founded by Dr. Brown in 1902 and was a boarding school for black students until 1971. Amelia has assisted with day-to-day visitor engagement, field trips, and special events like the annual Black Heritage Day event back in June (first two pictures). She has also been working on a digital history project that will expand the materials available on the self-guided campus tour.

08/12/2026

Millie Baysinger, a M.A. student in History with a concentration in Museum Studies, reports on her summer:

“This summer I spent working at Historic Bethabara Park in Winston-Salem! Bethabara is the first Moravian settlement in Forsyth County NC. I worked as a historic tour guide and interpreter. I am a seasonal employee so I will be working through school tours and festivals in the fall and winter as well!"

Captions on individual photos.

08/03/2026

Our Virginia-based student M.A. in History with a concentration in Museum Studies—Abbie Wood—is undertaking two different internships this summer. Her first collections management internship is with Alexandria Archaeology Museum . Their main storage facility contains over 3,200 boxes with collections from archaeological excavations throughout the city. However, storage materials like artifacts deteriorate! She is learning how collections managers plan to rehouse large areas and still work to share a facility with many other museums. Abbie studies the collections manager’s roles in meetings and the more complicated skills that support the museum. She even joined her supervisor and interpreted history at an America 250th event with historic tall ships!

Abbie’s other collections management internship is at Lee-Fendall House Museum and Gardens . Her main project is to organize legal documents for museum objects. She also makes plans on how to systematically check in on items and documents. On the side, historic house museum staff have many jobs. Abbie cares for and cleans historic objects and paintings. She conducts research. Her boss most recently had her help write exhibit text for an object and research 18th century objects for social media!

Even with being based in Virginia, she found a Greensboro connection—she helped hang a picture of "Light Horse" Harry Lee, who fought in the Battle of Guilford Courthouse —and for whom the Lee-Fendall House is named.

07/21/2026

Congratulations to Ashley LaRue Low, PhD candidate, who has accepted the position of Curatorial Fellow for the Initiative for Jewish Art and Culture at the North Carolina Museum of Art . As a fellow, she will conduct research on the museum’s Judaic Art collection, present scholarship in public and academic settings, and collaborate with the museum’s interpretation team to develop educational resources. She also holds a M.A. in History and a Public History / Museum Studies certificate from UNCG.

07/17/2026

Museum Studies M.A. student Alyssa Ruffing is spending her summer as an intern with , primarily giving tours of the houses and museum, helping organize and digitize the genealogy books at the Roanoke-Chowan Heritage Center, and helping with digital projects.

The Hope mansion is an 1803 plantation house with Palladian and neoclassical design in Bertie County, NC. It was the home of David Stone, the 15th Governor of North Carolina. Starting in the 1960s it was painstakingly restored to what it is today. It houses the best collection of Roanoke River Basin furniture in the country.
King-Bazemore is a 1763 house built by William King (and wife, Elizabeth), and was moved four miles to the current site in order to protect it from demolition. It is a great example of “hall and parlor” design, and very unique in North Carolina due to its combination of brick end walls and gambrel roof.

The Roanoke-Chowan Heritage Center houses many artifacts, though one of the most interesting and important due to the lack of artifacts of the enslaved, is the meat salt box/trough. It was carved from a singular 500 year old tree by the enslaved people of the plantation, and used to salt and preserve meat. Later on, after emancipation, it was used as a feeding trough for the animals (cattle and horses) of Hope. Liking the salt that had permeated the wood, the animals chewed down parts of the box.

07/07/2026

Congratulations to our colleague Dr. James Anderson on his upcoming Fulbright Award!

UNCG College of Arts & Sciences

Dr. James Anderson and Rachele Riley will elevate their research during their trips to Vietnam and Scotland respectively. Riley will use her Fulbright award to expand her multimedia design research centered around access to water. Anderson will translate a document important to Southeast Asian histo...

07/02/2026

Congratulations to our alumnae Dr. Tiffany Packer (UNCG Ph.D. in History, 2012) and professor at Florida A&M University on the publication of her book: "The History and Afterlife of the 1979 Greensboro Massacre: The Dirt Is Still Bloody"!

UNCG College of Arts & Sciences

On November 3, 1979, in Greensboro, North Carolina, the Communist Workers Party (CWP) planned a “Death to the Klan” march in the predominately Black, working-class, public housing community of Morningside Homes. Nazis and Klansmen drove through and unloaded gunfire killing five CWP members. Thi...