I received my PhD at the University of Florida in 2017 and I'm a native North Carolinian. My research explores how Chesapeake Native mobility and landscape shaped resistance to enslavement and colonialism in the seventeenth century. Beyond writing, I'm working to be a better teacher to every kind of student. For myself and undergraduates, I'm always looking for hands-on experiences and conversations about activism, history, archaeology, preservation, museums, and liberal arts education.
CV
Director of Public History, Virginia Tech (2019-2021, 2023-present)
Assistant Professor, Virginia Tech (2018-present)
EDUCATION
Ph.D., Early American History, University of Florida, 2017
Fields of Specialization: Early America, Native American History, Oral History
Certificate, Historic Preservation, UF College of Design, Construction and Planning, 2012
M.A., Comparative History, College of William and Mary, 2010
B.A., History/Anthropology, College of William and Mary, 2009
PUBLICATIONS
Plain Paths and Dividing Lines: Navigating Native Land and Water in the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2023)
Articles and Book Chapters
“Archaeology Over the Long Haul: Education at the Fairfield Plantation Site, Virginia,” in Public Archaeology in the 21st Century, ed., James F. Brooks (Athens: University of Georgia Press), 2023
“A Hard Job to Quit: Camaraderie, Crabbing, and Change on the Chesapeake Bay,” with Patrick Daglaris, Southern Cultures (online), 2022
“Labor, Landscape, and Four Virginia Watermen,” with Patrick Daglaris, Journal of Southern History, Spring 2022
“Bully! Said Bacon: Seventeenth-Century History, Nineteenth-Century Masculinity, and Literature about Bacon’s Rebellion,” Virginia Magazine of History & Biography, Spring 2022
“Economic Change and Perceptions of Health in Two Coalfield-Adjacent Appalachian Counties, circa 1950-2019,” with Emily Satterwhite, Appalachian Journal, Spring 2021
“The Story Doesn’t Fit the Grid,” with Scott Fralin, Perspectives, American Historical Association, Spring 2021
“‘We’re on Fire’: Oral History and the Preservation, Commemoration, and Rebirth of Mississippi’s Civil Rights Sites,” Oral History Review, June 2015
“To Learn the Trade of a Potter: Apprenticeship and Deviance in Moravian North Carolina,” North Carolina Historical Review, 2012
Public History Products
Please see JessicaLTaylor.com for additional description and links.
“Anglo-Native Trade,” Lectures in History, C-SPAN, April 2021
WVTF Radio Oral History Series, 2019-2021
● Develop oral history content with regional NPR producers in response to current events
“Voices of Virginia”: an Auditory Primary Source Reader, 2019
● Worked with 25 regional archives to create an open access companion to the United States History survey featuring over 50 oral histories and compatible with Virginia Standards of Learning. Available for free to any interested user online and paired with lesson plans.
Digital Day, 2019
● Coordinated 70 student and community volunteers to complete oral histories, transcriptions, scanning, and artifact cataloging for Montgomery Museum, Wilderness Road Museum, and Blacksburg Museum and Cultural Foundation
Oral History
● Participated in Tribal Policy Working Group to create a new, university-wide tribal consultation and collaboration policy for researchers, 2020-2021
● Conducted oral histories for: the Bluefield Oral History Project (on segregated education and business), the Heritage Committee of Middlesex County (on segregated education and business), African-American Historical Society of Portsmouth (on segregated education), Voice of Witness (on Native Appalachian History), Main Street Preservation Trust (for a National Register of Historic Places designation), the Fries Project (about the closing of a Hanes Clothing Mill), UT Austin (about the Hispanic/Latine experience during COVID-19)
● Consulted with the New River Valley Regional Commission, Mountain Home Center, Monacan Indian Nation, Rappahannock Indian Tribe, the Pamunkey Indian Tribe, Mississippi State University, and Taubman Museum of Art concerning their oral history projects and grant applications
Virginia Tech Sesquicentennial Observance
● Collaborated with students and faculty to research, write, and edit content for augmented-reality exhibit about VT campus and projection mapping exhibit
● Collaborated with Native cultural organizations and scholars on Native content for signage and exhibits
● Conducted and researched oral histories about Virginia Tech’s historic campus
● Consulted on physical exhibit planning in historic campus building
Oral History Workshops, 2018-2021
● Regularly hold free oral history workshops for groups including: ACC Student Leadership Forum, Virginia 4-H Congress, Center for Communicating Science, Calfee Community and Cultural Center, the LGBTQ+ Resource Center, Asian Cultural Engagement Center, Science Museum of Western Virginia, Southern Foodways Alliance, and various academic departments, church groups, and secondary schools
Reviews
“Becoming Catawba: Catawba Indian Women and Nation-Building, 1540-1840,” H-Net Reviews, May 2023
“The Virginia Venture: American Colonization amnd English Society, 1580-1660,” H-Net Reviews, April 2023
“Mythic Frontiers: Remembering, Forgetting, and Profiting with Cultural Heritage Tourism,” American Indian Quarterly, May 2017
“Living With Whales: Documents and Oral Histories of Native New England Whaling History,” Oral History Review, February 2016
“The Cheyenne Exodus in History and Memory,” Oral History Review, February 2015
Reviewed manuscripts for: The Public Historian, Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, North Carolina Historical Review, Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture Series (Bonn Center for Slavery and Dependency Studies), "A la découverte du sens : histoire orale, pouvoir et émotions" (Université de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour), 2021-2023
CONFERENCES AND PRESENTATIONS
Roundtable Participant, “Unsettling Appalachian Histories: Eastern Siouan Presence, Diasporas, and the Enduring Myth of Tierra Nullius,” Appalachian Studies Association, Athens, Ohio, March 2023
Commentator, “Methodologies from the Multisensory South,” American Studies Association, New Orleans, LA, November 2022
“Native History/US History to 1877,” Association for General and Liberal Studies, St. Louis, MO, September 2022
“The Water Business is Shot: Home and Environmental Change in Chesapeake Virginia,” Oral History Society, London, UK, July 2022
Panel Organizer, “How the Public Views History: Hard Data and Hard Questions,” National Council on Public History (NCPH) Annual Meeting, online due to COVID, April 2022
Roundtable Participant, "Using Augmented Reality to Explore the History of Slavery at Virginia Tech," Virginia Forum, Richmond, VA, April 2022
“Service, Equity, and Institutional Support in Civic Engagement,” Campus Compact Annual Conference, March 2022 [online due to COVID]
“Southwest Virginian Archivists: Imagining a Better Future Through Archives,” Appalachian Studies Association, Huntington, WV, March 2022
Invited talk, “Belonging to the Land: Federal Recognition and the Matter of Sovereign Nations,” Virginia Governor’s Housing Conference, Norfolk, VA (convened for state policy makers, nonprofits, and professionals working in community development and housing), November 2021
Invited plenary panelist, “Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Conservation in Contemporary Indigenous Communities,” American Fisheries Society, November 2021 [online due to COVID]
Panel Organizer, “School Spirits: Tough Campus History through Oral History,” Oral History Association (OHA) Annual Meeting, October 2021 [online due to COVID]
"Embodied archives of hurricanes, climate change, resettlement, and citizenship: Challenging national narratives of belonging in natural and human made disasters," OHA Annual Meeting, October 2021 [online due to COVID]
Roundtable Participant, ”Extended Reality, Inclusive History: Exploring Diverse Campus Histories with Extended Reality Technology,” Digital Past Conference, Aberystwyth, Wales, February 2021 [online due to COVID]
Lightning Talks Participant, “Mapping Property Boundaries and Nonelite Movement in the Chesapeake,” Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture Annual Meeting, June 2021 [online due to COVID]
“New Approaches to Movement and Mapping in the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake,” American Studies Association, 2021 [online due to COVID]
“Oral History, Creative Commons, and Standards of Learning: A Case Study in Virginia,” OHA Annual Meeting, Baltimore, 2020 [online due to COVID]
Poster session participant, “Using Augmented Reality to Visualize Hidden Histories at Virginia Tech,” NCPH Annual Meeting, Atlanta, 2020 [online due to COVID]
“Open Access Oral Histories for the Classroom,” National Council for History Education National Meeting, Cleveland, 2020 [online due to COVID]
“Mapping Property Boundaries and Indian Trails in the Chesapeake,” Virginia Consortium of Early Americanists Annual Meeting, Richmond, 2020
Panel Organizer, “Consuming Culture: Twentieth Century Food and the Shaping of Modern Southern Identity,” OHA Annual Meeting, Salt Lake City, 2019
“It’s Complicated: Climate Change and Oral History in the Rural South,” American Historical Association (AHA) annual meeting, Chicago, 2019
Chair, “The Ethical Mentoring of Junior Scholars: A Collaborative Writing Venture,” Society of Early Americanists biennial meeting, Eugene, Oregon, 2019
Panel Organizer, “Aging in a Changing Society: Interviewing Across Generations,” OHA Annual Meeting, Montreal, 2018
“'We Shall Be Loose Again': Mapping Runaways in Seventeenth-Century Virginia,” Appalachian Spring Conference, Boone, NC, 2018
“Mapping property boundaries and Indian trails in the Chesapeake,” HASTAC (Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory), Orlando, 2017
“Sot-Weed, Catholics, and Indian Threat in Colonial Maryland,” Northeast Modern Language Association Annual Convention, Baltimore, 2017
‘“A sure token of their being there’: Indian Narratives of Migration in the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake,” Society of Early Americanists Biennial Meeting, Tulsa, Oklahoma, 2017
“Bully! Said Bacon: White Masculinity in 19th-Century Representations of Bacon’s Rebellion,” Harrison Institute for American History, Literature, and Culture, University of Virginia, 2016
“‘He has heard theyr old men say’: Indians before the Virginia-North Carolina Boundary Dispute in the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake,” Association of Historians at Georgia State University Graduate History Conference, Atlanta. Best Paper, 2016
“Among the Indians: The Indian Experience at the Virginia/North Carolina “Dividing Line.” Virginia Forum (VF), Yorktown, Virginia. Runner-up, Best Graduate Paper, 2016
Panel Organizer, “Standing with Elders: Fieldwork in the South,” OHA, Tampa, Florida, 2015
FELLOWSHIPS AND GRANTS
Collaborative
PI, Humanities Collections and Reference Resources Program, National Endowment for the Humanities, with Virginia State University and Enslaved.org, 2023
Co-PI, Home Baking in Appalachia Oral History Project, Southern Foodways Alliance, with Danille Christensen and the Center for Food Studies, 2022
Consultant, Monacan Indian Tribe, COVID-19 Emergency Grant, Institute of Museum and Library Science, 2020
Co-PI, Native Student Retention Through Experiential Learning and Culturally Competent Mentoring Program, National Institute of Food and Agriculture, USDA, 2021
Co-PI, Rappahannock Indian Tribe, Sovereignty Symposium Grant, Virginia Humanities, 2020
Co-PI, Newman Libraries, Community Catalyst Grant, Institute of Museum and Library Science, 2019
External
Engaged Scholars Initiative, Lang Center, Swarthmore College/Campus Compact (National), 2022-2023
Lynton Award for Civic Engagement, Campus Compact (National), 2021
Elizabeth B. Mason Multimedia Award for Voices of Virginia: an Auditory Primary Source Reader, Oral History Association, 2020
Mutual Aid in Appalachia Oral History Project, Southern Foodways Allliance, 2020-2021
Consultant, Mountain Home Center, Oral History Archives Grant, Virginia Humanities, 2020
Fairfield Foundation, contract for Timberneck Oral History Project, 2019
Tidewater Foodways Oral History Project, Southern Foodways Alliance, 2018
Columbia Center for Oral History Research Fellowship, 2017
Lillian Gary Taylor Fellowship in Early American Literature, University of Virginia, 2016
Project Grant for Oral History, Main Street Preservation Trust (Gloucester, Virginia), 2016-2018
Mellon Travel Grant, Virginia Historical Society, 2015
Matching Virginia Foundation for the Humanities Grant, Mathews Historical Society, 2014
Open Grant, Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, 2014
Virginia Foundation for the Humanities Open Grant, Fairfield Foundation, 2013
Walter Reed Memorial Scholarship, Gloucester Historical Society, Gloucester, Virginia, 2010
Internal
Diggs Teaching Award, with Aaron Purcell and Jason Higgins, 2023
Niles Fellowship for oral history fieldwork trip with students, 2022-2023
VT Engage Fellow, for graduate course in Public History, 2021
Certificate of Teaching Excellence, 2021
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Departmental Diversity Grant / Latinx Voces of the Pandemic Oral History Project, partnership with UT Austin College of Journalism, 2021
VT150 Oral History Project and Summer Stipend, for interviews with descendants of enslaved community on Virginia Tech’s campus, 2019-2021
Newman Libraries Open Access Grant, 2019
Pathways Course Development Grant for Native History Undergraduate Course, 2019
Departmental Diversity Grant/ Women and Minority Artists and Scholars Lecture Series Fund (for #womenalsoknowhistory speaker series), 2019
Supplemental Retention Scholarship, Office of Graduate Minority Programs, 2017 (declined)
Travel Award, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, 2017
Ruth O. McQuown Memorial Scholarship (for activist scholarship), 2015
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Travel Award, 2014
Office of Research Graduate Travel Grant, 2014
Simons Early American History Departmental Award, 2014
Summer Research Grant, Samuel Proctor Oral History Program, 2014
Bob Graham Center for Public Service Civic Challenge Lesson Plan Winner, 2013
College of Design, Construction, and Planning Nantucket Scholarship, 2012
TEACHING
Master’s Committee Chair:
Sara Evers, “Industrial Training. Racial Understanding. Agricultural Education.”: Public History at The Booker T. Washington Birthplace Memorial (1945-1956), 2023
Bethany Stewart, “Memory and Food: Calfee Training School, 1940-1966,” 2023
Erica Blake, “Negotiating Space: The Cultural Politics of the Bear Mountain Mission School,” Spring 2022
Savannah Flanagan, “Unruly Sisters: Moravian Women, Dissent, and the 18th Century North Carolina Piedmont,” Spring 2022
Iris Swaney, ““Take care of your neighbor”: Institutionalization of the Battered Women’s Movement in the New River Valley,” Spring 2021
Committee member:
Rebecca Heth, Political Science, 2023
Sarah Plummer, Alliance for Social, Political, Ethical, and Cultural Thought PhD Program, 2022
Anthony Reynolds, Material Culture and Public Humanities MA Program, 2021
Courses:
Assistant Professor, Virginia Tech
Graduate Oral History course, Spring 2023
Graduate Public History course, Fall 2018, Fall 2019, Fall 2021, Fall 2022
Collaborative Projects: Website Page about Segregation in the 1940s for Christiansburg Institute
Temporary Exhibit about Appalachian Slavery for Wilderness Road Museum, Newbern, VA
Collaborative Projects: Food Justice in Southwest Virginia History Exhibit, with the Center for Food Studies and the Southern Foodways Alliance
Oral History Project about Segregated Education for Calfee School Museum, Pulaski, VA
Undergraduate Native History course, Fall 2020-Spring 2021
Project: “Native@VT,” Online Exhibit for VT American Indian and Indigenous Cultural Center
Graduate Politics of Memory course, co-taught w/ Audrey Reeves & Desiree Poets, Spring 2020
Collaborative Projects: “The Land Speaks,” Online Exhibit for Monacan Indian Nation
Brief on Interpretation of Slavery at Comparable Sites for Smithfield Plantation, Blacksburg, VA
U.S. History to 1877, Fall 2019, Fall 2020, Fall 2022
Undergraduate Public History, Fall 2018, Spring 2019
Collaborative Projects: Census Research and Infographics for Temporary Exhibit at American Civil War Museum at Appomattox, VA
Cemetery Tour for Montgomery Museum, Christiansburg, VA
Oral History Project on Fracking and Health, Oak Hill, WV
Interpretive Plan for Smithfield Women’s Celebration, Blacksburg, VA
Supervised Internships, Summer 2019-Summer 2021
Sites: American Civil War Museum, Appomattox National Historic Park, Booker T. Washington National Monument, Natural Bridge State Park, Rappahannock Indian Tribe, Smithfield Plantation, Christiansburg Institute, Fairfield Foundation, Women’s Resource Center of the New River Valley, Bethabara Historic Park, Blacksburg Museum and Cultural Foundation, Montgomery Museum, Glencoe Museum, Mountain Home Center
Visiting Lecturer, Georgia State University
U.S. History, Fall 2017-2018 (4-4 load)
Instructor of Record, University of Florida
Made in Early America, Spring 2017
U.S. History since 1877, Fall 2016
U.S. History to 1877, Fall 2015-Spring 2016
Oral History in Theory and Practice, Summer 2015
Instructor of Record, Summer Pre-Collegiate Program Instructor National Institute of American History and Democracy (NIAHD), College of William and Mary, 2014-2016
Co-teacher, Samuel Proctor Oral History Program, University of Florida, 2013-2015
Coordinator, Undergraduate Fieldwork Trips, Samuel Proctor Oral History Program
SPOHP in the Tidewater: Mathews and Middlesex County, Virginia, Fall 2014-Fall 2015, 2023
Appalachian Change Project: Banner Elk, North Carolina, Spring 2015
OTHER EMPLOYMENT
Park Ranger, National Park Service, Guilford Courthouse National Military Park, 2006-2017
AP Grader, US History, 2018-2023
SELECTED PROFESSIONAL INVOLVEMENT
Campus Compact Awards Committee, 2022
Publication Committee, Oral History Association, 2022-present
Education Committee, Oral History Association, 2021-present
Junior Scholars’ Caucus Co-President, Society of Early Americanists, 2018-2020
Oral History Association Program Committee, 2017-2018
Junior Scholars’ Caucus Member, Society of Early Americanists, 2015-present