Project Directors

Anne Mitchell Whisnant is the instructor for History 671. She is Deputy Secretary of the Faculty and Adjunct Associate Professor of History and American Studies at UNC-Chapel Hill. Her teaching, research, consulting, and writing focus on public history, digital history, and the history of the U.S. National Parks. In 2006, UNC Press published her book, Super-Scenic Motorway: A Blue Ridge Parkway History. Anne has also been the co-principal historian on several National Park Service projects including an administrative history of De Soto National Memorial and a Historic Resource Study of Cape Lookout National Seashore. Most recently, Anne chaired a task force commissioned by the Organization of American Historians and the National Park Service to study the state of historical practice within the Park Service. Its report, Imperiled Promise: The State of History in the National Park Service, was published in 2012. At UNC, Anne serves as adviser for Driving Through Time: The Digital Blue Ridge Parkway, a digital history collection being developed collaboratively with the UNC Libraries.

Elijah Gaddis is the project manager for Parks to the Side. A Ph.D. student in American studies at UNC-Chapel Hill, Elijah also holds an M.A. in Folklore from UNC and a B.A. in English from NC State.  Elijah’s research, teaching, and public projects focus on community memory and history, built landscapes and environments, and the cultural and material life of the American South.

History 671 Students, Fall 2014

The following students agreed to have their biographies posted to the site.  There were a total of twenty students enrolled in the class.

Catherine Cranfill (Rocky Knob) is a thirty-something History major/Music minor at UNC-Chapel Hill. Originally from Winston-Salem, NC, her family now makes its home in East Bend, NC. A lifelong fan of the National Park Service, working on this project has helped her appreciate all of the effort that goes into building and maintaining each NPS site. After graduating in the spring, she plans to pursue a career in the public history field and hopes to spread her enthusiasm for history to younger generations. Her other interests include human rights advocacy, science, logic, sci-fi, history of world religions, and making Japanese temari.

Sara Gardner (Cumberland Knob) is a senior anthropology major at UNC-Chapel Hill. She is from Asheville, NC, and grew up riding the Blue Ridge Parkway all her life. Cumberland Knob and the cemetery on site is very interesting to her, for she loves bones and skeletal remains and hopes one day to work in the field of osteology.

Moses Ip (Mabry Mill) is a senior student at UNC-Chapel Hill, majoring in investment finance. He is in charge of creating the Mabry Mill site digital exhibit. He is expected to graduate in December, and begin working for an investment bank in London, UK. He has previous experience in creating websites for various small start-up companies.

Joy Jones (Linville Falls) is a second year graduate student in the UNC School of Information and Library Science, concentrating in Archives and Records Management. She has a BA in History from Appalachian State University and a keen interest in both local North Carolina history and building digital exhibits and online special collections. She is currently a library assistant for Wake County Public Libraries and hopes to continue working with historical records after graduation.

Elizabeth Key (Linville Falls) is a senior History and Political Science double major at UNC Chapel Hill. She is passionate about history and wishes to pursue a career in either museum work or the educational system after graduation. This course in Public History has helped rejuvenate her love for history and her role in implementing the website on Linville Falls has helped hone her enthusiasm of the field. She was born and raised in Wilmington, NC so she loved the opportunity to explore the other end of the state.

Helen Kyriakoudes (Cumberland Knob) is a junior History major at UNC-Chapel Hill. Originally from Chapel Hill, she now lives on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, where she has interned at historical societies and museums in her hometown and nearby New Orleans, LA. She currently works as a tutor for the Student Coalition for Action in Literacy Education (SCALE) in Carrboro, NC.

Kayla Leonard (Mabry Mill) is a senior History and English double major at UNC-Chapel Hill.  Originally from Thomasville, NC, she now lives in Chapel Hill.  Kayla has held several museum internships in the past and she currently works at Duke Homestead State Historic Site in Durham, NC.

 

Hooper Schultz (Linville Falls) is a senior English major at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is originally from Raleigh, North Carolina, and currently works in Research Triangle Park. He has a long standing interest in North Carolinian history, as well as the Blue Ridge, having lived and worked in Asheville for a mountain history and tourism magazine. Working on the Linville Gorge site has helped him to better articulate how the natural beauty of North Carolina’s mountains have drawn visitors from across the country for generations.

Paula Slinglend (Mt. Pisgah) is a graduating senior at UNC-Chapel Hill. She is a history major and global cinema minor. Originally from Michigan, her first interest in history occurred while reading a tiny article on the lost colony of Roanoke in a high school textbook. Paula also researches genealogy occasionally. Prior to transferring to UNC, she received the Joseph F. Perisa award from Charles S. Mott Community College. She eventually will apply to graduate school, but plans to return to full-time employment after graduation.

Elyse Sulkey (Cumberland Knob) is a junior History and Art History double major at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a minor in Medieval and Early Modern Studies. She was born and raised in Bolivia, North Carolina. Elyse hopes to pursue a career in museums after college and feels that her role in researching and creating the digital exhibit for Cumberland Knob was an exciting first glance into the public history field.

Mathew Swiatlowski (Mabry Mill) is a Ph.D. student in American studies at UNC-Chapel Hill. Originally from western Massachusetts,  he earned a B.A. in English from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and a M.A. in American studies from the University of Massachusetts-Boston.  In between all this schooling, he worked for several years as a student affairs professional at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. Mathew’s research interests include recorded music, sound studies, and working class cultural history. He is in the beginning stages of a dissertation project on the circulation of pre-war ethnic American vernacular recordings in the post-war reissue music industry.

Mishio Yamanaka (Mt. Pisgah) is a history graduate student at UNC-Chapel Hill. She studies 19th century U.S. South focusing on race and ethnic relations during Reconstruction. From 2013 to 2014, She developed her own digital humanities project, The Fillmore Boys School in 1877: Racial Integration, Creoles of Color and the End of Reconstruction as a Carolina Digital Humanities Initiative graduate fellow and this experience led her to learn public history.