The Colonial Williamsburg Milliner and Mantua-Maker
Since 2004, dozens of NIAHD students have benefited from Internships at the Milliner's Shop in Colonial Williamsburg. Expanding on this partnership in 2023, NIAHD faculty and the Milliners began a collaboration to consider the public's experience of museum spaces and to explore how interpretive methods might adapt to meet the interests and priorities of current guests. Goals included foregrounding the labor of enslaved women who worked in the shop and emphasizing the economic and political narratives that circulated in this female-owned and occupied space.
One outcome of this cooperative venture was a panel presented at the 2024 Conrad M. Hall Symposium for Virginia History at the Virginia Museum of History & Culture. The panel, "Stitching it All Together: A Collaboration between the Milliner's and Mantua-Makers at Colonial Williamsburg and William & Mary's National Institute of American History & Democracy," included presentations from Dr. Julie Richter and Dr. Sarah McCartney of NIAHD; from Janea Whitacre and Rebecca Godzik of the Milliner's and Mantua-Maker's Shop at Colonial Williamsburg; and from Clarissa Cantacuzene, a student in the W&M Department of History. Papers considered how to highlight the skilled work of 18th-century women and how to to use material objects to meaningfully engage visitors in the economic and social dynamics of a functioning trade shop.
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