Current Seminars

SOCL 100 Populating Early 20th Century Black Williamsburg (Dr. Amy Quark)

In this course, students will explore a key moment in the making of Williamsburg and its image in the world: the creation of Colonial Williamsburg from the 1920s to the 1960s. This construction of an historical tourism destination was cast as a critical turning point in the national pursuit of democracy: the creation of an ambitious “national shrine…dedicated to the lives of the "nation-builders” in the “cradle of democracy.” Yet, the wave of Black communities displaced in the name of this landscape of commemoration reveals how white supremacy remained the underpinning structure limiting the achievement of this ideal. 

This course will provide Sharpe students with opportunities to develop career-ready skills. Sharpe students will gain hands-on experience generating public-facing research designed to engage diverse voices in pressing debates over democracy. In the process, they will develop a powerful toolkit of analytical and methodological skills that have wide application to diverse career paths. Students will develop skills in identifying and collecting publicly available data from digital and physical archives, analyzing data to construct a historical narrative, and presenting this data in a compelling, public-facing product.

ENSP 100 Mapping for Community Nature Rx (Dr. Dorothy Ibes)

The Nature Rx movement asserts that time spent in and around nature is medicine for the human body and mind, warning that modern lifestyles (indoors, sedentary, climate-controlled, device-focused) have weakened the human-nature relationship with dire consequences for human and planetary health and well-being. This 4-credit course utilizes multimedia, place-based storytelling to support time in local greenspace and thereby community health, particularly amongst underserved populations. To this end, student teams will develop public-facing, interactive ESRI StoryMaps that integrate maps, video, audio, images, and text to share the story of our local greenspaces and support visitation. The class is active and hands-on, with extensive group work, class discussion, peer review, field work, and instructor coaching. Students will engage in workshops on the topics of field data collection, Cartography & ArcGIS Online, and StoryMap Design. Course topics integrate place-based storytelling, effective public communication, nature rx, ecotherapy, urban park planning and design, environmental justice, geography, and complementary fields.

HIST 150 Southern Queer Theatre Research (Dr. Jay Watkins)

Theatre has been an integral part of LGBTQ+ communities around the country. Stages in cities as diverse as Atlanta, Raleigh, and Richmond have been important incubators for new voices and ideas in the South. Our playwrights and theatre companies have used their craft to explore life here in a region with a distinct queer experience. In addition, the physical place of our theatres can serve as a community space where activism, fundraising, and relationship-building occur. This research, therefore, focuses on Richmond Triangle Players [RTP], which began in 1992 as a fundraiser for AIDS services. Over the years, they have helped new playwrights show their work, sponsored a Southern queer playwriting festival, facilitated a theatre program for queer youth, and have been a consistent source of entertainment for Richmond. By partnering with RTP in this research, students will learn to conduct research and produce relevant and public-facing scholarship. In the classroom, students will study several of RTP’s productions and read several sources on LGBTQ+ and theatre history, as well as learn research and interview methodologies. We will travel to Richmond 2-3 times (days to be determined) to conduct research at VCU Special Collections and interview some of the people involved in RTP (directors, playwrights, owners, workers, actors, etc.) Students will write short papers that analyze a variety of sources and will produce a research paper based on the research we conduct.

BIOL 100 From Knowledge to Discovery (Dr. Margaret Saha)

A leading researcher writes that “Bacteriophages are the dark matter of the biological world; a vastness of ill-defined genetic variation whose impacts we observe on the microbial population but of which we have little understanding.” With an estimated 10^31 particles on the planet, phage (viruses that infect bacteria) are the most abundant biological entity on earth and constitute a dynamic, ancient, and diverse population that impacts the global ecosystem and have significant biomedical applications.  In this COLL 100 course we will use bacteriophage as the model to explore how scientists acquire and evaluate knowledge. We will explore this in three ways.  First, each student will actually attempt to discover and characterize a novel bacteriophage to actually “do” science and participate in knowledge discovery. Particular emphasis will be placed on quantitative analysis of data.  Second, through readings, we will explore the history and social context of bacteriophage research; from the initial surprising discovery of phages to why phage therapy was so popular in the Soviet Union and why it was virtually banned from the United States – until now. Third, we will discuss the current applications of bacteriophage research and how it could contribute to addressing major problems in environmental biology and human health.  Given the growing problem of antibiotic resistance, phage therapy provides an attractive alternative to treat bacterial disease.  In this course, you, the student, will be doing real research -- with all of its unknowns and frustrations but also with the joy of discovering  something that no one else has ever discovered!   

Please note that this course is for potential STEM majors.  Co-enrollment  with (or placement out of) introductory biology, chemistry, or physics is required.