Spring 2024
Multi-Discipline Collaboration
This project took root in the historical connections between the University of Richmond and the artist Edward Valentine’s (b. 1838) legacy as a sculptor of Confederate memorials. The students spent the semester investigating the ways they can stage histories, both personal and public, with a special focus on the Lost Cause and the University of Richmond’s relationship to its Confederate past.
The exhibition, housed at the University of Richmond for an academic year, was the culmination of a four-class collaboration between Professors Laura Browder (American Studies), Alicia Díaz (Dance), Nicole Maurantonio (Rhetoric & Communication Studies), and Sandy Williams IV (Sculpture), in partnership with the Valentine Museum and the Harnett Museum.
On the April 24th, 2024, students presented their dance performances, Story Maps, and sculptures in response to their semester-long immersion—through museum visits, documentary film screenings, and guest speakers—in current struggles to reframe mistold histories. This work reimagined and pushed conversations around history, memory, and the archive.
Project Details
What does it mean to remember? Who is remembered and alternately forgotten? How can we answer archival silences?
01
American Studies and Rhetoric & Communications
Students in the American Studies and Communications & Rhetoric classes collaborated over the course of the semester to create educational materials and digital resources designed to provide historical context and open new conversations. These connected Edward Valentine’s creations to the University of Richmond’s history and the circulation of Lost Cause ideology, interrogating the meaning of “the archive” and its function in alternately revealing and concealing histories.
Students presenting posters and stories at The Valentine.
02
Sculpture
Through these many collaborations, Sculpture students were be tasked with creating objects that they see as “missing from the archive.” The making process was augmented by creative collaborations and conversations with the other disciplines during the course of the semester.
03
Dance
Dance students worked to create movement-based work informed by, and in conversation with, the Valentine Museum’s exhibit “Sculpting History” and the educational materials generated by UR students. They considered the role that the expressive body plays in the reimagining of the archive and in the co-creation of new archives. Students collaborated closely with the other classes in both the research and artistic process.
04
Events
Group trips to the Valentine Museum and other historical institutions were coordinated, and class time was spent collectively reflecting on what’s missing in these archives. Presentations and performances were held at the Valentine, and a separate group installation within the UR Museums Booth Gallery concluded the semester.
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Top: Booth Gallery
Bottom: The Valentine
