I’ve been involving Dartmouth undergraduates in various research projects since I joined the College history department fifteen years ago. From time to time, research assistance evolved into independent work as directed studies, London-based research (in our foreign study program), and senior honors’ theses. Two history majors who delved especially deep into the Stephens papers with me — James Shinn ’11 and Anmol Ghavri ’18— chose to enter academia and are now emerging professional historians in their own right. Working with James and Anmol on a Stephens’ biography helped me to learn about those vivid worlds that excavated in “Life Stories of Black Georgians.” Critical support also came from my collaboration with Andrew Wright ’19.
Over the past three years, the enslaved and liberated evident across the Stephens papers has been the focus of sustained work with four undergraduates. Tulio Higgins ’23 devoted part of the 2020-21 pandemic year to an exploration of Stephens’ 1882 plea for Black political support; Macenna Hansen ’23 and Amana Hill ’23 each then began to decipher scrawled handwriting and helped to assemble the 100-odd letters written by Black Georgians. David Gutierrez ’25 spent the winter of 2023 finding stray occurrences in a long stretch of material from the early Civil War years (when Stephens mailbox was flooded with items related to his status as CSA VP). All of this work was funded through the support of Dartmouth’s Office of Undergraduate Research.
Beginning in June, 2023, the office of Dartmouth’s Dean of Faculty has begun to underwrite an expanded effort, via a “Scholarly Innovation and Advancement” grant awarded to this project. David Gutierrez returned for a second term of work, and he has been joined by Albert Velikonja ’25, Kaija Celestin ’25, and Dylan Dunson ’26. The work of these four over the summer of 2023 will be evident as regular contributors and transcribers as the”From the Page” project.