News & Events

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ASECS: Memories and Meaning: Making History Accessible in the Digital Age

Fri.Oct. 10, at 9:30 AM In Litrenta Hall Toll Science Center         

October 10, at 9:30 a.m. Litrenta Hall As part of the ASECS Conference, please join us for a 50-minute plenary on how digital resources–from family papers to large databases–are reshaping the way we teach and study history. Panelists will showcase innovative approaches to using digitized collections to illuminate the 400-year African American experience on the Delmarva Peninsula from Chattel slavery and Black Revolutionary War Service to land ownership and cultural expression. Victoria Barnett-Woods and Eleana Deanda-Camacho will give opening remarks. Project Director of the Chesapeake Heartland, Darius Johnson, will moderate a discussion with Ian Post from the Nabb Research Center and Jennie K. Williams Executive Director, Kinsfolkology. 

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American Society for 18th-Century Studies Conference

October 9-11, at Washington College           

October 9-11 Washington College 
The American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, established in 1969, is the foremost learned society in the United States for the study of all aspects of the period from the later seventeenth through the early nineteenth century. Its members are literary scholars and writers, historians, theorists of gender, race, sexuality, disability, nation and empire; philosophers and political theorists; art historians and artists; musicologists and musicians; theater historians and practitioners; biographers and bibliographers; and specialists in other humanistic, artistic, and social scientific fields with a range of broad and more particular interests.

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Maryland One Author One Book Tour: Carole Boston Weatherford and Jeffery Boston WeatherfordTues., Oct. 7  at 7:00 PM  at Chesapeake College           

October 7, at 7:00 p.m. Chesapeake College In collaboration with the Talbot County Free Library, Caroline County Public Library, Eastern Shore Regional Library, and Queen Anne's County Public Library, Chesapeake Heartland: An African American Humanities Project, Office of Multicultural Affairs, Rose O'Neill Literary House and the Needle's Eye Academy, the Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience will sponsor and coordinate student transportation to the Weatherford's official Eastern Shore stop on the annual Maryland Humanities One Maryland One Book statewide author tour. To learn more about Carole, Jeffery and Kin: Rooted in Hope.

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Wiley Cash: 2025-26 Patrick Henry History Fellow

Tues., Sept. 23, 2025 6:00 p.m. Rose O'Neill Literary House

September 23 at 6:00 p.m. at the Rose O'Neill Literary House Wiley Cash, the 2025-26 Patrick Henry History Fellow, will read from his novel The Last Ballad at the Rose O'Neill Literary House. Wiley Cash, a best-selling author versed in southern history, mystery, and family drama will be joining the Washington college community for the academic year and teaching an English class while also working on his sixth novel–in his words,"a retelling of the Lost Colony [of Roanoke Island, North Carolina] that braids three storylines while interrogating the tendrils of white supremacy that sprouted from the American colonial experiment."                                       Read More

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Bilingual Public Readings and Community Dialogues with Tanya Kateri Hernandez

Fri., Sept. 12 4:30 P.M. Miller Library, Newlin Room 

September 12 at 4:30 p.m. in the Newlin Room at the Miller Library Join us for a powerful, bilingual experience to kick off Latinx Month! Tanya Kateri Hernandez is a world-renowned, Puerto Rican comparative law expert with academic interests in anti-discrimination law.  She currently serves as the Archibald R. Murray Professor of Law at Fordham University School of Law. Professor Hernandez's scholarship has been published in numerous university law reviews and news outlets. Copies of her book Racial Innocence in both English and Spanish will be available as supplies last.

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ART + COMMUNITY+ HISTORY: Creating a Landmark Together, Phase II–Making Memory Move

August 8 - 22  Performance on Custom House lawn

August 15 at 6:00 p.m. Performance on the Custom House lawn  Phase II of Art+Community+History: Creating a Landmark Together begins in August with FREE movement workshops and performance during Legacy Day. Placemakers and performers of all ages are welcome to join MCAAHC Commissioner Ada Pinkston in the Benjamin A. Johnson Fitness Center Dance Studio at Washington College. The Make Memory Move workshops will culminate in a public performance on the Custom House lawn (101 S. Water Street) that opens the 12th Annual Legacy Day on August 15 at 6:00 PM.

As part of this Maryland State Arts Council-funded process to realize a public artwork(s) that celebrates and honors centuries of African American history in the Chesapeake Tidewater region, we are collaborating with the Mellon Foundation-funded LandMarked Project to activate this future site.

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Living with History: Bringing the Past into the Present

Sat., April. 5, 2025 3:00 p.m.                  Kent Cultural Alliance

101 Spring Ave. Chestertown, MD 

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Reimagining How and Why We Relate with Erika Doss

Mon., Feb. 24, 2025 6:00 p.m. Hodson Boathouse River Room

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ART + COMMUNITY+ HISTORY: Creating a Landmark Together, Visioning Session I

Thur., Feb. 20, 2025 6:00 p.m.

206 S. Queen St, Chestertown, MD

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Reimagining How and Why We Reckon

Wed., dec. 4, 2024 at 5:30 P.M. et VirtuaL

Link to Zoom

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From Yorkshire to Maryland: The Calverts and Kiplin Hall

Wed., Dec. 4, 2024 at 12:00 P.M. et at Hynson Lounge

What do Yorkshire in England and Maryland have in common? The Calvert family! Discover more about the history of the Calverts in England and their home in Yorkshire in this talk from Alice Rose, Programming Curator at Kiplin Hall and Gardens, UK.

Register with WC ALL

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ART + COMMUNITY + HISTORY: Public Art Bus Tour to Philadelphia

SAT., Nov. 23, 2024 ALL DAY Bus Leaves at 9:30 a.m.Custom House, 101 S. Water St, Chestertown, MD

Please join us on an all-day FREE bus tour to Philadelphia to see various monuments and public artworks. Starr Center and Chesapeake Heartland staff invite all voices to participate in collective reimagining and to join us on a one-day bus tour to Philadelphia. This tour will mirror the August Delmarva bus tour, but its context will instead center the early American capital's connections to Kent County where robust connections date back centuries and endure.

Register before 11/15

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The Spilling of the Tea: The History of Tea and the American Revolution

Tues., Nov. 12, 2024 at 12:00 p.m. et at Hynson Lounge

Register with WC ALL

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Reimagining How and Why We Remember with Brent Leggs

Mon., Nov. 4, 2024 at 5:30 P.M. et at decker theater

Gibson Center for the Arts, Chestertown, MD

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250^th Anniversary of the Chestertown Tea Party; Inaugural Event of the Maryland 250 Commission

Thur., May 23, 2024 at 5:30 P.M. et at the Custom House

101 S. Water Street, Chestertown, MD

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"Streaming History" with Dan Shotz

Thur., May 16, 2024 at 7:30 P.M. et -Zoom 

May 16th at 7:30 p.m. ET  Dan Shotz is currently the executive producer of the new adaptation of the popular book series "Percy Jackson & the Olympians" for Disney+. Shotz is also in production on the second season of the critically- acclaimed series “The Old Man” starring Jeff Bridges and John Lithgow for FX. 

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"Streaming History" with Louis Baynard and Thomas Mallon

Thur., April 18, 2024 at 7:30 P.M. et - ZOOM

Thomas Mallon's eleven books of fiction include Henry and Clara, Fellow Travelers, Watergate (a Finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award) and the forthcoming Up With the Sun.  

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"Streaming History" with Phaedra Michelle Scott '14

Thur., April 11, 2024 at 7:30 P.M. et - Zoom

Apr. 11th at 7:30 p.m. ET Phaedra Michelle Scott '14 is a writer and dramaturg based in New York City. She is a staff writer on the upcoming CBS/Showtime drama KING SHAKA. 

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MCAAHC Public Meeting

Mon., April 1, 2024 at 11:00 A.M. et - Bethel A.M.E Church

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Bringing the Bay to Baltimore

Fri., march 22, 2024 at 5:30 P.M. et - kent cultural alliance

Mar. 22nd at 5:30 pm ET Please join us for a lecture and discussion about bringing curatorial representation of the Eastern Shore to the existing exhibits at the BMA with Brittany Luberda, the Anne Stone Associate Curator of Decorative Arts at the Baltimore Museum of Art where she is a specialist in 18th-century ceramics and silver.

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"GET ON THE BUS!"

wed., February 14, 2024 at 6:00 P.M. et - decker theater

Feb. 14th at 6:00 pm ET - Please join us for the film premiere. Get on the Bus follows a 2022 civil rights journey through the American South. Local K-12 students, community members, and Washington College students and alumni joined together in an envoy to deliver historic materials from Chestertown, Maryland, to the Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama, where they will be. permanently housed. Along the way, participants visited the 16^th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, walked over the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, and toured Martin Luther King's Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. Capturing the group's daily reflections and conversations, the documentary reveals a community working together to develop both a deeper understanding of the past and a collective response to present day racial injustices.

Sponsored by Minary's Dream Alliance, Sumner Hall, and the Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience.

"Get On The Bus!" Documentary Announcement 

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A Public Conversation with Maurizio Valsania, Winner of the 2023 George Washington Prize 

Mon., February 5, 2024 at 6:00 to 7:00 P.M. et - Litrenta Hall 

February 5th, at 6:00 pm ET - Please join the Starr Center for a  public a Public Conversation with Maurizio Valsania, Winner of the 2023 George Washington Prize and author of First Among Men: George Washington and the Myth of American Masculinity. The George Washington Prize is one of the nation's largest and most prestigious literary awards and honors its namesake by recognizing the year's best new books on the nation's founding era, especially those that engage a broad public audience.

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The Annual Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Breakfast

Mon., January 15, 2024 at 8:30 A.m. et - Fountain Park 

Sponsored by Minary's Dream Alliance, NAACP, Chester Valley Ministers Association, Washington College's Office of the President, and the Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience.
- 8:30 AM: March and Reading at Fountain Park, Chestertown MD
- 9:00 AM: Breakfast (Tickets HERE), Hodson Hall Dining Hall, Washington College
- 10:00 AM: Free Banquet to follow Breakfast, Decker Theatre, Gibson Center for the Arts, Washington College - Inclement Weather Date: January 20, 2024

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Combating Erasure a lecture by Robell Awake

Mon., November 6, 2023 at 6:30 p.m. et - Litrenta Hall 

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Book Talk during Sultana Downrigging Festival

Sat., October 28, 2023 at 2:30 p.m. et - Harwood Nature Center 

October 28, 2023 at 2:30 p.m. ET - Please join the Starr Center and the Bookplate bookstore, at the newly opened Sultana Harwood Nature Center in the Lawrence Preserve, for a conversation between writer Fernanda Moore and Starr Center Director Adam Goodheart, where they will discuss his new book "The Last Island: Discovery, Defiance, and the Most Elusive Tribe on Earth".  

The indigenous hunter-gatherers of North Sentinel Island, in the Bay of Bengal, have lived in virtual isolation from the rest of the world for centuries.

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60 Years After the Kennedy Assassination: A Conversation 

Tues., October 10, 2023 at 5:00 p.m. et - Hyson Lounge, Hodson Hall 

October 10, 2023 at 5:00 p.m. ET - Please join the Starr Center at the Hynson Lounge for a conversation between Starr Center Deputy Director, Jason Patterson and author and Journalist, Jefferson Morley. Jefferson Morley is a veteran Washington investigative journalist and former Washington Post editor. He is a leading source on the circumstances and history of the Kennedy assassination, and is the editor of the Substack blog JFK Facts.

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A Lecture on Abolitionist Henry Highland Garnet

Tues., October 3, 2023 at 6:00 p.m. et - sumner Hall 

October 3, 2023 at 6:00 p.m. ET  - Join the Starr Center at Sumner Hall (the last functioning Grand Army of the Republic African American Civil War veteran meeting hall), for a lecture on Henry Highland Garnet. Garnet was a prominent reverend, orator and abolitionist in the 19th century. 

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"Sold Down the River:" A Public Conversation with Edward Ball

Mon., April 24, 2023 at 5:30 p.m. et - Litrenta LECTURE HALL

April 24, 2023 at 5:30 p.m. ET - Award-winning author and historian Edward Ball will discuss his book in progress, a pathbreaking work on four Black families that survived enslavement and forced migration. Ball is the 2022-23 Patrick Henry History Fellow at Washington College's Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience. Ball has spent the academic year in Chestertown researching his new book Sold Down the River, . . ."

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A Century of Black Film with Wil Haygood

Wed., March 8, 2023 at 5:30 p.m. et - Litrenta LECTURE HALL

March 8, 2023 at 5:30 p.m. ET - Acclaimed journalist, bestselling author, and former Starr Center Fellow Wil Haygood will return to Washington College for this public program co-sponsored by the Starr Center and the Rose O'Neill Literary House. Haygood will discuss his recent book Colorization: 100 Years of Black Films in a White World, which examines the struggles and triumphs of Black actors. . ."

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Eastern Shore Opinion Poll Presentation

Wed., November 30, 2022 at 4:30 p.m. et - Litrenta LECTURE HALL

November 30, 2022 at 4:30 p.m. ET - The midterm elections might be over, but but there's much more to learn from the results of Washington College's inaugural Eastern Shore Opinion Poll. Miller Director Dr. Patrick Nugent, and Dr. Flavio Hickel and Dr. Christine Wade from Washington College's Department of Political Science, will describe the poll's launch and present key findings about the policy and civic engagement. . ."

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Five Score Later: Civil Rights & Historical Memory in Gettysburg

Thurs., March 24, 2022 at 5 p.m. et - via zoom

March 24, 2022 at 5 p.m. ET - The role Gettysburg played in the American Civil War has been studied at length. But what about the role the town played in the American Civil Rights movement, 100 years later? And how did the town's historical memory impact the present? Join Starr Center Director Adam Goodheart for a Zoom conversation with Author and Historian Jill Ogline Titus as they discuss her new book. . . "

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Premiere of "Rooted Wisdom: Nature's Role in the Underground Railroad"

FRI., march 11, 2022 at 7 p.m. est - virtual event

March 11, 2022 at 7 p.m. EST - Join Starr Center Director Adam Goodheart for the virtual premiere of "Rooted Wisdom: Nature's Role in the Underground Railroad," a guided experience and short documentary film created by Adkins Arboretum and the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad State Park. Goodheart will be moderating a panel discussion with historians and the filmmakers, following the premiere.

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The Heart of the Eastern Shore (a feature on Chesapeake Heartland Project)

January/February Issue February Issue

From Chesapeake Bay Magazine - Kim Briscoe Moody carries a map in her memory. “I was born and grew up on Prospect Street, in Chestertown. My mom grew up, was born on Calvert Street, and my father was also born on Prospect Street. I grew up in the Bethel AME Church [on the block in between], and I can remember playing on the back lot. It brings me joy, when I go home, to see. . ."

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Sophie Kerr Series Presents Sufiya Abdur-Rahman Presents Presents

Wed., November 17 at 5:00 PM EsT via Zoom 

November 17 at 5:00 p.m. EST - A non-fiction reading by Prof. Sufiya Abdur-Rahman, co-sponsored by the Rose O'Neill Literary House and the Starr Center for the Study of American History. Sufiya Abdur-Rahman's writing investigates questions of family, identity, race, and religion and, often, how they intersect. Her essays, articles, and criticism have appeared in publications including...

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Virtual preview for "ISAAC: A Musical Journey," a play by Marlon Saunders

Sat., November 6 at 7:30 PM EsT via Zoom 

November 6 at 7:30 p.m. EST - Written and composed by Marlon Saunders, "ISAAC" was commissioned by the Kent Cultural Alliance and the Chesapeake Heartland Project and is based on the memoirs of Isaac Mason, a formerly enslaved person, born in Kent County, Md., who escaped to freedom. This free preview will feature songs from the show and a conversation with Starr Center Director Adam Goodheart and Saunders. 

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Thomas Jefferson and Race - A Zoom Conversation with Author & Scholar Mia Bay  

Tues., October 12 at 5:00 PM EsT via Zoom

October 12 at 5 p.m. EST - Much has been written about Thomas Jefferson and his impact, but what did African Americans think about this founding father? Join us for a thought-provoking Zoom conversation with Mia Bay—leading scholar of African American history—about her current book project on Jefferson. This event occurred in the past, but you can still see the conversation here. 

EVENT VIDEO

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Newark resident completes internship with the Smithsonian 

Thurs., September 9, 2021 September 9, 2021 

From the Newark Post - Newark resident Ama Amponsah recently completed an internship with the National Museum of African American History and Culture, where she promoted the Smithsonian Anthology of Hip-Hop and Rap with a series of blog posts. 'My favorite thing about my internship was learning about the origins of hip-hop music and how it's more than a music genre, it's a culture that's. . .

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An inside look at recently discovered two-hundred year old documents

Tues., AUGUST 31, 2021

From WBOC's Delmarvalife Program - Watch this  seven-minute segment about The Commodore Collection, a unique archive of local African American history recently discovered in a house in Chestertown. These historic papers were saved from the auction house by historians from the Starr Center and the Chesapeake Heartland Project and local activists and are archived at Washington College's Miller Library. 

WATCH THE VIDEO

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Hip Hop Time Capsule: a summer program focusing on diversity

MON., AUGUST 23, 2021

From WBAL Radio - Hip Hop Time Capsule is a new collaboration between high school and college students in Kent County, Maryland, and musicians, college professors and museum professionals. As part of the program, a diverse group of 14 local teenagers,  most with deep roots in the community, chronicled a musical heritage that stretches from work songs sung by the  enslaved, through. . .

READ & LISTEN

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A Starr in the East (a feature article on The Starr Center at Washington College) 

AUGUST 2021 Issue

From the August 2021 issue of "What's Up Eastern Shore" - After more than two decades since its inception, the Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience at Washington College has put Chestertown on the academic-history map. Political forces in the United States , especially over the past year, are being compelled to reckon with the way. . .

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Hogan Announces Funding for New Endowment Honoring Late Senator President Mike Miller 

Thurs., July 15, 2021

From the Office of Governor Larry Hogan - Governor Larry Hogan today announced that he will be providing $1 million to Washington College in his forthcoming Fiscal Year 2023 budget proposal to fund a new directorship within the Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience to honor the historic legacy of longtime Maryland Senate President. . .

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Thousands of pages documenting slavery found in attic of Eastern Shore house 

Fri., July 2, 2021

From The Hill - Thousands of papers, some documenting the auction and sale of enslaved Black Americans, were headed for the auction block themselves before Black historians and community members stepped in to reclaim ownership over their past. 'It was important to the community because this will connect the dots for people and the younger generation, to let them. . .

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Maryland attic hid a priceless trove of Black history. Historians and activists saved it from auction.

Mon., June 28, 2021

From The Washington Post - The 200-year-old document was torn and wrinkled. It had stains here and there. And it was sitting on a plastic table in the storeroom of an auction house near the Chester River hamlet of Crumpton, on Maryland's Eastern Shore. Historian Adam Goodheart had seen it before, but only in a blurry website photo. Now, here it was in a simple framed box. . .

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