Above the Oxbow: Engaging the Past on Mount Holyoke
Join us to hear Danielle Raad discuss her new book, Above the Oxbow: Stories Entangled with a Mountain (April 2026, West Virginia University Press). The book explores the intertwined narratives that surround Mount Holyoke, the locally cherished mountain in a Massachusetts state park with sweeping views of the Connecticut River Valley below and a two-hundred-year-old Summit House perched on top. Blending ethnographic and historical approaches, it is a public history that illuminates how communities interpret, preserve, and engage with Mount Holyoke’s past and form attachments to place on the mountain.
Dr. Danielle Raad is assistant professor of history and museum studies at the University of Georgia. She earned a PhD in Anthropology and a Graduate Certificate in Public History from UMass Amherst in 2021. Above the Oxbow is the culmination of her dissertation project developed at UMass.