Students in the UMass Public History Program often produce exhibitions for and alongside community partners. Examples include an exhibit created with the members of the Goodwin Memorial A.M.E. Zion Church in Amherst; exhibits on the life of W.E.B. Du Bois in Great Barrington; interpretive panels for the Samuel Harrison House in Pittsfield, home of a prominent African-American clergyman who served as chaplain to the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment during the American Civil War; and a national award-winning exhibit at the Ashley House Museum in collaboration with the Trustees of Reservations, documenting the life of Elizabeth “Mum Bett” Freeman, a Black woman enslaved at the property in the late eighteenth century who is regularly acknowledged as a key figure in the ending of slavery in Massachusetts.
UMass Public History, in partnership with our colleagues in UMass Anthropology, also produced outdoor interpretive panels for the W.E.B. Du Bois National Historic Site in Great Barrington, Massachusetts.
Most recently, our program produced the five-panel traveling exhibition The Carceral Commonwealth, as part of a larger collaboration with the Humanities Action Lab and area partners. For more on this exhibit, and to learn how to borrow it for use in your organization, click here.