This online publication is a collaborative project by Nalleli Guillen, Alison Kreitzer, and Anne Reilly, the co-chairs of the 2012 Material Culture Symposium for Emerging Scholars, and Nicole Belolan, the symposium historian. All four are doctoral candidates in the American Civilization Program in the Department of History at the University of Delaware.  For more information on the program and our research, visit our website and our blog.

History of American Civilization at UD | Am Civ Blog

Nicole Belolan, who designed the site, explores the material culture of physical mobility impairment (or disability) in early America. She is investigating how early Americans used objects to manage their impaired bodies and to navigate the world and how those experiences shaped ideas and practices related to gender roles, citizenship, and identity.

nbelolan at udel dot edu | nicolebelolan.org

Nalleli Guillen studies race and ethnicity using nineteenth- and twentieth-century American visual and material culture.

nallelig at udel dot edu

Alison Kreitzer is dissertating on dirt track auto racing in mid-twentieth-century America.

akreitz at udel dot edu

Anne Reilly, who edited the papers, is interested in how the physical memorialization of the past shapes American identity in the present. Her dissertation investigates the public commemorations of the three-hundredth anniversaries of the Jamestown, Plymouth, and New Sweden colonies in the early twentieth century.

reillya at udel dot edu

Katie Yoder, an undergraduate student majoring in Visual Communications at the University of Delaware, designed the poster for the symposium and graciously allowed us to adapt her image for this site.

Deborah C. Andrews, Director of the Center for Material Culture Studies and Professor of English at the University of Delaware, served as our faculty advisor during the symposium and oversaw this project.

Rebecca Worley, Assistant Professor of English, and her undergraduate publications class provided the project with a site mockup.