Memory, Place, and New England

About Me

Introducing my New England memory studies dissertation and ongoing PhD journey at Liberty University.

A weathered New England town common in early autumn, photographed at eye level in crisp photographic realism. The central subject is an old white-painted wooden meetinghouse with a tall, steeple-less belfry, its clapboards slightly peeling and its windows wavy with antique glass. It stands behind an open grassy green edged by low stone walls mottled with lichen. Maple trees just beginning to turn red and gold frame the scene. Soft, late-afternoon overcast light creates gentle, even illumination with subtle shadows under the eaves. A narrow brick path leads from the foreground toward the door, adding depth and perspective. The mood is contemplative and calm, evoking layers of civic and cultural memory in small-town New England.
An archival research desk set up in a small New England historical society reading room, captured in clean, detailed photographic realism. On a broad oak table sits an open nineteenth-century ledger with yellowed, slightly curled pages, next to a stack of labeled manila folders and a magnifying glass. Behind the table, floor-to-ceiling wooden shelves hold uniformly sized, grey archival boxes with handwritten call numbers on their spines, no readable modern logos or text. Cool, diffused daylight filters through a nearby multi-pane window, creating soft highlights on the paper textures and gentle shadows beneath the boxes. Shot from a slightly elevated angle using shallow depth of field so the ledger dominates the foreground, the atmosphere feels quiet, focused, and scholarly, perfectly suited to a dissertation on regional memory and place.

Historian of New England Memory

I am a PhD candidate in history at Liberty University, researching how New England villages remember, preserve, and reinvent their pasts through museums, townscapes, and local storytelling.

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Overview

My dissertation, Reconstructing the New England Village, bridges cultural history and memory studies to examine how communities curate landscapes, artifacts, and narratives to negotiate identity, nostalgia, and regional distinctiveness.

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A weathered New England town common in early autumn, photographed at eye level in crisp photographic realism. The central subject is an old white-painted wooden meetinghouse with a tall, steeple-less belfry, its clapboards slightly peeling and its windows wavy with antique glass. It stands behind an open grassy green edged by low stone walls mottled with lichen. Maple trees just beginning to turn red and gold frame the scene. Soft, late-afternoon overcast light creates gentle, even illumination with subtle shadows under the eaves. A narrow brick path leads from the foreground toward the door, adding depth and perspective. The mood is contemplative and calm, evoking layers of civic and cultural memory in small-town New England.