A Newsletter for UMW Faculty and Staff
Associate Professor of History Will Mackintosh
Will Mackintosh, associate professor in the Department of History and American Studies, has been appointed to the Fredericksburg Area Museum Board of Directors. His focuses include early American history, cultural and intellectual history, and the history of travel and tourism.
Associate Professor of History and American Studies Will Mackintosh was interviewed on With Good Reason, which airs Sundays at 2 p.m. on Fredericksburg’s Radio IQ 88.3 Digital and at various times throughout the week on stations across Virginia and the United States. Check the website for show times.
In an episode entitled “Talkin’ Hurricanes,” which re-aired the week of August 6, Dr. Mackintosh, the author of the book Selling the Sights: The Invention of the Tourist in American Culture, discusses how in the early 19th century, Americans began to journey away from home–not for work or migration, but simply for the sake of traveling. It gave rise to a new cultural phenomenon: the tourist. Listen here.
Associate Professor of Sociology Eric Bonds was mentioned in an article on the Fredericksburg City Council’s resolution to change the name of Jefferson Davis Highway, a measure that was approved 6-1. The General Assembly will discuss the name change at a special session in August. History and American Studies Associate Professor Will Mackintosh has also been a driving force behind the current effort, Bonds said.
Bonds and two students in his political sociology class had asked City Council to make the change because of Davis’ role in the Civil War and the fact that he’d owned more than 100 slaves during his lifetime.
The request evolved out of Bonds’ desire for the students to do a community involvement project that would help them develop democracy skills and not simply vote in an election and then tune out. The class overwhelmingly voted on the renaming project, and researched Davis and the history of the naming of the highway after him. Read more.
The 47th Annual Conference of the East-Central American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies met at UMW on Oct. 27-29. Marie McAllister (ELC) served as 2016 Conference Chair. Program Committee members were Ben LaBreche (ELC), Betsy Lewis (MLL), Will Mackintosh (HIST), and Maya Mathur (ELC). Marie Wellington (MLL) and Richard Hansen (emeritus, ELC) served as registration volunteers. The nearly one hundred attendees hailed from institutions in Virginia and neighboring states, and from schools across the country. Events included a keynote address by Catherine Ingrassia of VCU and walking tours of Historic Fredericksburg. LaBreche and Mackintosh also presented their scholarly work at the conference, and Wellington served on the Molin Prize Committee.
The conference was supported by the Wendy Shadwell ’63 Program Endowment in British Literature, the CAS Dean’s Office, and the ELC, HISP, HIST, and MLL Departments. Special thanks to our student aides and to the many wonderful staff members from Events, Setup, Catering, Copy Center, Admissions, University Center, Parking, CAS, ELC, HISP, HIST, and MLL who contributed their knowledge and assistance.
Last October, Ryan Brazell (DTLT) and Will Mackintosh (History) created a group for LGBTQ faculty and staff to socialize, discuss issues of importance to our community, and otherwise build community. We are in the process of organizing monthly social events for the spring semester; if you would like to be added to the email listserv, please send an email to Ryan at rbrazell@umw.edu.
Will Mackintosh, assistant professor of history, recently presented new work on the 19th century print culture of geographical knowledge at a small workshop entitled “Travel in the Marketplace” at the University of Bangor in Bangor, Wales.
On April 5, Will Mackintosh presented a paper entitled “Traveling Gender Identities in the Nineteenth Century” at the Graham Letters and Culture Symposium in Illinois.