Over the past few semesters, I began my early American literature course with Thomas Jefferson. Starting with Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence, Notes from the State of Virginia, and letter to Benjamin Banneker was important considering the recent events in Charlottesville, VA. Typically, I start the first class with David Walker then back track to Jefferson,…

Recently, I wrote about using FSA/OWI photographs in the classroom to help students visualize an historical moment or literary text. Today, I want to expand upon the ways that having students analyze photographs can lead to broader discussions of history and sites of memory. Last December, Time named Ruddy Roye (@ruddyroye) its Instagram photographer of…

In 2015, I attended the MELUS conference in Athens, GA. At one of the panels, Maria Hebert-Leiter and Bryan Giezma presented some work on their upcoming book project. They introduced me to the Photogrammar site at Yale. The site contains 170,000 photographs taken by Farm Security Administration (FSA) and Office of War Information (OWI) workers between…