Wednesday will begin a nearly thousand-year-old tradition. After the recent passing of Pope Francis, who served as pope for 12 years, the Catholic Church is looking for his successor. Soon, the doors to the Sistine Chapel will be locked, signifying the beginning of the papal conclave – the secretive balloting process where the College of Cardinals, who are among the highest-ranking members of the church, elect a new pope.

Kathleen Comerford, Ph.D., at ����Vlog, specializes in Catholic history in the 16th and 17th centuries. She is also an associate editor for the , which focuses on the work of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), a religious order within the Catholic Church. Pope Francis was the church’s first Jesuit pope.

With the global significance and rarity of the conclave, Comerford answered frequently asked questions about how the conclave works, how the conclave process has evolved over time, and what the passing of a pope means for the Catholic Church and the world. 

Question: What does the passing of a pope mean for the world?

Comerford: Multiple things! First of all, there are 1.4 billion Catholics in the world scattered in many different countries. The pope is a unifying figure for all of the Catholics. He represents something immediate in the sense that he’s the head of the church and is a recognizable figure.

The pope is also a monarch. I was just talking with my classes about this. He is the head of the government of the Vatican City State, which is the smallest independent state in the world. It has a very long history itself. Pretty much everybody who lives in Vatican City works for the Vatican. The pope is one of the few elected monarchs in history. He is responsible for financial and political decisions, and he has ambassadors around the world as a result of his role in global policy.

Question: How is a new pope selected?

Comerford: The College of Cardinals will meet for an election called a conclave, and they actually stay in a dormitory-like place in Vatican City for it. They are sequestered from the public, and they take some time to meet,  pray and vote. The cardinals aren’t supposed to be sitting around talking about who would be a really good pope, but we don’t know whether they do because they’re sequestered and nobody is supposed to talk about it.

They will likely take a vote on the first day, but that’s not required. Every subsequent day, they can take a maximum of four votes; two in the morning and two in the afternoon until a candidate gets a two-thirds majority.

Question: What does the voting look like?

Comerford: There are ballots, and the cardinals write their preferred candidate on the ballot, and then they put their vote in a chalice. To count the votes, there’s a group of three people who are in charge of counting and then announcing the results to the fellow cardinals. There are 252 cardinals, but only 135 of them are eligible to vote because anyone over the age of 80 is ineligible. 

The procedure where only cardinals can elect the pope dates from 1059. The secret ballot and the two-thirds majority requirement is from 1621. The sequestration for the process dates from 1271 because they argued about who the new pope would be for two years and nine months; a total of 33 months. And so, they decided that the only way to make sure that this didn’t happen again would be to create this scenario with the cardinals locked in a room with a key.

Question: When one of the candidates receives a two-thirds majority and becomes the next pope, how will it be announced?

Comerford: Well, this is kind of fun, because they have four votes every day until one of the candidates receives a two-thirds majority. After they take the votes, the papers used to vote are burned. How the news is shared to the crowds outside is based on the color of smoke. If the smoke is black, that means no one received the majority and there’s no new pope yet. If there’s white smoke, it means there’s a new pope.

This practice really only dates to the early 19th century. At first, it was just if there was smoke, there was no pope; if there was no smoke, then there was a pope. In 1914, they changed this aspect of the election so that black smoke means “no pope” and white smoke means “new pope.”

Question: It’s expected that the next pope will be one of the cardinals in the room when they vote, yes?

Comerford: Yes, but it doesn’t have to be. There have been a lot of popes, but in the last 200-300 years, there hasn’t been somebody who wasn’t in the conclave that was elected. Theoretically, they could nominate somebody who’s not a cardinal and the whole room could say, “yes, that’s the person we want as pope.” However, they don’t vote by acclamation anymore. They stopped doing that in the 19th century.

Question: Pope Francis appointed 108 of the cardinals, so that’s a total of 80% of those eligible to vote for the next pope. How likely is it that we see a pope similar to the late Francis, considering he provided the electorate for his successor?

Comerford: First of all, he deliberately went out and created cardinals in places where there had never been cardinals before. And he didn’t do that by saying, “I’m going to find somebody who’s like-minded to me.” He just said, “There are a lot of Catholics in Myanmar and they’ve never had a cardinal. So I’m going to make sure that there’s a cardinal now.” Most of these new cardinals are in places like Rwanda, Cape Verde, Tonga, Myanmar, Mongolia and so on. So these are non-European cardinals.

Now, less than 40% of the voting cardinals are European. So to speculate on how similar they are to Francis, you have to break down what Francis was. There has been his entire pontificate about how he’s the first American pope, but his parents were born in Italy. He didn’t grow up speaking Italian, but it was a dialect of Italian as well as Spanish, because he grew up in Argentina. He was the most European you can get and still be an American.

Another part of the question is, will the new pope be somebody who is of a similar mind to Francis in terms of his governance, which was very devolved. He introduced this idea of “synodality,” which is about fairly consistent communication with groups of people. Pope Francis was not particularly monarchical or hierarchical. 

There is also the aspect of his thinking that leans more to the left than the right on a number of social issues like immigration, women’s rights, the rights of minorities and immigration. He opened a lot of conversations, which the very right leaning portions of the church have been very uncomfortable with.

Caleb Hartshorn, a public history graduate student, has been pursuing his dream job of being a paleontologist for as long as he can remember. However, after taking a brief field school excursion to the desert, he learned one very painful lesson:

“Paleontology mostly happens in the desert, and the desert and I do not get on well,” he quipped. “The sand and the sun did an absolute number on me over the course of two weeks, and I realized that was not the program I wanted to do.”

Yet, the Columbus, Georgia, native had no interest in abandoning his dreams. Instead, he sought new ways to seek his passions. He was always fascinated by history, but was fueled by the “aha!” moments of discovering history in the field.

That’s what led him to research at Georgia Southern. Hartshorn and his mentor and professor, , are diving into the fascinating world of maritime archaeology on Ossabaw Island, off the Georgia coast. Hartshorn’s research, part of his master’s degree program, focuses on uncovering the history of this island, particularly its 18th and 19th-century past. 

Hartshorn’s work includes archaeological surveys, archival research and the development of an ArcGIS Map, which is a geographic information system. The project, conducted in collaboration with the Ossabaw Island Foundation, aims to catalog remnants of the island’s history, including Colonial-era structures and even modern debris. By mapping the locations of these findings, Hartshorn is laying the groundwork for future researchers.

“The idea is that this map will serve as a springboard for later projects in the area,” he said. “Ten years from now, if somebody else is out there, they can just add on to what’s been put in there.”

One of the highlights of his research, on display in a new exhibit, “A Maritime Legacy,” in the Learning Commons on the University’s Armstrong Campus through May, is the immersive experience of working in a place untouched by human hands for generations. 

This hands-on experience not only deepened his understanding of the island’s history but also brought history to life in a way that textbooks never could.

“You get maybe 20 or 30 feet out into the woods and it looks like no one’s ever been there,” he reminisced. “Just a completely empty forest. You’re driving along a little trail, but sometimes there’s no trail, then you’ll take a turn and find a pile of shells. It just looks like a regular pile of shells, but when you look closer, you can see some of them were used as tools by people who were in this same spot two or three thousand years ago just going about their daily lives, walking possibly the same trail you’re walking now. It really puts into perspective just how long this island has been inhabited.”

Knoerl praised Hartshorn’s dedication, noting his talent for combining fieldwork with meticulous archival research.

“Ossabaw Island is like a lot of the Georgia Sea Islands,” he said. “These were enclaves for enslaved communities. There’s so much of Georgia’s history, including the development of the Gullah Geechee culture, that took place on those islands. It’s an understudied area, and so we’re happy to have this opportunity to record and preserve as much of that history as we can to study it and to share that with as many people, because it’s such an amazing part of Georgia’s history.”

For Hartshorn, the experience has been a dream come true, combining his love of history with archaeological exploration. His passion for finding forgotten stories buried in the ground, untouched for centuries, makes his work both meaningful and transformative for Georgia’s historical narrative.

Georgia Southern history professor Brian K. Feltman, Ph.D., is creating an exhibit honoring the African Americans from Bulloch County who made the ultimate sacrifice during the First World War.

“More than a Name: Commemorating Bulloch County’s African American Fallen Soldiers of the First World War” will debut at Georgia Southern’s Henderson Library in March 2025 and run until July. 

Twenty-six Bulloch County natives died in the First World War. Thirteen of them were African American. The exhibit, funded by Georgia Humanities, serves as not only a look back in remembrance but also a look into the lives of these men as they fought for a country that, at the time, viewed them as second-class citizens.

The impetus for this project was twofold. A German historian who wants his students engaged in research, Feltman said primary sources or sources in German can be challenging to study. To circumvent this, he often uses local sources. This was the origin of the idea for the exhibit.

The service of African Americans became the focus shortly after Feltman and his students began their research.

“We realized that it was easy to find a lot of information about the white veterans and the white fallen soldiers, but the African Americans who served and died had really been marginalized,” he said.

Feltman elaborated that while documentation such as draft cards and ledgers were relatively easy to find for Black soldiers, there was very little in the way of public acknowledgment, either before or after the war. Perhaps the most tangible example of this is the absence of photographs of any of the 13 fallen soldiers included in the exhibit. 

Feltman said this shortage wasn’t limited to photos: “The memory of the First World War is significant within the African American community. In the exhibit, we’ll display many books by African American authors about the African American experience. Still, within the broader community, this experience has been forgotten.”

The exhibit will include biographical information, photos of their gravesites, and their responsibilities specific to their regiment or battalion. Additionally, there will be original posters featuring African American soldiers and their families and era-specific covers of the NAACP’s official magazine “The Crisis.” 

In addition to honoring the soldiers, the exhibit aims to place their service in its proper context. That context includes what Feltman referred to as the “everyday reality” of racism. Bulloch County remained a rural area in the early twentieth century. Despite nearly 50 years since the Civil War, the area and the entire South still felt its effects. A fact that isn’t lost on Feltman.

“At the time, many African Americans worked in agriculture,” he said. “A lot of their grandparents would’ve been enslaved, so these people were still very much coming out of the experience of the Civil War.”

 While preserving and contextualizing the history, Feltman also prioritized community and student engagement—two critical facets given the localized nature of the topic and the fact that many of his students are Bulloch County natives.

The community engagement aspect can sometimes be challenging.  As Feltman says, these sorts of exhibits often have a short lifespan and are only showcased temporarily. Fortunately, the Willow Hill Heritage & Renaissance Center is here to keep it alive. Following the display at the Georgia Southern Museum, the exhibit will be donated to the in Portal. 

Willow Hill was a school for African American children founded initially by formerly enslaved families of Bulloch County. In 1920, it was sold to the Bulloch County Board of Education and became an integrated public school in 1971. It operated for 125 years and eventually reopened as a museum for African American history in 2005.

Alvin Jackson, M.D., the current board president whose grandfather served in the war, is keen to house the exhibit for years to come.

“It’s quite an honor,” he said. “The stories of these soldiers are personal to many of us, and we are so excited that we can continue to tell them.”

“Willow Hill does so much with the African American community,” Feltman echoed. They serve as a real hub in Bulloch County for teaching the current generation and helping them understand what they are a part of in terms of local history.”

Feltman said his students played a key role in making this exhibit a reality.

Each student in the Spring 2024 session of his class on World War I was given a Bulloch County veteran or a topic related to their service to research. Feltman says this hands-on experience is vital for students in the short and long term.

“The students did all their own research; this wouldn’t be possible without them,” he said.  “We understand that students need to be involved and have that real-world experience, something they can show potential employers when the time comes.” 

Feltman says special collections librarian Autumn Johnson and her team helped the students access important materials.

“Special Collections had some valuable resources in the form of American Legion auxiliary files,” he said. “We’re also borrowing materials from universities like Johns Hopkins and Indiana University. That’s a complicated process, and Autumn Johnson has been key in making that happen.”

Ultimately, Feltman hopes that community members of all backgrounds will take pride in the bravery and sacrifice of these men and take time to reflect on their story and its retelling.

Alvin Jackson agrees. 

“I come from a community of storytellers, said Jackson.”They have kept so many of these stories alive from the days of enslavement and beyond. This exhibit would be another important story that has not been fully told, and it will empower us to know more about what I call archival silence, where the stories are not in the history book. Still, we tell those stories to add another chapter to Bulloch County and American History.”

Learn more about the exhibit and the research behind it by visiting .

Former President Jimmy Carter passed away at the age of 100. Carter served as the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981, and he was also the 76th governor of Georgia, serving from 1971 to 1975. Famous for his international peace initiatives and humanitarian efforts during and after his presidency, he is the only U.S. president to call Georgia “home.”

Chris Caplinger, Ph.D., is an assistant professor within the at ����Vlog and has insight into Carter’s life before, during and after his presidency.

Question: How did you first get introduced to studying the former president?

Caplinger: I was an undergraduate at Emory University. After he left the White House, he held a position on faculty there. He did give individual lectures, but he also did something that really touched almost every incoming student. For a number of years before I was there and then well after I was there, he would be one of the speakers at the new student convocation.

I managed to wrangle an invitation all four years. He did questions and answers afterwards. And so, as a 22-year-old, I stood up in the auditorium and he answered my question. That was a lot of fun.

Question: What are some memories or personality traits that stand out to you about President Carter?

Caplinger: He clearly was oriented toward improving people’s lives. He was always very upfront from his campaign throughout his life talking about issues of his faith, which were an anchor for what it was he was doing. He believed in doing the right thing. His biographers will explain that one way to really get under President Carter’s skin was to say that this was going to look good politically, because it was like questioning the motive of doing something. He was frustrated that it was that way and that people would frame it that way. He was frustrated when he was dealing with people who were aware of the political implications of the things that he was asking them to do. To him it was a matter of you should know better, you should do the right thing.

Question: What was it about Carter that made him so appealing in 1976? Why did America choose the peanut farmer from Georgia?

Caplinger: He was a little bit of a palate cleanser, if you want to think about it. Gerald Ford, who became president when Richard Nixon resigned, had been a popular politician, but he was tarred by the fact that he pardoned Nixon. And that was not very popular at the time.

Carter’s election was sort of a pendulum swing toward somebody who was overtly moral and someone who wore that on his sleeve. He was different, and I think a lot of people voted for him thinking that we needed something different.

Question: Talk about his ability to connect with the American people while he was in office. As you noted, he was a bit of a palate cleanser after the Nixon-Ford administration. What did Carter do to almost reimagine how people think of a presidential administration coming out of Nixon-Ford?

Caplinger: In 1974, he decides to throw his hat into the ring and just camps out in Iowa, which is something that people have done since then. But it was this new thing to invest this much time and energy going to the state fair and all the things that you do in each of Iowa’s 99 counties. He connects and I think he comes across as genuine. So even when he wasn’t known nationally, people in Iowa had been seeing quite a bit of him. He would introduce himself, he would say, “I’m Jimmy Carter and I’m running for president” in his folksy way.

Question: Let’s get into his presidency now. Are there any moments from his presidency that stand out to you more than others?

Caplinger: Some of them were very positive and then others where he was having to react to crises. The oil shocks were big ones that bedeviled his presidency for a while. And then, not unrelated to this, the Iranian Revolution and then the capture of 52 hostages in the embassy in Iran later that year, 1979, came to define the last year of his presidency. 

His popularity spikes immediately after the hostages are taken, but then there’s a failed rescue attempt. After that the American populace sees him as a weak leader, whether that’s true or not.

He took some steps to give the Panama Canal back to Panama, and that played well with Latin America by making the United States look like a responsible partner instead of an imperialistic power. However, it didn’t poll well. Carter was initially hesitant to give Panama back. Then-President Gerald Ford had been working toward liberalization of the Panama Canal, but Carter was very lukewarm about it. This is something that I think would help to define Carter. When he came into the office, he had some people who were there to advise him about what had been happening. Pretty quickly, he changed his mind. It’s important to be open to that happening, learning something new and finding out that you need to be going in a different direction, and I think this is what happened to Carter with Panama.

Question: What was Carter’s leadership style during all of this? 

Caplinger: The concept of responsibility was always very important to President Carter. When you had the responsibility, that meant you’re going to do something about it. Part of this comes from his training. He believed that you could fix complex problems by studying them. He worked hard. He worked 12-hour days and read a lot, studied a lot, and when he felt like he had a solution, then he would sometimes browbeat Congress in order to get it.

He calls for conservation during his term. He comes to the American people and says we need you to treat this like it’s a big deal. He’s calling on people to sacrifice for the greater good. However, Americans generally don’t like to do that for long periods of time.

Gasoline rationing takes place in World War II and it’s somewhat successful. The difference was that people understood during World War II what the costs were. They understood why they were being called to do it. Famously in the 70’s, lots of people thought that the oil crisis was manufactured by oil companies. So part of it was that they just didn’t necessarily believe it.

The issue of gasoline rationing for Carter was actually Congress. It was seen to be the responsible thing: we need a plan because if there was a serious oil shock, there could just be bedlam at the gas pump. If there’s no plan, it would be extremely disruptive. So the idea was that you have a plan in place, not because anybody wants it; nobody wants it.

The issue with gasoline rationing is that there are winners and losers. At some level, Carter understood that and he was willing to let Congress figure out a plan. Congress was not able to do it; it was not able to make it happen. And when Congress fails in doing it, Carter gets out his wagging finger and chastises them for not thinking of the nation before their locale.

Question: Let’s discuss his post-presidency now. Can you talk a little bit about how his personality style became so productive, and what do you think drove him to continue making these impacts after the White House?

Caplinger: He was by far the longest ex-president that we’ve had. I do think it’s important to see a lot of what he was doing as a continuation of things that he started, in many cases in the White House

If you take a look at his work with elections, an outgrowth of peace initiatives, and other priorities, he’s able to be successful in a lot of these efforts because of the priorities that he had in the White House. The mechanism for this is the Carter Center. It’s his presidential library, but it’s also a form of think tank. It’s this very, very active place that is working on the things that Carter valued. So he was, I think, seen as an honest broker.

Question: When it comes to being in the White House, a lot of the job is learning how to do it on the fly. If you could sum up the biggest lesson on how to be president that we learned from President Carter, what do you think that lesson would be?

Caplinger: There’s a lot of cautionary tales of what not to do. We learned you don’t get to just govern; you have to build allies. I do think that a good relationship with Congress is something that is essential. You’ve got to have a good team that knows how to do that.

On the positive side, Carter is responsible for getting the United States behind human rights as being a defining part of what foreign policy should be. I think that’s a good message to lead by.

To listen to Caplinger’s full conversation on President Carter’s life and legacy, .

Question: They’re connected, but they’re pointed in different directions. What do you mean?

Parten: Antietam, if we take Antietam in and of itself, strategically, it was really important because it forced the Confederate Army out of the North. Antietam is a creek in Maryland. It was part of the Confederate Army’s invasion of the North. It’d be the first invasion of the North. The second would end at  Gettysburg. And like Gettysburg, Antietam mattered because it forced the Confederate Army to retreat. They could have kept marching into D.C. further north to Philadelphia, or elsewhere. So from a strategic perspective, it’s really important because it prolonged the war and allowed the U.S. to eventually win the war in the long run.

Also, Antietam was important because it was so bloody. It was a disastrous battle. It was incredibly bloody, incredibly violent. It led to an inordinate number of deaths and it had the effect on the country, similar to what the Battle of Shiloh had, which was fought just a few months earlier. In April of 1862, Shiloh was one of the first big battles that basically woke everyone up to the fact that this was going to be a long war. This was not going to be a flash in the pan. It wasn’t going to end in a year. It would be a multi-year affair costing countless lives and needing countless numbers of resources to expend a more sophisticated federal state to fight this war.

Question: When it comes to the Battle of Antietam, even with the 23,000 dead, it was clearly a union advantage coming out of it. But still, both sides took devastating losses with more than 10,000 lost on both sides. How was it that it was a turning point so significantly when both sides took such drastic hits?

Parten: It’s a turning point because at the time the Union Army had been suffering a series of defeats. Robert Lee thought that if he marched his army into Maryland, there was actually this kind of substratum of Confederate support in Maryland. They didn’t find that. And then, more importantly, they were defeated. It deterred the army from the North and forced them, the Confederate Army that is,  back into Virginia. That’s why it’s seen as a Union victory. It’s sort of a moment where public opinion begins to turn a little bit.

This is a moment where Northerners and Northerner electorate begin to think that maybe this war can be won. It’s a moment where morale is high, and that’s why Lincoln issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation when he did. His cabinet knew this at the time, but he had been preparing that document for much of 1862. He’d been talking about it behind closed doors. However, because the army was getting beat so badly, if he announced it too soon, it would seem like a desperate plea for help, basically, or an act of desperation.

And so it was decided that they would wait for a decisive victory, for morale to rise and then release the document. Antietam is that battle that gives Lincoln and his advisers the confidence to announce the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation. So that’s why the two moments are linked the way that they are, and why they point in different directions, so to speak. They matter for what the war looked like on the ground, strategically, but also what the war would mean and what it would ultimately be about

Question: We all know the Emancipation Proclamation, but it’s that word “preliminary” that may be unknown to some readers. What is the difference between the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation and the actual Emancipation Proclamation itself?

Parten: The preliminary Emancipation Proclamation was really a threat to the Confederate Army. It’s a preliminary document that would go into effect on Jan. 1, 1863, if the Confederate government didn’t come to the negotiating table, which they didn’t. 

The government basically said that they would free enslaved people in the rebellious states unless the Confederate Army came to the negotiating table and basically surrendered and ended the war. Lincoln gave the Confederate government until Jan. 1 of 1863,  knowing that that was a non-starter, it was never going to happen. But again, emancipation was not popular in the country at the time. And so this is Lincoln, in part, reading public opinion and putting his feelers out and trying to gauge where the general public was and what they would be willing to support. So by giving the Confederate government this option, this potential way out, Lincoln was opening the door to kind of soothing the public’s mind, showing that he’s doing everything he can to end the war as peacefully and as fast as possible, even if it meant retaining the status-quo.

Question: You’ve lived along the East Coast for most of your life, and you’ve been studying this era of American culture and history in these parts of the country. What is it about studying in Georgia that makes it different from studying in the other states you’ve lived in?

Parten: The Civil War in Georgia is one of, if not the state’s most transformative moments,  you know its a formative historical moment. The Battle of Atlanta, Sherman’s march through Georgia, his taking up Savannah; these are colossal historical forces that have shaped the state that we live in. There’s a level of familiarity, proximity, too, to that history. And it’s also just kind of on the roadsides. We can see it on historical markers and in other other ways as well. 

My grandmother’s a great example. She grew up in Dalton, Georgia, right alongside a railroad track. And she talks about as children one of her favorite pastimes with her cousins was to go back and to find basically minnieballs and other artifacts from the Civil War. They were just  right in their backyard. And so there was a certain level of living history to the Civil War in the South, especially, that you can’t quite find anywhere else.

One ����Vlog graduate student has been exploring the coastal Lowcountry and visiting residents’ homes to reveal the maritime history where families live.

Public history major Sadie Ingram is studying the history of Gullah Geechee oystermen and their role in developing the region both economically and culturally.

“I didn’t realize exactly how broad the subject was when I first started it,” Ingram said. “Something I’m really interested in is looking at the effects of government regulation on independent oystermen and then the big canneries, and also looking along race lines. How did these government regulations affect African-American oystermen versus white oystermen?”

Knoerl, based primarily on the Armstrong Campus in Savannah, has a history of exposing his students to adventures in the Lowcountry. His students have taken several trips to Gullah Geechee sites to find artifacts and study the maritime archaeology of the region.

His work has drawn the attention of national media companies and documentary producers, along with a strong reputation among his students.

“Sometimes you have questions while you’re reading documents or about what was going on in the past,” Knoerl said. “Until you put yourself in the physical environment that it was actually occurring in, sometimes you won’t even know the questions or the answers that you’re missing until you get out there and see it.”

Some students based on the Statesboro Campus enjoy the exploratory trips in the Savannah area because it adds that extra layer to their projects. Ingram is one of those students. She said it not only helps her apply her research, but it opens unexpected doors to advance her research.

“When you interview somebody and their family’s history, that’s not something that you always get that’s written down,” she said. “People don’t always just write down what their grandparents did or how these things came to be in their family. That’s something that you can find by going out to these different sites as well and getting those oral history interviews with those people.”
All of Ingram’s research will be completed next year, and will be put on display within the ����Vlog Museum’s larger exhibit, “Charted Worlds: The Cultural History of Georgia’s Coastal Plain.”

Savannah holds some of the richest history this country has to offer. One ����Vlog student is making it easier to interact with that history.

Mark O’Dell will graduate with a public history master’s degree through the College of Arts and Humanities in the 2022 Spring Commencement ceremony. In his free time, you can find him scouring through the archives of the Georgia Historical Society. Other times, you can find him working in a cemetery.

“A few years back, I took photos for the cemetery conservation department as a fun way to do volunteer work,” said O’Dell. “When it came time to decide what my thesis project was going to be, I wanted to see if I could incorporate some of the stories that I had been gathering.”

That’s exactly what he did.

Two cemeteries of focus through his research have been the North and South Laurel Grove cemeteries on Ogeechee Road in Savannah. When the grounds were established in the 1850s, they were segregated.

“Family histories often lead us to the end of someone’s lifetime, which is in the cemetery,” said O’Dell. “So, I like to explore cemeteries, not just for the family history information aspect, but for the art that’s in there. And just some of the interesting stories that can be found in the cemetery.”

His work goes further than learning the names and stories of those to whom history gave a smaller spotlight. Throughout his research, he features the philanthropic organizations which helped build the region more than 100 years ago.

”I think the subject material is something that I would like to see other people work on or discover more about, and bring to the public’s eye,” said O’Dell. “It’s kind of like telling the story from the ground up by finding these people’s lives that mattered. It’s especially helpful when learning about Savannah’s history and what Savannah is now.”

The tours can be found at .

����Vlog history professor Kathleen Comerford, Ph.D., turned to an unlikely source for her students’ research projects after access to primary sources was limited during the COVID-19 pandemic. The students were tasked with writing Wikipedia articles as their projects, which changed the way the students and Comerford looked at Wikipedia’s usefulness in higher education.

General encyclopedias like Wikipedia aren’t typically used in higher education due to the synthesized nature and overarching narrative of the articles, Comerford explained. However, she felt as if using Wikipedia would be a great way for students to communicate the history they learned throughout their projects. 

Comerford first used Wikipedia in her HIST 2500 course, which doesn’t require a major research paper and is made up of non-history majors, many of whom are interested in teaching in a K-12 setting. She then decided to use similar methods in her 4000-level class, which has a major research requirement.

“It seemed to me a good fit to have them engage in a project which brought history to the people,” Comerford said. “Wikipedia is a resource for many people wanting to learn about a topic, so writing the articles is a way of teaching. I had the HIST 2500 students work on stubs — those very brief pages which were on topics of enough interest to merit an article, but which did not yet have one.”

The classes were a part of the Wikipedia Student Program, a Wikipedia-led training and collaboration program for students to communicate aspects of the course subjects to an audience with some interest in, but little background knowledge of, the subject. Wikipedia Student Program staff communicate with professors throughout the semester to turn the subject matter into articles written by students in the class. The students also learned how to critique existing Wikipedia articles.

“I have a new appreciation for Wikipedia editors and Wikipedia itself,” said Katherine Shaffer, who took both courses featuring the Wikipedia projects. “A lot of work goes into making those articles and it’s pretty amazing that such a wealth of information is available to the public for free. However, after learning how to properly critique Wikipedia articles I have seen many that have unreliable sources or unsupported information, so I make sure to double check information now.”

Sadie Ingram, who graduated in May, said the skills she learned in Comerford’s class will be useful in her career.

“I took Dr. Comerford’s HIST 2500 course as an elective, and I didn’t expect to learn as much as I did,” she said. “I think that having students do research for a Wikipedia article of their choosing teaches and strengthens basic research and citation skills, and how to write for a public audience. My field is public history, so those kinds of skills are my bread and butter. I would definitely apply this to a summer camp or educational school program in relation to a historic site or event.”

Although the idea to feature Wikipedia in her classes came as a pivot during the pandemic, Comerford said she will probably continue to use Wikipedia, particularly in her HIST 2500 classes.

“There were times during each semester when I thought I must have been crazy to do something new when I was already doing so many new things,” Comerford said. “I hope that the students, who were also overwhelmed with changes, have learned that writing good history doesn’t just mean getting good information; it also means writing well, and for a broad audience. Based on the feedback they gave me as part of the assignment, I believe that they have indeed learned that.”

For more information on the Georgia Southern Department of History, visit .

Jessica Forsee’s professional goal has always been to make history available to as many people as possible. As a graduate student in the ����Vlog Department of History, Forsee has been able to work toward her goal by curating exhibits, doing research and helping with daily tasks as an intern at the Savannah River Site (SRS) Museum.

The SRS Museum is located in Aiken, South Carolina, and focuses on interpreting the history and scientific impact of the nuclear production plant, known as the Savannah River Site, near Aiken.

Forsee helped curate two virtual exhibits on how the Cold War affected the small towns in the Aiken area from 1950 through the 1970s. The first exhibit commemorates the 70th anniversary of the Savannah River Plant’s construction with major partners in the Aiken area. Forsee worked with the Savannah River Archeological Research Program at the University of South Carolina on the exhibit, which opened in November 2020. 

Forsee’s newest curated exhibit, “Nuclear Culture: Aiken and Savannah River Plant Life during the Cold War,” is an interpretation of how the Savannah River Plant workers transformed Southern industry and culture including gender norms, race relations and community development at the height of the Cold War. Forsee was able to use technology and research skills she learned in her history classes to build the online exhibit.

“My most memorable experience with ‘Nuclear Culture’ was working with the curation facility at the Savannah River Site and coordinating the artifact loans of over 15 items with the curator, Melissa Hanson,” Forsee said. “Learning how to tell the story of SRS through objects is incredibly important when it comes to exhibit curation. Getting to bring to life the experiences of the everyday worker at SRS during the Cold War made ‘Nuclear Culture’ such an exciting project from the very beginning.”

The Department of History’s Public History Coordinator Michael Van Wagenen, Ph.D., served as one of Forsee’s advisors, helping her with brainstorming sessions, reviewing drafts of her written materials and providing moral support.

“The Master of Arts in History degree program is geared toward providing our students with real-world, professional experiences such as Jessica’s,” Van Wagenen said. “Many of our students who complete these projects go on to work in museums, historic sites, state and national parks, and other places where history is taught both in and out of a formal classroom setting.”

After graduating in May, Forsee will take the first step in her postgraduate career as a historian with the United States Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) at Hurlburt Field, Florida. She said her internship has prepared her to step into her career and immediately begin making an impact on the visibility of public history.

“I 100% believe that my internship prepared me for the next steps in my career because I’ll be tasked with curation and collection upkeep to preserve the long history of AFSOC,” Forsee said. “My internship at the SRS Museum taught me how to take the technical and scientific accomplishments of SRS employees and add in a humanities interpretation to bring to life the larger history of SRS during the Cold War, and at AFSOC, I’ll continue to do the same.”

For more information about the SRS Museum and to view some of Forsee’s work, visit . To learn more about the Department of History, visit .

Savannah is drenched in history, but many of the city’s stories often go untold. Four ����Vlog history students aim to shed light on these untold stories as a part of their project, Savannah History Remix. 

The project, developed by graduate students Lauren Della Piazza Hartke, R. Dalton Bryant, Noah Prince, and Dalton Blackmon, is a series of walking tours featuring lesser-known stories of Savannah’s history. Hartke, Blackmon and Prince will have a virtual discussion about the project on Oct. 23 at 6 p.m.

The tours were set to debut in April and take place in groups, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the tours were modified to be self-guided through Emory University’s OpenTour platform. 

“The walking tours seemed like the safest bet and a good opportunity to learn some digital skills,” said Assistant Professor of history Alena Pirok, Ph.D., who is overseeing the project. “The tours intend to bring new and useful historical information to the city, its residents and the historical tourism industry.”

When the project began, the students identified subjects not found on commercial tours of Savannah, including modern immigration, laborers, common people of Savannah and the LGBTQ community. Hartke created the tour, “A Seat at the Table: A Social History of Savannah’s Foodways,” which revolves around the culinary history of the city.

“My goal for this project was to show how Savannah’s food scene today is the product of many years of input and contribution from many different subgroups of peoples,” she said. “I want people to understand how our notion of southern food is the product of English, West African and Native American foodways, combined with regional practices unique to Savannah’s economy and ecology.” 

Pirok said the Savannah History Remix tours have more freedom than commercial tours.

“A non-profit tour like ours does not have to worry about losing customers and money,” she said. “This gives us the freedom to take more risks and to offer new, but academically sound, historical narratives that people do not find familiar or ones that might challenge their vision of the world.”

During the Zoom discussion, the students will talk about their projects and the process of creating the tours. There will also be a preview of two tours and how to access them.

“We hope that the Zoom discussion will prompt people to go and visit the digital tour site,” Hartke said. “I hope that while we may be unable to lead in-person tours, it will provide people with the tools to get out and explore the city of Savannah on their own, in a way that is safe and informed.” 

The students will also talk about other gaps in Savannah’s history and future projects that can help bring more stories to the people of Savannah.

“We want to present people with stories they didn’t know they wanted to know,” Pirok said. “Ultimately, I would like people to walk away from the tours with some new stories about Savannah, a fresh set of eyes through which to see the old city and a sense that history is in a constant state of flux.”

To view the discussion of the project via Zoom, click . For more information about Savannah History Remix, visit