ICJS’s programs have not only supported the work of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation. They have influenced and supported the work of staff at other historic sites, members of the scholarly community, and members of the general public. The work of ICJS departments is continually fueling new scholarship and discoveries, providing more and richer resources to understand Monticello and our shared history.


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Educational Programs - Training - Fellowships

 


Spreading the Word

Educational Programs

Monticello has hosted a variety of educational events and programs for decades; many of them were hosted under the umbrella of ICJS after its creation in 1994.
"Jefferson and Monticello" course brochure, 2008. The long-running “Jefferson and Monticello” course provided members of the general public an opportunity to learn about Jefferson and his world through 8 sessions taught by Monticello staff, offered through a partnership with the University of Virginia’s School of Continuing and Professional Studies.
Group photo of Straticello participants at Monticello, 1994. The “Straticello” seminar for K-12 educators was jointly sponsored by Monticello and Stratford Hall from 1985 to 2008. After 1994 it became part of ICJS’s portfolio.

 

Training

DAACS Summer Institute 2022
The Summer Institute at Monticello in 2022 included 17 fellows, 6 interns, DAACS staff, and visiting lecturers from across North America and the Caribbean.

Monticello’s Archaeology Department is also home to the Digital Archaeological Archive of Comparative Slavery (DAACS – http://www.daacs.org), an ambitious initiative that uses digital technologies to foster archaeological data sharing and collaboration among scholars, helping to advance our understanding of the evolution of slave societies in the early modern Atlantic.

Over the last 24 years, thanks to funding from organizations such as the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities, DAACS has grown into the largest and longest-running archive of downloadable, comparable archaeological data for any specific region or period.

A critical component of this work is training and supporting a large network of archaeologists and historians who use material culture to conduct research on the experiences of enslaved communities and their descendants in the Southeastern United States and the Caribbean.

Analysis Senior Archaeological Analyst Dr. Lindsay Bloch works with DAACS Fellow Simone Muhammad (California State University, Fullerton) to identify different types of Afro-Caribbean ware from the Estate Little Princess site located on the island of St. Croix in the US Virgin Islands.
Skills DAACS Summer Institute Fellows and interns learn DAACS identification, measurement skills and protocols. Graduate students, junior scholars, senior scholars, and DAACS staff learn together and from one another.

 


Fellowships

Under Saunders Director Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy (2003-2022), the ICJS’s international reach experienced a major expansion. To date, the ICJS has hosted over 500 domestic and international scholars from the United States, and 32 countries around the world. Our fellowships have supported not only academic historians and graduate students, but novelists, archaeologists, artists, librarians, journalists, musicians, and more. This map shows the geographic origins of all of ICJS’s fellows, illustrating the worldwide reach of our fellowship programs.

 


 

Supporting Scholarship

"The Family Letters Digital Archive – overseen by Lisa Francavilla, Retirement Series editor J. Jefferson Looney, and others at the International Center for Jefferson Studies – is a boon to scholars, students and anyone else who is interested in Martha Jefferson Randolph and her extended circle of family and friends." - Cynthia A. Kierner, Author of "Martha Jefferson Randolph, Daughter of Monticello"