List of Internships

Terms: The Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society (ACHS) is seeking 1-2 graduate or advanced undergraduate students with strong research and writing skills, a background in American history, and familiarity with genealogical research and the local history of Albemarle County and the City of Charlottesville. Previous experience with oral history research a plus. Workspace will be provided in our Downtown Charlottesville office, and the intern will have the ability to work remotely if needed. These internships pay $17/hour for graduate students and $15/hour for undergraduates, for 300 hours of work over the summer.

Goals: The ACHS is partnering with the City of Charlottesville to research, locate, and collaborate with the descendants of enslaved individuals who were buried in unmarked graves at the Pen Park cemetery, with the goal of determining the most appropriate ways to commemorate and memorialize this solemn ground. Charlottesville City Council approved a resolution on December 2, 2019, authorizing the use of funds for the archaeological evaluation of possible unmarked graves outside the enclosed family plots at the Gilmer/Craven/Hotopp Cemetery at Pen Park, which date from the late 1700s through the 1800s. Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) evaluation of the site shows the presence of 43 unmarked and unrecorded graves outside the walls of the three family plots. The evidence so far suggests that these unmarked graves are those of individuals enslaved on the site of Pen Park. Our summer interns will review existing research and archival sources, conduct new research, complete reports on specific individuals and families, and participate in oral history interviews with members of the descendant community. They will work directly with ACHS staff, contractors, and volunteers, and in close collaboration with others involved in the project, including Jeff Werner, City of Charlottesville Historic Preservation Planner; Shelley Murphy, UVA Enslaved Laborers Project Lead Researcher; Sam Towler, Local Historian and Central Virginia History Researchers member; and Lorenzo Dickerson, Maupintown Media Filmmaker and Local History Storyteller.

Outcomes: With guidance from ACHS staff, the interns will become familiar with cvillepedia.org and will write and edit wiki pages and articles for the Pen Park Cemetery Project. At the end of the internship, the interns will have added page articles to the site, and understand the processes involved with researching and writing for a local history wiki. The interns will have the opportunity to present on their work in a hybrid online/in-person public program hosted by the ACHS during the internship.

About:  The ACHS has served the local community for over 80 years, collecting, preserving, and interpreting local history. Today we are embracing technology and digital archives to expand accessibility to historical information. Cvillepedia.org was created by Charlottesville Tomorrow in 2009 and has grown to be a source for community knowledge and history of the people, places, and events in Charlottesville and Albemarle County. The ACHS, in partnership with Charlottesville Tomorrow and the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library, is initiating a comprehensive strategic plan for Cvillepedia’s future—to facilitate improvement and expansion through community partnerships, to ensure the site is an equitably accessible archive for local history, and to envision the platform as a community-driven historical resource for and by local citizens that benefits the whole community.

 

Terms: The Chickahominy Indian Tribe seeks a summer intern to assist with communications and historical documentation. The scope of work will include creating various communication materials to be distributed internally and externally, including but not limited to event and informational flyers, email blasts, social media postings, and others. In addition to communications, the successful intern will assist with creating an educational tool (or tools) that accurately depicts the Tribe’s history and can be distributed to both internal and external individuals and organizations. Such tools may include photos, videos, podcasts, and more. Assistance with data entry in the Tribe’s enrollment software, to include genealogy data, is also requested. The necessary information and training needed to successfully complete the aforementioned activities will be provided by tribal staff and those designated by tribal leadership. Most work can be conducted remotely, however, in-person attendance will be required on occasion to gather information for the creation of the educational tool (or tools). This internship pays $15.00 for 250 hours of work. 

Goals: 1. Gather information and create various tribal communications that convey pertinent information in a neat, organized, and concise format. 

2. Collect historical and present-day information to create an educational tool (or tools) that can be used internally and externally to convey accurate tribal history and information, in order to foster awareness and knowledge of the Chickahominy Tribe and Indigenous peoples. 

3. Enter data into the enrollment system to ensure records are updated and genealogy data is captured. The intern should have excellent written/oral communication skills; be proficient with Microsoft Office Suite and technology; have an interest in history and/or experience with research; work well with tribal staff, citizens, and outside agencies; ability to work independently.

Outcomes: The outcomes of this proposal include streamlining the Tribe’s communications, promoting education and awareness, and ensuring accurate records within the Tribe’s enrollment system.  

About: The Chickahominy Indian Tribe is located in Charles City County and consists of ~1,000 citizens, of which ~80% live within 1-hour of the Tribal Center. The Tribe was state recognized in 1983 and later gained recognition from the federal government as a sovereign nation in January 2018.

 

Goals: Interns will comb through public records in the county courthouses of the three counties we’re targeting, identifying sales of land by Black legislators and recording the names of those who purchased it, as well as the boundaries of their tracts. We’ll search (and make a relational database based on) property tax records, deeds, and especially land books from the 1890s and 1910s, which identified landowners by race. We will also meet with community members from Cumberland, Buckingham, and Prince Edward counties to share information and request feedback and guidance.  

Outcomes: A number of the legislators we will research, the first Black men to serve in Virginia government, amassed large acreages of land. Many of them sold tracts to formerly enslaved people who then established the farmsteads, churches, and schools that anchored “freetowns”—settlements founded by formerly enslaved Virginians during Reconstruction. Mapping Black legislators’ property holdings is a way of identifying and locating the earliest post-war Black settlements, an under-studied period of Black achievement and self-empowerment that occurred during Reconstruction before the violence and repression of the Jim Crow era intervened. Interns will use the information they find to create an annotated, publicly available ArcGIS map that shows original property holdings by legislators, and the ownership of subdivided tracts once they were sold. Essentially, this will map the very beginnings of post-war Black settlements in central Virginia, and illustrate how land was acquired and then redistributed by Black civic leaders. Interns will also create publicly available StoryMaps about each of the legislators, highlighting their roles as community builders and developers.

About: The project is a collaboration between Griffin Blvd. Archives, a public history initiative that aims to preserve local knowledge and cultural sites with the goal of reimagining rural Black landscapes in central Virginia, and the Finding Virginia’s Freetowns project at UVA, a partnership between faculty and Scholars’ Lab dedicated to identifying and mapping central Virginia “freetowns”—settlements founded by emancipated Blacks during Reconstruction.

Terms: We seek two upper-level undergraduate students with relevant coursework in American History and/or African American Studies to serve as research assistants for the 2022 Morven Summer Institute class, ARH 4500/AAS 4559: Morven’s Enslaved and Descendant Communities (May 23-June 17). The interns will enroll in the course and assist with (1) video documentation and social media posts of class activities, including field trips; (2) the transcription of archival materials, such as handwritten letters, wills, deeds, etc.; and (3) the creation of draft cultural landscape walking tours via app or pamphlet. Experience with social media and graphic design is a plus, but no prior experience or training in digital technology is required. Interns will be supervised by the course instructor, Dr. Scot French, a specialist in digital and public history. Internship start and end dates will be set by the supervisor. This internship pay of $17 per hour for 240 hours over the course of 8-10 weeks (25-30 hours per week).

Goals: Our primary goal for these paired internships are: (1) to document class activities through video and social media and build public awareness/support for ongoing research and site interpretation at Morven; and (2) to build a digital archive of student- and faculty-generated research (scanned documents, transcriptions, bibliographies, etc.) and related presentations/reports for use in ongoing research and curated displays, and (3) to create interpretive tours for the site that can be utilized to tell the complete history of the Morven property to visitors. Interns will have an opportunity to work with 19th century historical records, such as newspaper advertisements, handwritten letters, wills, and deeds.

Outcomes: Interns will contribute to video and social media documentation of the summer class and the development of an accessible/searchable digital repository of student- and faculty-generated materials that will help tell the story of Morven’s enslaved and descendant communities. Interns will gain valuable experience in videography and social media, historical research, and digital humanities tools/methods.

About: The 2,913-acre UVA Foundation-owned property known today as Morven has a complex, multi-layered history spanning thousands of years of human occupation. Located in southwestern Albemarle County, not far from Monticello, the site has attracted new interest from researchers since its acquisition by UVA in 2001. Today, Morven is home to a multi-disciplinary research and teaching initiative known as the Morven Summer Institute. ARCH 4500/AAS 4559 Morven’s Enslaved and Descendant Communities (May 23-June 17) invites students to explore the lives and labors of African Americans at Morven through a combination of lectures, discussions, field trips, and guided research. Led by co-instructors Lenora McQueen and Scot French, students will learn about each of the site’s distinct periods of occupation, from 17th and 18th century Monacan Indian encampments to the British land grant era of the Carter Estate (1730s-1790s), post-Revolutionary Era experiments in small-scale tenant farming and agricultural reform at William Short’s “Indian Camp” (1790s-1810s), and the rise of large-scale plantation slavery under David Higginbotham (1820s-1853) and D.G. Smith (1853-1865). Students will also explore the post-emancipation transition to free labor systems (sharecropping, tenancy, wage labor) and the formation of descendant communities throughout Albemarle County. Students will maintain research blogs, work in small groups to examine/interpret primary sources, report new findings, and produce a multimedia or poster-style project for public presentation at Morven.

 

Terms: In partnership with the County Archaeologist and the Office of Historic Preservation, the Historical Commission seek an intern to conduct a local historical research project. The intern must demonstrate the ability to work independently; possess strong oral and written communications skills; and organizational skills. The candidate must have access to housing and transportation to the office and research repositories. Hybrid options may be available in consultation with the selected candidate, but in-person attendance at monthly Historical Commission meetings is required. The intern’s workspace will be in the Planning Office, at 5 County Complex Court, Suite 210, Prince William, VA, and, or in the offices of the Historic Preservation, in the Williams Ordinary at 17674 Main Street, Dumfries, VA 22026. This internship is not to exceed 300 hours and the intern will be allotted a stipend of $4,500.

Goals:  Study a now “disappeared” Prince William County settlement/community and the reasons for its disappearance. Conduct archival research to determine the location of the community and provide as much contextual information as possible, given the availability of records. Final product will include an article for the Journal of Prince William County History and a digital report that will be publicly accessible on the Office of Historic Preservation website. The selected intern will also make a final presentation to the Historical Commission at the conclusion of their internship.

Outcomes: Attendance at and reporting to the Prince William County Historical Commission during its regularly scheduled monthly meeting is required. These meetings take place on the second Tuesday of the month at 7:30 pm at 5 County Complex Court, Suite 210, Prince William, VA. The summer meeting dates are June 13, July 11, and August 15.

 

Terms: Stratford Hall seeks an advanced undergraduate intern majoring in African American Studies, History, Anthropology, or Public History for a six-week internship focusing on African American descendant engagement. Successful candidates will have demonstrated interest in community engagement, program planning, historical research, and public history. Intern must be able to work 30-40 hours a week, including the weekend of July 22-23, when Stratford holds its annual First Africans Day. Stratford Hall is located in Westmoreland County, Virginia, and offers on-site housing as part of the internship package. This internship will pay $15 per hour for 260 hours of work, schedule to be negotiated with the employer. 

Goals and Outcomes: The intern will work under the direction of Vice President of Collections and Public Engagement, Dr. Kelley Fanto Deetz, and duties will be in support of Stratford Hall’s dedication to descendant engagement, including historical research, assisting with oral history and documentary film production, community outreach, event planning, and general office duties as assigned.

About: Stratford Hall is a National Historic Landmark located in Westmoreland County, VA nestled along the Potomac River. A publicly accessible museum and historic site for over ninety years and home to the only two brothers to have signed the Declaration of Independence, Stratford Hall will leverage the upcoming 250th Anniversary of the birth of our nation to reintroduce our broad and diverse stories to our communities and stakeholders.

 

Terms: Advanced undergraduate or graduate student with background in American history. The intern will work with the President’s Commission on the University in the Age of Segregation on the history of the University of Virginia, 1865-1965. This will involve archival research, document photographing, and professional transcription/editing of historical documents. Intern should demonstrate strong organizational and analytic skills, ability to work independently, and write clearly. Hybrid work options available. These internships pay $15/hr.

Goals: Primary responsibilities include archival research, document photographing, and professional documentary transcription (we will train first), proofreading, and writing of descriptive primary document-based essays as part of the university’s public confronting of its own difficult past. Interns will also learn Omeka metadata entry to prepare documents for publication on the PCUAS website.

Outcome: The intern will be expected to complete specific tasks as outlined above. At the end of the summer, the intern will have a detailed understanding of both the technical processes involved in archival research, public history, and the post-1865 history of the University of Virginia.

About: The President’s Commission on the University in the Age of Segregation (PCUAS) is co-directed by Andrea Douglas, Executive Director of the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center and Kirt von Daacke, Professor (History) and Assistant Dean, College of Arts & Sciences. PCUAS is funded by the President’s Office and is charged with exploring and reporting on UVA’s historical relationship with the era of segregation, especially as it connects to the Charlottesville/Albemarle community.

About: The President’s Commission on the University in the Age of Segregation (PCUAS) is co-directed by Andrea Douglas, Executive Director of the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center and Kirt von Daacke, Professor (History & American Studies) and Assistant Dean, College of Arts & Sciences. PCUAS is funded by the President’s Office and is charged with exploring and reporting on UVA’s historical relationship with the era of segregation, especially as it connects to the Charlottesville/Albemarle community.

Virginia Museum of History and Culture  - POSITION FILLED