Meet Patrick Nugent, the new deputy director of the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, at a talk and public conversation titled “History, Hip-Hop, and Place,” on Nov. 10 at 4:30 p.m. The talk, located in Hynson Lounge, will be free and open to the public.
Nugent will discuss the intersection of place, race, and environment from his background as a writer, educator, historical tour guide, and doctor of philosophy in American studies. At Washington College, he teaches environmental and cultural studies alongside classes for the history department.His fall semester offering, “Activist/Artist,” will be followed in the spring by a course entitled “America in the 1960s.”He serves as a George’s Brigade mentor and often works with students to develop co-curricular projects and internships. Much of his work extends into the larger community, from developing a Chestertown walking and kayaking tour to spearheading public history projects focused on the history of the Chesapeake Bay.
Over the past ten years, Nugent has taught and designed courses for the English department at Brooklyn College and the Department of American Studies at George Washington University. His unique touch has been guiding students on local explorations including such trips as “African-American Migrations in the Nation’s Capital” and “Ecological Landscapes in the Big Apple.” He welcomes students, citizens, staff, and faculty alike to join him in similar explorations of Chestertown and the surrounding Eastern Shore.
About Washington College: Founded in 1782 under the patronage of George Washington, Washington College is a private, independent college of liberal arts and sciences located in colonial Chestertown on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Based in the Custom House along the colonial waterfront, the College’s C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience fosters the art of written history and explores our nation’s past—particularly the legacy of its Founding era—in innovative ways, through educational programs, scholarship and public outreach. For more information on the Center and the Patrick Henry Writing Fellowship, visit https://starrcenter.washcoll.edu.
A team of students from the College’s C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience is setting out this summer to record a series of oral history interviews with people who lived in Chestertown and its surrounding area of Kent and Queen Anne’s Counties during World War II. The student researchers seek to chronicle the local wartime experience through the stories of those who experienced it. Potential interviewees might be veterans, family members of veterans, or simply people who lived in this area and remember things like blackouts, bond drives, munitions factories, and the presence of German POWs at local farms. Our students welcome memories of how the wartime experience involved men, women, and children from all backgrounds and walks of life, whether in uniform or as civilians.