In the news: Public humanities students unearth history buried beneath Oxmoor Farm
Dr. Felicia Jamison (Image credit: WHAS11 News)
April 18, 2023
WHAS11 News recently spoke with Assistant Professor of History and Comparative Humanities Dr. Felicia Jamison and second-year PhD student Hayley Salo about efforts to uncover the lives of individuals who were enslaved at Oxmoor Farm, the historic homestead formerly owned and operated by the Bullitt family.
This semester, Hayley and other students in Dr. Jamison’s Introduction to Public Humanities class (HUM 590/HUM 636/HIST 504) participated in an excavation overseen by the Kentucky Archaeological Survey. The project has uncovered nails, bones from food, coins, corset hooks, straight pins, and more from beneath four buildings that were formerly dwellings for enslaved people.
In addition to participating in the excavation, students created an exhibit centered on Louisa, an enslaved woman; conducted oral histories of the descendants of the enslaved people; conducted archival research and created metadata of enslaved people in the Bullitt Family papers; and researched and wrote about how visitors may experience visiting historic sites that have slavery in their pasts.
The students will present their research publicly on Wednesday, April 19, 4:30–6:00 p.m., at Oxmoor Farm. You can register here.
For video and text versions of the WHAS11 News story, click here.
