Beyond Avalon: Reclaiming the Record
How archival research recovers the names and lives the official record tried to erase — the methods, the dead ends, and what the documents actually say. Built around my first-place SCS research.
Speaking
I speak about the record — and who it left out.
Talks and workshops on archival research, public history, and the nontraditional path to the archive — for classrooms, conferences, community groups, and libraries.
Talk topics
What I speak about
Archives for Everyone
A practical, beginner-friendly workshop on doing genealogical and archival research without a university behind you: where the records live, how to read them, and how to keep a research log that holds up.
The Counter-Archive
The lens behind my 185-episode series: how history, policy, and power connect — and how ordinary people can learn to read them together.
The Nontraditional Path
Poverty, chronic illness, motherhood, a heart attack and a coma — and getting to the archive anyway. For student audiences who don't see themselves in academia yet.
On the calendar
Past & upcoming
Sep 2026
First place — UAH Summer Community of Scholars poster session
"Institutional Erasure at Avalon Plantation: Reclaiming Black History in Huntsville, Alabama."
Applied
Mid-South Sociological Association
Applied to present the Beyond Avalon research.
Applying
Public history conference
Preparing an application to present the Avalon research to a public history audience.
Book a talk
Tell me about your audience, your date, and what you're hoping people walk away with. I reply to every serious inquiry.