Discover the Past for Yourself

New American History is designed to foster and empower curiosity.

Drawing on partner projects such as Bunk and American Panorama, New American History offers high-quality, open-access resources about the American past.

Our Learning Resources are designed primarily for middle-and high-school history and social studies teachers interested in harnessing the power of digital media in their classrooms. Correlated with national standards and informed by inquiry-based pedagogy, the Learning Resources can help teachers make the most of what New American History offers.

Our work is based at the University of Richmond and made possible by generous gifts from alumni and trustees of the university. Our Learning Resources also reflect the contributions of many partners and collaborators in schools and public history organizations around the country. We are especially grateful for our partnership with the University of Richmond’s Digital Scholarship Lab, which produces innovative and prize-winning projects focused on spatial exploration of the American past.

Our Sources

• Learning Resources

  A digital library of new ways to teach America's past in light of the present

  learn.newamericanhistory.org

• Bunk History

  A shared home for the web’s most interesting writing and thinking about the American past

  bunkhistory.org

• American Panorama

  A portfolio of innovative and interactive historical maps of the United States

  dsl.richmond.edu/panorama

• BackStory

  A full archive of the long-running radio program and podcast about U.S. history

  backstory.newamericanhistory.org

• Future of America's Past

  A public television series visiting places where American history was made

  pbs.org/show/future-americas-past

• Valley of the Shadow

  A searchable historical archive of two communities in the American Civil War

  valley.newamericanhistory.org

New American History is made possible by generous gifts and the collaboration of students and staff at the University of Richmond.

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About the Team

New American History

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  Edward Ayers

  Executive Director

  Ed Ayers is University Professor of the Humanities and President Emeritus at the University of Richmond. He conceived of New American History and Bunk after four decades of teaching, writing, and promoting history in the United States. The projects of New American History seek to fulfill the recognition Ed received when he was awarded the National Humanities Medal: making American history accessible to everyone.

  Learn more about Ed on his website, or follow him on Twitter.

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  Annie Evans

  Director of Education and Outreach

  Annie Evans has spent over half her life teaching history, civics, and geography in Virginia’s K12 public schools. With New American History, she collaborates with a network of educators across the country to create learning resources to inspire the next generation of educators, public historians, and community leaders. Embracing inquiry and place-based learning, she serves as co-coordinator of the Virginia Geographic Alliance and a National Geographic Grosvenor Teacher Fellow and Certified Educator.

  Explore New American History’s Learning Resources, and share your feedback with Annie on Twitter.

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  Julian Maxwell Hayter

  Education and Outreach Collaborator

  Julian Hayter is a historian whose research focuses on modern U.S. history, American political development, African-American history, and the American civil rights movement. He teaches courses on African American history and politics in the Jepson School at the University of Richmond, and more widely engages K16 educators and students in exploring these topics in collaboration with New American History.

  He is the author of The Dream Is Lost: Voting Rights and the Politics of Race in Richmond, Virginia. His work has been published in the Journal of Policy History and Richmond Journal of Law and Public Interest. He also contributes to national and local media outlets.

Bunk

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  Tony Field

  Editor

  Tony Field has worked at the intersection of journalism and history scholarship for well over a decade. He co-created Bunk with Ed Ayers in 2016, and in 2008, was the founding senior producer of BackStory. He has also worked as a producer on many other radio shows and podcasts, including NPR's On the Media, Radiolab, and Slate’s Amicus.

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  Kathryn Ostrofsky

  Digital Archive Coordinator

  Kathryn Ostrofsky holds a PhD in History and a MLIS. She has taught history at Angelo State University and Clark University, and managed the Dedham Historical Society’s archives and library. Her work at Bunk continues her efforts to foster collaboration between scholars and archivists and mobilize digital technologies to make humanities resources more widely accessible.

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Digital Scholarship Lab

The Digital Scholarship Lab in the University of Richmond’s Boatwright Library is directed by Robert K. Nelson.

The Digital Scholarship Lab has developed a number of widely used and acclaimed digital history projects, most notably American Panorama, which received the 2019 Roy Rosenzweig Prize for Innovation in Digital History from the American Historical Association and was named a tech innovation by the Chronicle of Higher Education in 2016. “Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America” received Honorable Mention for the 2019 Garfinkel Prize from the American Studies Association’s Digital Humanities Caucus. Other digital history projects from the DSL include Mining the Dispatch and a remediated, enhanced version of Charles Paullin’s 1932 Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States.