Mapping Black Religion is a black digital history project aimed at exploring black religious life and political developments during the 19th century. It is based on research conducted by Nicole Myers Turner and is brought to the web through collaborative work between the Virginia Commonwealth University AltLab and Cabell Library Digital Scholarship Staff.
Todd Easter – As a member of the Digital Engagement Department, Todd Easter designs and optimizes web applications and websites. Focusing on inclusive design and web accessibility compliance, he strives to write clean code and deliver impactful web experiences.
Before joining VCU Libraries in 2017, Easter worked with multiple businesses and agencies as a freelancer. He studied engineering at the University of Delaware.
Jeff Everhart – Jeff Everhart is a web developer, teacher, and technologist. Jeff built his first client website in WordPress in 2011, and taught his first online English class in 2013. Since then he has been a passionate advocate for exploiting the intersections between technology, teaching, and the internet. Jeff holds BA and MA degrees in English from Longwood University and currently is working on a graduate certificate in GIS from VCU. As a staunch supporter of OER, Jeff developed and launched an open website for students and teachers of American Romanticism that got 10K monthly views until it was hacked. He (somewhat) jokingly asserts that he taught himself how to program because it seemed faster than counting all of the exclamation points in Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass(1855). It wasn’t actually any faster, but in the 1855 version there are 1227.
Nicole Myers Turner, PhD- Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, Yale University (formerly of Virginia Commonwealth University). My research explores the relationship between black religion and politics. This project emerged from research conducted for my first book, Soul Liberty: The Evolution of Black Religious Politics in Postemancipation Virginia (UNC Press, 2020) and my interest in exploring the affordances of the digital humanities and the augmentation brought through black studies and black digital humanities.
Erin White – Leading the Digital Engagement department, Erin White directs the strategy for web infrastructure, digitization, digital collections and digital scholarship for VCU Libraries.
Notable recent collaborations include Mapping the Second Ku Klux Klan, 1915-1940, Digital Virginias, and leading VCU Libraries’ 2018 Gender-Inclusive Library Workgroup.
Deeply interested in the intersections of social justice and the digital world, White presents and writes about library IT management, user experience, critical digital scholarship and diversity and inclusion in libraries.
Tom Woodward – Tom is interested in how technology allows you to think. His educational philosophy is influenced by Maria Montessori, Seymour Papert, and Bret Victor. Tom has spent the last eighteen years focused on blending constructivism and technology in K12 and higher education. His interests include multimedia creation, data visualization, history, APIs, poetry, WordPress, and photography. He continues to try to create new and interesting approaches to learning that take advantage of the important parts of our real world while using technology to expand and extend learning opportunities digitally.
