Academic Research

The Red Hill Cemetery Project promotes research related to the history of the cemetery, the community it served, and the lives of those interred within it. Current faculty, staff, and student projects include historical and genealogical research, descendant community oral histories, geographic information systems (GIS) story maps, ground-penetrating radar (GPR) and LIDAR surveys.

COMMUNITY PRESENTATIONS

To build community by sharing the history and memory of Red Hill Cemetery in Waycross, UNF students and faculty present their work in regional venues. These include oral and multimedia presentations, roundtable discussions, and research panels.

DOCUMENTING RED HILL: A HISTORIC AFRICAN AMERICAN CEMETERY IN WAYCROSS, GEORGIA 

UNF in collaboration with the Okefenokee Heritage Center

Saturday, October 14, 2023, 10 – 11:30 a.m.
Mandarin Library, Jacksonville, Florida

UNF faculty and staff participated in the Southern Genealogist’s Exchange Society’s (SGES) lecture series and presented their research on the Red Hill Cemetery Project. This presentation brought together research concerning historic burial grounds and cemeteries; the cultural contexts of cemetery research and community engagement including Red Hill Cemetery as Archive: Preserving Black History through Oral History; and the multifaceted efforts to commemorate and document such spaces.

SGES, established in 1964, continually adds to the genealogical knowledge base of its members, exposes the general public to genealogy pursuits, assists individuals in the compilation of family histories, records and preserves genealogical records, and consistently furthers the interest in accurate genealogical research methods.

Participants

Dr. David Sheffler and Dr. Felicia Bevel, Department of History
Michael Boyles, Center for Instruction and Research Technology

Hosts

Alana Masters and Jim Vearil, Southern Genealogist’s Exchange Society

CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS

To publicize the history and memory of Red Hill Cemetery in Waycross, UNF students and faculty have presented their work in regional and national scholarly venues. These include poster presentations, roundtable discussions, and research panels.

HISTORIC CEMETERIES IN CULTURAL CONTEXTS
LOCAL TO GLOBAL

October 24-25, 2022
Clemson University, Clemson, South Carolina

Preserving Black History at Red Hill Cemetery

• Moderator: Dr. David Sheffler, University of North Florida
• Red Hill Cemetery as Archive: Preserving Black History Through Memory and Space
  Dr. Felicia Bevel, University of North Florida
• (Re-)Marking the Unmarked: Ground-Penetrating Radar at Red Hill Cemetery
  Kelley Melendez, University of North Florida
  Dr. Gordon Rakita, University of North Florida
• Interpreting Red Hill Cemetery: Memorialization and Marginalization of Black World War I Veterans
  Amarilys Sánchez, University of North Florida

View photo galleries and learn more about UNF's experience at the Clemson 2022 Research Symposium

SECOND ANNUAL FLORIDA DIGITAL HUMANITIES CONSORTIUM CONFERENCE

April 2, 2022
Flagler College, St. Augustine, Florida

AFRICANA STUDIES AND DIGITAL HUMANITIES ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSION

• Dr. David Sheffler, University of North Florida
• Dr. Felicia Bevel, University of North Florida
• Carol Lynne Hemmingway, University of North Florida

UNF CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS

UNF undergraduate students, graduate students and faculty from all colleges present their research or creative projects to the public. In both in-person and virtual modes, these are environments in which students can hone their research synopsis and presentation skills by demonstrating their work and interacting with peers, faculty, and various interested attendees. Projects may be in varying stages of development when they are exhibited at these conferences.

Select each image to enlarge poster

UNF DIGITAL PROJECTS SHOWCASE 2020
November 9-13, 2020

Red Hill Cemetery Project: Creating a Cultural Heritage DatabaseAccessing Red Hill: Using Omeka S to Document and Preserve an African American Cemetery

Authors
Carol Hemmingway, Laura Bullard, Dr. David Sheffler, Michael Boyles

ACADEMIC COURSES

Blackness in Archives
SPRING 2022
AMH 4991 — 16 Undergraduate Students
AMH 5992 — 2 Graduate Students

Dr. Felicia Bevel, Department of History

COURSE DESCRIPTION
In this thematically organized course, we will first explore the archive as a site of both violence and resistance, as a space of erasure and recovery. This will involve reading a range of interdisciplinary texts that offer theoretical approaches related to Black bodies and spaces in/as archives. During the second half of the semester, we will apply our conversations about Blackness and archives to a local site — the Red Hill Cemetery, an African American cemetery in Waycross, Georgia that the UNF Department of History and the Okefenokee Heritage Center are currently documenting and archiving. The final project for this course will be to construct a historical narrative of this cemetery and the surrounding community, which will be included on the project website. We will visit the cemetery and heritage center together as well.

Death, History, and the Digital Humanities
SPRING 2020
HIS 4936 — 20 Undergraduate Students
HIS 5934 — 3 Graduate Students

Dr. Leah Richier, Department of History

COURSE DESCRIPTION
In this seminar, we will face our mortality — and that of all the humans who have lived before us. Often we study history alienated and distant from our subjects, imagining them as almost unreal. In contrast, this course will have us contemplating some of humanity’s most serious subjects: impermanence, sacred spaces and rituals, and the diverse treatment of the dying and dead. Our major project will be visiting the site, Red Hill Cemetery, in Waycross, Georgia — an abandoned African-American cemetery held sacred by the community until around the mid-twentieth century.

Economic Geography and Geographic Information Systems
FALL 2019
GEO 6506 — 8 Graduate Students

Dr. Chris Baynard, Department of Economics and Geography

COURSE DESCRIPTION
This course trains graduate GIS students on remote sensing image acquisition methods and teaches STEM skills such as microcomputer assembly Python coding. Skills are applied in fields such as archaeology, conservation and land management.

ROUNDTABLE DISCUSSIONS

How to Research Local Black History
Wednesday, February 24, 2021, 3 – 4 p.m.

A roundtable discussion hosted by Dr. Felicia Bevel of the UNF Department of History with Dr. Yolanda L. Rivers (Okefenokee Black Heritage Committee), Willie Character (Okefenokee Black Heritage Committee), Mitch Hemann (Jacksonville Historical Society) and Kimberlyn Elliott (Lincolnville Museum and Cultural Center). Hosted by UNF’s Digital Humanities Institute.