In this episode, Matt talks with Dr. Alena Pirok about her recently published book The Spirit of Colonial Williamsburg, which covers the intersection of belief in ghosts, public perception of history, and ghost tourism.
Dr. Alena Pirok is an assistant professor of US History at Georgia Southern University. She holds a Ph.D. and MA in history from the University of South Florida, and a BA from Southern Illinois University. Her research looks at interpretation, historical institutions, and lore. Her first book The Spirits of Colonial Williamsburg: Ghosts and Interpreting the Recreated Past will be available through the University of Massachusetts Press’s Public History in Historical Perspective series in September 2022.
Email: apirok@georgiasouthern.edu
This episode was written by Matthew Armstrong with music by Matthew Armstrong and production by Kaylia Metcalfe.
There is no transcript for this episode.
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Sources and Show Notes
The Spirit of Colonial Williamsburg (Sales Link)
Battle of Williamsburg (Civil War)
Horton, Ann – Slavery a Public History: The Tough Stuff of American Memory
Mitchell and Webb – Are We the Baddies?
Williamsburg Slave Auction Recreation
Sources:
Miles, Tiya. 2015. Tales From the Haunted South: Dark Tourism and Memories of Slavery from the Civil War Era. The University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill NC.
Pirok, Alena. 2019. Goodwin’s Ghosts: Colonial Williamsburg’s Uncanny Legacy. The Public Historian, Vol. 41, No. 3 (August 2019), pp. 9–30.
Pirok, Alena. 2022. The Spirit of Colonial Williamsburg: Ghosts and Interpreting the Recreated Past. University of Massachusetts Press, Boston, MA.
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