JMU Campus History Resources

Interested in learning more about the history of James Madison University? Here are some sources to get you started.

Crowley, Sean. James Madison University, 1908-909 to 1958-195: An Annotated Historical Timeline. (2006), prepared for JMU’s Centennial in 2008.

Dingledine, Raymond C. Madison College: The First Fifty Years, 1908-1958. Harrisonburg, VA: Madison College, 1959.

James Madison University. Images of James Madison University, 1908-1983: Blue Stone Hill to JMU. Harrisonburg: JMU, 1983.

Jones, Nancy Bondurant.  Rooted on Blue Stone Hill:  A History of James Madison University.  Sante Fe, NM and Staunton, VA:  Center for American Places in association with The Community Foundation of Harrisonburg and Rockingham County, 2004.

Robertson, Emily G. The Transformation of Madison College into James Madison University. Williamsburg, VA: College of William and Mary, PhD., 1991.

For a more detailed list of sources, consult this site compiled by Special Collections at Carrier Library: Bibliography of JMU History.

Further Reading on Monuments and Memorials

Compiled by Tiffany Cole and Malia Willey, JMU Libraries

Interested in learning more about the monuments and memorials? Here are some sources to get you started.
 

Books

Allison, David B., ed. Controversial Monuments and Memorials: A Guide for Community Leaders. Blue Ridge Summit: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2018.

Brown, Thomas J. Civil War Monuments and the Militarization of America. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2019.

Clinton, Catherine. Confederate Statues and Memorialization. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2019.

Cox, Karen L. Dixie’s Daughters: The United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Preservation of Confederate Culture. Rev. ed. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2019.

Domby, Adam H. The False Cause: Fraud, Fabrication, and White Supremacy in Confederate Memory. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2020.

Harris, Leslie M., James T. Campbell, and Alfred T. Brophy, ed. Slavery and the University: Histories and Legacies. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2019.

Wilder, Craig Steven. Ebony & Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2013.

Other Resources

Articles

*Alderman, Derek H. and Rose-Redwood Reuben. “The Classroom as ‘Toponymic Workspace’: Towards a Critical Pedagogy of Campus Place Renaming.” Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 44, no. 1 (2020): 124-141. https://doi.org/10.1080/03098265.2019.1695108

*Brasher, Jordan P., Derek H. Alderman and Joshua F. J. Inwood. “Applying Critical Race and Memory Studies to University Place Naming Controversies: Toward a Responsible Landscape Policy.” Papers in Applied Geography 3, no. 3-4 (2017): 292-307. https://doi.org/10.1080/23754931.2017.1369892

Luke, Nikki, and Nik Heynen. “Abolishing the Frontier: (De)colonizing ‘Public’ Education.” Social & Cultural Geography (2019): 1-22. https://doi.org/10.1080/14649365.2019.1593492

Nash, Carole. “Native American Communities of the Shenandoah Valley: Constructing a Complex History.” Prepared for JMU’s Campus History Committee (2020). https://sites.lib.jmu.edu/historyandcontext/files/2019/04/Native-American-Communities-of-the-Shenandoah-Valley.pdf


*These two articles are guiding the work of JMU’s Campus History Committee.

Web Resources

AASLH Conversations: Monuments and Memory webinar from American Association for State and Local History

As the Statues Fall: A Conversation about Monuments and the Power of Memory recording from SAPIENS.org

Discussion on the Removal of Monuments from Public Spaces recordings from the Society of Architectural Historians

Essays from Commemorative Landscapes of North Carolina