Nineteenth-Century Virtual Reality
On one level a virtual reality headset works the same way as the old View Master toy.
On one level a virtual reality headset works the same way as the old View Master toy.
Recently, I began a process to show my appreciation to William & Mary, in a modest way, for my education and to give something back to the College as I approached the 50th anniversary of my graduation in 1970.
Over the winter and spring of early 1941, a towering landmark rose on the rural landscape less than two miles from downtown Williamsburg. The structure housed the screen for the Stockade Theatre Auto-Torium at Casey’s Corner, where Richmond and Ironbound Roads intersect.
My favorite kinds of materials in archives are the ones we might describe colloquially as “well-loved,” where you can tell that someone—or perhaps more than one someone—spent hours writing, reading, and thinking about a topic.
Sometime between 1795 and 1826, Lady Jean Skipwith made an account of the flora on her property. [i] A pocket-sized notebook, now in the Special Collections Research Center (SCRC), contains her handwritten list of plants.
Written by graduate student assistant, Erna Anderson. This exhibit is on view in the Swem Library lobby through April 1, 2021.
In the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, protestors in Bristol toppled the statue of Edward Colston (1636-1721) in an act representative of an accelerated global reckoning with the legacies of enslavement and colonialism.
Beatific. Sympathetic. Spiritually illuminated. An ecological, fresh-planet consciousness.
So Beat writers Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac described their work, their art, their lives.
A common and complex practice within Tibetan Buddhism is the millenia-old, slow and careful creation of sand mandalas.
When I arrived at the Special Collections Research Center this past July 29th for my first day of research into William & Mary’s collection of Maury Family Papers, I felt in my bones that I was in store for a fascinating week of discovery. My hunch proved true.