Laura Brannan Fretwell is a third year PhD student in the History and Art History Department at George Mason University, and a graduate research assistant at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media. Laura received her master’s in women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at Georgia State University. Originally from Tampa, Florida, Laura is interested in how southern communities remember and forget different local histories related to race and gender. Her dissertation focuses on memory, race, identity, and power at a local park in Richmond, Virginia throughout the nineteenth century. Laura uses a combination of methodologies such as archival research, gender theory, and digital humanities tools such as mapping and computational history. Currently, Laura is working on her digital history project “Divided Union” with her colleague Janine Hubai. Divided Union was jointly created by Laura and Janine and provides historical context about American race and memory, especially the legacy of Confederate commemoration in the U.S. She is also an affiliate of George Mason University’s John Mitchell Jr. Program for History, Race, and Justice at the Carter School for Peace and Conflict Resolution. She hopes to one day either teach history at the university-level or work at a public history cultural institution.
Janine Hubai is a PhD student in the History and Art History Department. She holds a MA degree in history from UMass Boston. Originally from New England, Janine chose George Mason University to take advantage of their Digital Humanities program and close access to archives in D.C. Janine's research areas of interest are military history, indigenous people's history, colonization, and race relations. She also studies digital humanities and public history, with particular interests in website content and design, and film production and editing. Currently, Janine is working on a website, Divided Union, with Laura Brannan which looks at Confederate symbol use in American society. She also directs the creation of a digital archive of over 3,000 postal items from Holland during World War II. Her dissertation looks at the war, forced relocation, and internment of Navajos by the U.S. government in New Mexico in the 1860s.