Anne Spencer House & Gardens Tour – Lynchburg

Anne Spencer House & Gardens Tour – Lynchburg

Join Lifetime Learning and UVA faculty for a day of exploring and learning at the Virginia Historic Landmark, the Anne Spencer House & Garden Museum, on Saturday, May 7, 2022. We will tour the home and gardens of Anne Spencer, a poet of the Harlem Renaissance—a significant figure of the black literary and cultural movement of the 1920s, civil rights activist, teacher, and librarian. Shaun Spencer-Hester, the granddaughter of Anne and Edward Spencer, will join us for a tour of the home, the gardens, and the Pierce Street Historic District.

UVA Professors Lisa Reilly, Elgin Cleckley, and Alison Booth will share the architectural, landscape, and digital literary projects developed by UVA students in a fall course that sought to enhance access to and knowledge of the museum and gardens.

Veranda magazine named the gardens one of the 30 Most Beautiful Gardens in the World.

Speaker Biographies

Shaun Spencer-Hester, Executive Director and Board Treasurer, The Anne Spencer House & Garden Museum

Shaun Spencer-Hester, the granddaughter of Anne Spencer, oversees the day-to-day operations of The Anne Spencer House & Garden. Spencer-Hester has curated the collection of furnishings, textiles, artwork, collectibles, and antiquities that remained in the home at Anne Spencer’s death in July 1975.

Lisa Reilly, Commonwealth Professor in Architectural History, Undergraduate Architectural History Program Director, School of Architecture, University of Virginia

Lisa Reilly is the Commonwealth Professor in Architectural History, and her chief research interest is in medieval visual culture. Her most recent book, The Invention of Norman Visual Culture: Art, Politics, and Dynastic Ambition, published by Cambridge University Press, establishes a new interpretive paradigm for the eleventh and twelfth-century art and architecture of the Norman world in France, England, and Sicily.

Elgin Cleckley, Assistant Professor, Architecture + Design Thinking, School of Architecture, University of Virginia

Elgin Cleckley is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at UVA with an appointment in the Curry School of Education and the School of Nursing. He is a designer, director, and principal of _mpathic design – a design thinking pedagogy, initiative, and professional practice focusing on intersections of identity, culture, history, memory, and place.

Alison Booth, Professor, Department of English, College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences, University of Virginia, and Director - Scholars’ Lab, University of Virginia Library

Alison Booth, Professor in the Department of English, teaches courses in Victorian fiction, women writers, Gothic, narrative theory, auto/biography, travel, and other topics. Uniting her research interests and willingness to adapt technology in the classroom, she emphasizes critical and writing skills. In her research, Booth expanded feminist and narratological studies of cultural and literary history in Britain and North America since 1830 into digital humanities and bibliography.

Agenda

Event Details