ABOUT THE AUTHOR

David Ehrenpreis was born in 1963 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and grew up in Charlottesville, Virginia. He is Director of the Institute for Visual Studies and a professor of art history at James Madison University, where he has taught since 1998. He completed his undergraduate degree in foreign languages at Hamilton College and his M.A. and Ph.D. in art history at Boston University. His articles and reviews have appeared in The Art Book, CAA Reviews, Centropa, German Studies Review, Woman's Art Journal, and Zeitschrift für Kunstgeschichte, among others, and he has curated numerous exhibitions, including one on the work of the contemporary Chinese artist Xu Bing. In addition to receiving support for research from the Arts Council of the Valley, College Art Association, German Academic Exchange Service, and James Madison University, he earned a Certificate of Distinction in Teaching from Harvard University. He resides in Harrisonburg, Virginia.

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

Kevin Borg was born in 1961 in San Bernardino, California, and grew up in nearby Rialto, California. He is a professor of history at James Madison University, where he has taught since 2000. After an early life shaped by industrial arts shop classes, followed by work as an auto mechanic and architectural woodworker, he completed his B.A. in history at the University of California, Riverside, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in American history and the history of technology at the University of Delaware. His articles, essays, and reviews have appeared in The Journal of American History, The Journal of American Studies, Notes on Virginia, Revue d'histoire moderne et contemporaine, and Technology and Culture, among others, and he is the author of Auto Mechanics: Technology and Expertise in Twentieth-Century America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007; paperback, 2010). In 2015, he and Bradley Andrick received a Virginia Foundation for the Humanities Open Grant to support development of "Spatial History in the Public Square: Maps, Images & Archives in the Community," an online historical map and research tool; and, in 2017, received a JMU Provost's Research Grant to expand that project. He resides in Bridgewater, Virginia.

Randall B. Jones was born in 1957 in Washington, D.C., and grew up in the Maryland suburbs and Rockingham County, Virginia. He completed his B.A in English and an M.F.A. in creative writing at Virginia Commonwealth University. Since 2005, he has served as a public information officer with the Virginia Department of Historic Resources in Richmond and, as a freelance writer has authored articles for James Madison University's alumni magazines, Montpelier and Madisonian, and for numerous other publications. Previously, he served as a book editor at the Center for American Places, a national nonprofit organization once located in downtown Harrisonburg, where he helped bring to publication—in partnership with the Johns Hopkins University Press, University of Chicago Press, and dozens of other publishers—books that have won more than 100 best-book awards and honors in 31 academic fields. He resides in Harrisonburg, Virginia.

Kenneth E. Koons was born in 1954 in Waynesboro, Pennsylvania, and grew up on a farm near there. He is a professor of history at Virginia Military Institute, where he has taught since 1982. He completed his B.A. and M.A in history at Shippensburg State College and his Ph.D. in history at Carnegie Mellon University. His articles have appeared in a number of edited collections, including Archaeological Perspectives on the American Civil War, edited by Clarence R. Geier and Stephen Potter (University Press of Florida, 2000), and Home Front to Front Line: The Civil War Era in the Shenandoah Valley, edited by Jonathan A. Noyalas (Shenandoah Valley Battlefields Foundation, 2009). He is also co-editor, with Warren R. Hofstra, of After the Backcountry: Rural Life in the Great Valley of Virginia, 1800–1900 (University of Tennessee Press, 2000). In the realm of public history, Koons has served as a consultant to museums, government agencies, attorneys, and various non-profit organization on issues relating to the history of agriculture and rural life. He has received numerous awards and honors, including fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Jessie Ball DuPont Seminar, the British Council, Belfast, Ireland, and a Virginia Historical Society Mellon Research Fellowship. Among his many research and teaching awards at VMI, he has been appointed as a General Edwin Cox 20' Institute Professorship in History and Economics. Koons resides in Spottwood, Virginia.

Dale MacAllister was born 1947 in Harrisonburg, Virginia, and grew up in nearby Singers Glen, Virginia. He is resident historian at the Harrisonburg-Rockingham Historical Society and an adjunct instructor at James Madison University. He completed his B.A. in physics at Bridgewater College and his M.S. Ed. at James Madison University. Since 1971, he has spent his classroom career teaching middle school in Rockingham County and then supervising middle and high school student teachers for JMU. His articles about local and Shenandoah Valley history have appeared in the Harrisonburg-Rockingham Historical Society and Shenandoah Valley Folklife Society newsletters, and he is currently completing a biography of Lucy F. Simms, Harrisonburg's most famous African-American teacher. He resides in Singers Glen, Virginia.

Scott Hamilton Suter was born in 1962 in Harrisonburg, Virginia, and grew up in Rockingham County, Virginia. He is an associate professor of English and chair of the English Department at Bridgewater College, where he has taught since 2002. He completed his B.A. in English at James Madison University, his M.A. in English at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and his Ph.D. in American studies at George Washington University. He was a Senior Fulbright Scholar in 1996–1997. His essays have appeared in numerous books, among them Ceramics in America (Milwaukee, WI: Chipstone Foundation, 2005), Encyclopedia of American Folklife (M.E. Sharpe, 2006), Rough South, Rural South: Region and Class in Recent Southern Literature (University Press of Mississippi, 2016), Shenandoah Valley Apples (Columbia College Chicago Press, 2013), and The Philosophy of David Lynch (University Press of Kentucky, 2011). He is also the author of Shenandoah Valley Folklife (University Press of Mississippi, 1999) which was a Virginia Book Award nominee, Places, Faces, and Traces: Historical Photographs of Harrisonburg and Rockingham County (Silver Lake Mill, 2005) and Images of America: Harrisonburg (Arcadia Publishing, 2003), both collaborations with Cheryl Lyon. He resides in Spring Creek, Virginia.

Henry Way was born in 1980 in Bristol in the United Kingdom, where he also grew up. He is an associate professor of geography at James Madison University and the interim associate dean of the College of Integrated Science and Technology at JMU, where he has taught since 2008. He completed his B.A. in geography at the University of Oxford, a M.Phil. in geographical research at the University of Cambridge, and a Ph.D. in geography at the University of Kansas. His articles have appeared in Cultural Geographies, Historical Geography, and in proceedings of international conferences on the subjects of urban planning and cultural and urban geography. He resides in Harrisonburg, where he is also Chair of the Harrisonburg Planning Commission.

(Photograph: © Daniel Robinson)