The following story originally appeared on the website for the Charles Center. – Ed.
Three doctoral candidates in history at William & Mary — Emily Wells, Jennifer Merriman and Qiong Wu — received Boswell-Caracci Material Culture Study Fund grants to reach beyond campus and their primary fields to connect with leading experts in the world of material culture studies.
Now in its second year, the fund was established by a local couple, adjunct professors of business James Boswell ’86 and Chris Caracci HON ’23, to support undergraduate and graduate student experiences at material culture symposia or programs, with a preference for those sponsored by Colonial Williamsburg, the Decorative Arts Trust, Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library and the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA).
“The fund grew out of a shared belief in the power of objects to tell stories and deepen our understanding of the past,” wrote Boswell and Caracci in a joint email. “Material culture study offers students an invitation to slow down and look closely, to see beyond texts and discover meaning in the craftsmanship, context, and lived experience that artifacts reveal.”
Grants of up to $1,000 provide opportunities for students to connect deeply and meaningfully with ideas, objects, and scholars beyond the classroom and in ways that are rarely part of traditional academic study. “In a world that moves quickly, cultivating that kind of attention and curiosity feels more important than ever,” they wrote.
Wells attended the 77th Colonial Williamsburg Antiques Forum last February, where she engaged with experts in the field and expanded her professional network. The gathering helped her further identify how “material culture can be used as a vehicle for learning about history and historical research,” she said.
Wells’s dissertation focuses on girlhood in the American South between the American Revolution and the Civil War, with a focus on elite, white girls and how they thought about social identity in relation to place.
Her research journey began as an undergraduate at Mount Holyoke College, where she examined female education and girlhood during the 18th and 19th centuries. “A key turning point for me was an internship I had as an undergrad at Colonial Williamsburg,” Wells said. “Having that hands-on experience working with objects and looking at material culture as a form of historical research was really formative for me.”
Set to graduate next spring, she has since completed another internship at Colonial Williamsburg, in which she was able to examine stories embedded in embroideries, writing desks, and other objects. By placing material culture within the broader context of her archival research, Wells has been able to demonstrate in new ways “how girls connected to the material world.”
Wells has been surprised by the amount of archival material she has come across over the course of her research.
“Going into this, I thought it might be difficult to find documents, objects, any sort of material made by girls,” she recalled. “But as I started, I found that my problem was actually the opposite. There are so many things in collections, in archives, that were made by or speak to girlhood in some way – my biggest surprise was just how much is out there that can help us understand girls and girls’ lives.”
Participating in the Antiques Forum introduced Wells to senior researchers in the field while allowing her to reconnect with other students and scholars.
“It was invigorating, and it made me more excited to return to my own research, which is always something that I enjoy about conferences – I come away feeling more inspired and ready to go back to my own dissertation,” Wells said.
In the final stages of writing her dissertation, Wells now looks to the future, driven by her passion for working in public history. “I would love to work as a curator, specifically a curator of textiles. But I’d also love to work in a museum setting where I can continue to engage with the history of girlhood and also the history of childhood more generally,” Wells said. “I’m looking for any sort of opportunity where I could continue to research and share the history of childhood, because it’s something everyone can relate to.”
Merriman, a third-year Ph.D. candidate, received support to participate in MESDA’s upcoming “Map Seminar: Mapping American Expansion in Winston-Salem,” North Carolina, in October 2025.
Focusing on a single 18th-century printing press owned by Christoph Saur in Germantown, Pennsylvania, Merriman’s dissertation investigates “the factors that went into the production of printed texts and how and at what cost these works were distributed, not only among German settlers in early America, but also back home in Germany,” she explained.
Long fascinated by the relationship between German settlers and the British empire, Merriman’s dissertation builds on her master’s thesis about Saur’s craft and livelihood to study the transatlantic dimensions of German settler history and the transcontinental impact of one man’s printing press.
“I wrote my master’s thesis on Christoph Saur’s newspaper, and I did not realize when I started researching how widely circulated his newspaper was. It had a huge circulation for the time, but I didn’t realize how influential it was. His newspaper really shaped the political milieu of the time – so many of his works ended up in Germany as well,” Merriman said. “His works weren’t only well known within America itself, but they were prized objects collected by European princes.”
Fueled by her discoveries, Merriman is eager to participate in the MESDA seminar, which will take advantage of Winston-Salem’s rich German history, having been a hub for Moravians in the colonial period.
“By being able to attend the seminar, I’m not only getting to have more exposure to these Moravian centers, which were major centers of German migration, but the topic of the seminar is really relevant to my dissertation,” Merriman said.
Merriman hopes to ask key questions about the logistics of human map creation, deciphering the human decisions that shaped the material form. In an age of digital mapping, Merriman said it is crucial to study the human factors that have driven the historical creation of maps.
“Maps were also material objects; they were human creations, involving human decisions,” Merriman said. “Maps are not these abstract, static representations of reality, but material objects grounded in the physical world. I think that’s something that is underappreciated and something that I’d definitely like to bring into my own research.”
Merriman looks forward to diving into the research stage of her dissertation next year, taking on fellowships and, she hopes, gaining more experience in working with rare books and archival materials.
Qiong Wu, second-year Ph.D. candidate in history, attended the 2025 Organization of American Historians conference in Chicago last April with support from a Boswell-Caracci grant.
Wu pointed to a particular panel, “Ideologies, identities, and imagery: Materiality and nationalism in the Atlantic World,” that provided methodological enrichment and opportunities to connect with other scholars examining material culture as symbols of nationalism.
Wu’s dissertation focuses on the complex historical relationships that developed around popular commodities, tracing connections across the U.S.-China supply chain and their potential impact on the same supply chains today.
Her analysis uses the contemporary context of globalized world trade to understand how differential experiences and cultural backgrounds can shape how people experience the same commodities throughout the centuries.
“One of the main goals of my research is to understand the transculturation of economic ideas, cultural artifacts, and social practices that took place during early United States-China trade,” Wu said.
Informed by her own Chinese background and a course she took on the American Revolution while completing her master’s degree at Brown University, Wu became fascinated with the fluidity of early American trade and the question of “how early Americans worked through this tangled empire.”
The growing mercantile relationship between the U.S. and China in this early period is key to understanding what shaped early American empire and the legacies this relationship left behind, Wu explained.
“Trade is very important here, because I think trade is a way of communication; not just communication by goods, but also a way to connect different continents or different peoples,” she said. “It connects truths during the trade, during the communication of commodities. There’s also transculturation – the communication of ideas, cultural artifacts, and social practices, which may be different because of this kind of trading experience at that time.”
The Boswell-Caracci grant funding came at an opportune moment in her dissertation process, Wu said, having applied to the fund just after she discovered the importance of material culture for her research.
“The material culture study, and especially the methodology of following an object, has greatly influenced my work, because it could help me explore the social life of material things like ginseng, which connected three different groups of people: Indigenous and Native Americans, early American traders, and Chinese people,” Wu said. “Owing to this methodology, I can recognize the multiple, simultaneous, and diverse experiences that people of the time might have with a bag of ginseng, and this can also resonate with our experiences.”
In the future, Wu hopes to become a professor whose work will establish its own transcontinental dialogue between the U.S. and China, whether “through goods or through ideas.” Curiosity and lifelong learning are Wu’s goals, and fostering communication between these different cultures is “the dream.”
For Boswell and Caracci, a shared interest in material culture studies has not only sparked connections with scholars overseeing collections at preeminent museums, but it has informed how they live their lives and approach teaching and mentoring William & Mary students.
“Our own interest in material culture began during early visits to Colonial Williamsburg, and it has only grown through personal and professional engagements with institutions like MESDA, Winterthur, and the Decorative Arts Trust,” Boswell and Caracci explained. “These experiences have shaped not only how we study history, but also how we live with intention, valuing the tangible reminders of who we are and where we come from.”
Interested in learning more about the Boswell-Caracci Material Culture Study Fund grant? Check the website.