By Amy Wolf
The 1870s home of Professor William J. Vaughn, Vanderbilt University鈥檚 original librarian and one of its first faculty members, carries history鈥攁nd some mystery鈥攁bout early Vanderbilt chancellors, faculty, women鈥檚 athletics, campus politics and more.
Now, with the culmination of a three-year trans-institutional project supported by the , the Vaughn home has inspired an extensive exhibit and 19 interdisciplinary courses involving eight faculty and more than 230 students.
These hands-on courses have turned the Vaughn home and adjoining parts of campus into a living lab on topics ranging from excavation, digital archaeology, engineering, architectural documentation, history of the American research university, digital storytelling, and sustainable development.
鈥淭his project has been a shared love among a lot of people,鈥� said , who holds the Mellon Foundation Chair in the Humanities and serves as director of the , which currently resides in the Vaughn home.
鈥淚 had a dream about opening the doors of this house for research and exploration,鈥� Tucker said. 鈥淪tudents, faculty and staff have enthusiastically expanded this vision and have become deeply engaged in ways we couldn鈥檛 have even imagined.鈥�
Tucker and a team of leaders within the won a highly competitive grant from the NEH to partially fund the multiyear project. Additional projects are supported by a Vanderbilt .
HIDDEN NARRATIVES
Many of the discoveries stemming from the 19 classes are now part of an exhibit within the Vaughn home called 鈥淗idden Narratives.鈥� Visitors can explore the exhibit on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9 to 11 a.m., when classes are in session.
鈥淭hrough the Vaughn home, we can tell so many different stories鈥攚hether it be the stories of early faculty members or the stories of the servants that worked on campus with them. Or maybe it’s about the early women students here who were taking classes but couldn’t even matriculate yet. We’re making sure that their voices are being heard and we are celebrating the contributions they made to campus,鈥� said , Mellon Assistant Professor of Culture, Advocacy and Leadership and curator of the exhibit.
One display includes a video produced by current students looking at the impact of one of Vanderbilt鈥檚 first female students, Stella Vaughn.
Daughter of William Vaughn, Stella was one of only 10 women enrolled at Vanderbilt in 1892. She organized the university鈥檚 first women鈥檚 basketball team and served as its coach for 20 years.
For the project, students interviewed Vanderbilt Vice Chancellor for Athletics and University Affairs and Athletic Director . Like Vaughn, Lee is a former Commodore basketball player and a pioneer as the first Black woman to head an SEC athletics program.
ARCHEOLOGICAL DIGS
The archaeological research on the Vaughn home continues, with active digs happening throughout the year.
, associate professor of anthropology and chair of the department, and , postdoctoral research fellow in the , have led multiple hands-on classes in which students examined Vanderbilt鈥檚 early history through archaeological excavations of the grounds. Their work unveiled a service workers鈥� cabin once located behind the first faculty residences on the Vanderbilt campus.
Excavations will be conducted during the upcoming celebration. Throughout the year, visitors are welcome to explore current and previous excavations and to examine the artifacts discovered so far through augmented reality experiences across the site.
鈥淚t was wonderful having students coming through the exhibit with parents in tow during our recent Family Weekend,鈥� Morrow said. 鈥淚鈥檓 sure we spoke with at least 70 members of the community throughout the day and even had a parent start digging with his son!鈥�
NATIONAL REGISTER OF HISTORIC PLACES
Another big milestone of the project is working to earn the Vaughn home a place on the . All of the research about the home completed so far has been documented in an expansive historic structures report that will support the home鈥檚 submission to the national registry.
鈥淭his was a student-led venture over multiple semesters. In each seminar, students identified and divided up research tasks and shared findings with one another and future classes to make sense of the big story,鈥� said , assistant professor of history of art and architecture and instructor for several of the Vaughn home courses.
Students photographed and documented every inch of the house, including crawling into spaces that hadn鈥檛 been seen in decades. They drafted architectural drawings, analyzed paint chips and researched scores of archival documents, newspapers and more.
鈥淭he result was a rich picture of not just the life of a building as it evolved over 150 years, but also the lives of its occupants, visitors of the campus, even the city spanning from the beginning of Vanderbilt to the present,鈥� Worsnick said.
鈥淚 think the idea that a home can have such a lasting impact on so many people for so many years is phenomenal,鈥� Tucker said. 鈥淭he project brought both delight and a great sense of responsibility as we worked together to research the Vaughn home’s importance in Vanderbilt’s long history.”
- Read more about the launch of the Vaughn home project.
- See more stories about .
- Follow the latest from the .
- RELATED – Bold Strokes: An illustrated guide to pioneering figures in Vanderbilt history