Mills Kelly Receives Funding For Civil War Graffiti Preservation

Mills Kelly, Senior Scholar and Former Director, Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (RRCHNM); Professor, History, has received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities for: “Off the Wall: Digital Preservation of (U.S.) Civil War Graffiti Houses.”

Kelly will use the funding to support the building and publishing of a digital archive focused on soldiers’ graffiti found in Civil War-era structures located in the greater Northern Virginia region operated by six local project partners.

The digital archive will provide scholars, students, and the public access to not only the graffiti, but also to a reasonably large collection of ancillary archival material associated with the graffiti. 

Taken together, the resources in this digital collection will provide users – both the general public and scholars – with a digital resource that offers unique and often unexpected insights into the lived experience of war in America from 1861-1865. 

Kelly has received $350,000 for this project. Funding will begin in June 2024 and will end in late May 2026.