The Albert Lepage Center for History in the Public Interest

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The Albert Lepage Center for History in the Public Interest

Contact information, map and directions, contact form, opening hours, services, ratings, photos, videos and announcements from The Albert Lepage Center for History in the Public Interest, College & University, The Albert Lepage Center for History in the Public Interest Street Augustine Center, Room 410, Villanova, PA.

Opened in 2017, the Lepage Center is founded on the belief that historical scholarship and historical perspective, when brought to bear on contemporary global issues, can help us make better decisions and create a better society.

01/15/2026

What is the history of the Augustinian sisters and how do they approach Augustinian spirituality?

Interest in the Order of St. Augustine has grown with the election of Pope Leo XIV, but little is known about the Augustinian sisters, most of whom lead cloistered, contemplative lives.

On January 29 at 12 p.m. join us in SAC 410 to learn from Colleen Mitchell, PhD, associate director of outreach for the Augustinian Institute and assistant teaching professor in the Augustine and Culture Seminar program, about her research in this area.

A political theorist, Dr. Mitchell seeks to offer an analysis of Augustine's ideas about women and gendered communities, a history of the mostly untold story of the Augustinian sisters, and a reflection on what Augustinian spirituality looks like for the women who practice it. Food will be provided.

01/14/2026

We are delighted to announce our latest cohort of funding recipients! From historical novels to podcasts, workshops, forensic research and more, our grantees are pushing history in the public interest forward. Click the link in our bio to learn more.

01/06/2026

Since the dawn of film and television, writers, directors and actors have sought to retell history. Period pieces can spark debate, nostalgia and fierce critique—but how do film, television and now video games shape our understanding of the real stories behind the screen? And what can the history of that media tell us about the history that surrounds it?

On Tuesday, January 27 at 6 p.m., join us for a free webinar on the history behind some of our favorite pop culture and the rise of mass visual media.

Featuring:

- Peter Raleigh, PhD, Long Library
- Pamela Robertson Wojcik, PhD, University of Notre Dame
- Makeba Lavan, PhD, Grinnell College
- Jeremiah McCall, PhD, Gaming the Past

This event is virtual only and open to the public. Registration link: bit.ly/4s0cbOo

12/29/2025

As 2025 comes to a close, we’re feeling grateful for everything we’ve experienced together this year.

Thank you to our incredible speakers for sharing their knowledge at our events, our internship partners for welcoming our students into their organizations and to our Villanova community and beyond for supporting us with your time, attention and curiosity.

We can’t wait to do it all again!

12/23/2025

In Levittown, Pennsylvania, Historic Fallsington is a living community of 17th through 21st century homes and other buildings that showcase three centuries of Bucks County history.

Last summer, Lepage Center intern James Capik '26 MA conducted research into the impact of the American Revolution on the district, including any members of the town who may have fought in the war.

“What interested me was honestly how sort of niche the research is,” Capik said. “Fallsington is not and was not a big town, though it was the center of a thriving Quaker community. Research hasn't really been done on the village's relationship with the Revolution, so it’s been exciting to be breaking ground on it.”

Lepage internships offer a variety of experiences that build skills including archival work, event planning, planning museum exhibits and more. In Capik’s case, he returned to campus in the fall with a newfound passion for research.

"My skills in that department are improving by the day, and I've gotten to take trips to outside archives,” he said. “I was recently at the Friends Library at Swarthmore College, where I got to work with microfilm for the first time.”

Plus, Capik says, research carries the excitement of learning something new when you least expect it.

“Having some breakthroughs on different people and events is something that will stay with me,” he said. “Everyone at Historic Fallsington is a history buff, so they understood the magnitude of different discoveries. Some of these discoveries were small, but all of them helped me fill out the narrative.”

At the Lepage Center, our opportunities don’t just teach hirable skills—they nurture the unique passions of every student we support. We can’t wait to announce our 2026 internship partners after a good holiday’s rest!

12/16/2025

Founded in 1935, the Maryland State Archives’ records are older than the United States, dating back to 1634. This year, History and Classical Studies student Nicolas Ricardo ’26 CLAS spent his summer working with its extensive collection of records, documents and art, as part of a Lepage Center internship.

With previous experience in the Archives of the Province of Saint Thomas of Villanova, Ricardo wanted to expand his skills in interpreting records.

“I spent many of my days transcribing script documents into an excel spreadsheet, specifically records of incarceration from the middle of the 19th century in Maryland,” he said. “Additionally, later in the summer, I consulted further government records, such as censuses and criminal docket minutes, to collect data on individuals for case studies.”

While carefully examining materials, he found himself thinking about the generational work that goes into maintaining historical records.

“A major takeaway is the importance of cooperation and human labor in history,” he said. “While technology has advanced such that software exists to process script, a human eye, particularly with the aid of colleagues, remains the best tool for analysis of old records.”

While building his skills, Ricardo also practiced seeking support from trusted colleagues—an invaluable learning curve for anybody at the start of their career.

“Never be afraid to ask for help from those around you and your superiors,” he reflected. “History is hard work and mistakes can be frequent, but persisting in those mistakes will never lead to growth.”

Lepage Center summer internships partner Villanova History students with their best teacher: real-world experience. Our 2026 application opens soon—click the link in our bio to learn more!

10/14/2025

Meet Lepage Center grantee Lynne Calamia, PhD, executive director of the Roebling Museum!

The Roebling Museum tells the story of Roebling, NJ, a company town built by John A. Roebling’s Sons Company. As a former gateway to a sprawling steel mill, the museum's building once served as the passage point for thousands of industrial workers.

A grant from the Lepage Center enabled its team to collect new research and design a virtual event series. “The goals of our project were to share new research, chat directly with communities and reach into the homes of folks who can't make it to the museum,” Calamia explains.

In the post-lockdown world, online programming empowers historians to expand access, connect with new audiences and create new event models. In practice, a new challenge emerges—evoking the wonder of a museum visit from the comfort of attendees’ homes.

Instead of a simple lecture, staff shared interviews with residents, using interactive polls to spark conversations about the stories participants heard. “For all of our programs, we had a lot of folks who grew up in Roebling [with] family who worked at the steel mill. We created a space for them to chat with each other,” she reflects. “Two attendees connected who grew up down the street from each other and hadn't talked in over 20 years ... that's a hugely personal impact and it led to them both attending all four of the talks.”

Another event showed off new local collections. “This was a way for us to get the message out to descendants that their family's history is important, and they should look in their basements and attics for artifacts to help us tell the Roebling story,” Calamia says. Plus, that gathering delivered an in-person dividend: after attending the online event, one family funded a new set of exhibit cases at the museum.

“At a small museum, we might have bits and pieces of research that we are able to complete between other programs, but with this funding, we were able to go through the new findings and turning them into presentations to share with our community,” Calamia says. “And I was able to multiply the grant money by the relationships I was able to deepen through the process.”

10/07/2025

Throughout U.S. history, colleges and universities have seen many important cultural movements, scientific innovations, and intellectual developments. Today, higher education institutions face a new era defined by government intervention, shifting finances and competing perspectives.

On Wednesday, October 22 at 6 p.m., the Lepage Center explores the history behind current tensions on academic campuses with three scholars of higher education. This webinar kicks off our “Crisis Moments” programming, presented by the Lepage Annual Series.

Featuring:
- Isaac Kamola, PhD, Trinity College
- Michael Bérubé, PhD, Penn State University
- Lauran Lassabe Shepherd, PhD, American Campus podcast

This webinar is virtual only. Register at the link in our bio!

09/26/2025

A big thank you to everybody who joined us for our day of programming on the Camden 28! We had a blast learning from filmmaker Anthony Giacchino ’92 CLAS and historian Michelle M. Nickerson, PhD, Loyola University Chicago.

Over lunch, Dr. Nickerson detailed research methods behind her new book “Spiritual Criminals,” which shares a complex portrait of the grassroots religious progressives who resisted their church and government to protest the Vietnam War. Later, we gathered at Topper Theatre for a screening of Giacchino’s 2007 documentary “The Camden 28." During our Q&A, former members of the Camden 28 who were in the audience reflected on their watershed court case and the power of nonviolent protest.

Making history free and accessible to the public is central to our work. Subscribe to the Lepage Center newsletter in our bio to stay updated on our events!

09/08/2025

This week, we’re highlighting one of the Center’s latest grantees. "Voices from the Factory Floor: Acme Steel and Living Deindustrial," led by Joseph Coates, MSLS, and Emiliano Aguilar, PhD, is an oral history project focusing on the industrial, working-class heritage of the Calumet Region in northeastern Illinois and northwestern Indiana.

In the late 1800s, the area housed one of the world’s largest centers of steel production. With its towering furnaces and thousands of workers, the Acme Steel Coke plant was one of many facilities dotting the Chicago landscape. But by the 1990s, the Calumet River's skyline looked starkly different. Low demand and greater international competition fueled a catastrophic downturn in business. Facing bankruptcy, the Acme Steel plant closed in 2001 and was later designated an EPA superfund site.

The ACME Steel collection at Purdue University Northwest documents the highs and lows of that history.

“The primary goal is to develop narrative threads that will inspire further research, cataloging, and exploration of deindustrialization in the Calumet Region,” says Joseph Coates, the assistant director of the Purdue University Northwest University Library and assistant professor of Practice. “This grant has allowed us to build on [the inventory] of the relocated collection and begin the process of making it accessible to researchers and the public.”

Support from the Lepage Center enabled the project’s team to document former plant workers' memories of the factory floor. “The dangers of working in the steel mills in the 60s and 70s were absolutely wild,” Coates explains. “Everybody we talked to had a colleague die at one point in their career due to an accident.”

The Lepage Grant additionally funded the process of distilling collection pieces for presentation to the public. And while the work continues, the story isn’t over yet. “Since the initial grant was written, the last remnant of ACME Steel, Cleveland Cliffs Riverdale Plant, closed,” Coates says. “The goal then became more of preserving what we could of that facility ... [and] making sure the Riverdale plant artifacts were able to be saved.”

08/11/2025

During the Vietnam War, the United States drafted over 2 million young men to the front lines of southeast Asia. By the summer of 1971, over 50,000 of these young men were dead, with nearly 1 million Vietnamese casualties.

An unlikely coalition of Catholic priests, laypeople and a Lutheran minister, who became known as the Camden 28, decided that enough was enough. They hatched a plan to strike at the heart of America's military campaign—the local draft office. But when they arrived in the dead of night to destroy its records, the group was thwarted by the FBI, tipped off by a mole. Unmoved from their cause, the Camden 28 demanded to be tried for their crimes together in a high-profile case that placed the Vietnam War in the court of public opinion.

Join us on Wednesday, Sept. 17 at 5:00 p.m. for a screening of “The Camden 28,” a documentary by Oscar-winning director Anthony Giacchino ’92 CLAS. Following the screening, Giacchino will be joined for a Q&A by Michelle M. Nickerson, PhD, Loyola University Chicago.

Register at the link in our bio!

07/15/2025

We loved connecting with our guests last week from the State Department’s Study of the U.S. Institutes program! The six-week intensive program brings global postgraduate scholars stateside to better develop their knowledge of American society, culture and institutions.

Each summer, we host the SUSI program at our “Beyond Borders” event, which examines the relationship between American foreign policy and democracy. This year, panelists told the stories of three modern diplomatic focal points — East Asia’s postwar democratization, the rise of First Ladies’ soft power and the Iran-Contra scandal.

Like our events, recordings of our live programming are always free and available to the public. Coming soon!

Address

The Albert Lepage Center For History In The Public Interest Street Augustine Center, Room 410
Villanova, PA
19085

Website

https://www1.villanova.edu/villanova/artsci/lepage.html

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