Assistant Professor Danielle Raad is an Assistant Professor of History and Museum Studies. She is a public historian, anthropologist, archaeologist, and curator with a focus on how people in the present make meaning from the material culture—art, artifacts, and historic sites—of the past. Prior to joining the faculty at UGA, Prof. Raad held positions as the Curator and Assistant Director of the Stanford University Archaeology Collections and as the Cullman-Payson Postdoctoral Fellow in Academic Affairs and Outreach at the Yale University Art Gallery. She has also previously worked as an academic advisor, a study abroad coordinator, a community college chemistry instructor, and a high school physics teacher. She is the author of Above the Oxbow: Stories Entangled with a Mountain, forthcoming from West Virginia University Press in February 2026. The book is a study of place attachment on Mount Holyoke, a mountain in Western Massachusetts. It explores how visitors over two centuries have forged relationships with the mountain through various activities, including engaging with historic narratives of the site at the Summit House, a former hotel turned museum. Above the Oxbow presents a local and public history while illustrating how a mountain can become special to people and how attachments to place are mediated by material culture and influenced by collective, family, and personal memory. Prof. Raad primarily teaches courses in the Museum Studies Program. Research Research Areas: Public History Cultural & Intellectual U.S. 19th & 20th Century Selected Publications Selected Publications: Raad, Danielle R. Above the Oxbow: Stories Entangled with a Mountain. Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, forthcoming 2026. Raad, Danielle & Hurley, G. “Cultivating STEM Skillsets with Art and Artifacts: A Teaching Workshop.” STEM in the Art Museum: Innovative Pedagogies for 21st-century Science Curricula, Milkova, L. & Kovach, J. (Eds.), University Museums and Collections Journal, 16:3 (2024), 205-213. Raad, Danielle R. “World War II in Western Massachusetts: Contemporary Archaeology of a Plane Crash.” Historical Archaeology, 58 (2024), 90-102. Raad, Danielle R. “The Power of Collective Vision: Landscape, Visual Media, and the Production of American Mountains.” Journal of Cultural Geography, 38:1 (2021), 102-122. Raad, Danielle R. & Makarewicz, C.A. “Application of X-ray Diffraction and Digital Optical Microscopy to Investigate Lapidary Technologies in Pre-Pottery Neolithic Societies.” Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports, 23 (2019), 731-745. Raad, Danielle R., Li, S., & Flad, R. “Testing a Novel Method to Identify Salt Production Pottery via Release and Detection of Chloride Ions.” Journal of Archaeological Science, 43 (2014), 186-191. Education Education: Ph.D. Anthropology, University of Massachusetts Amherst, 2021 M.Ed. Secondary Education, Lesley University, 2016 S.M. Archaeological Materials, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2015 M.A. Chemistry, Harvard University, 2012 B.Sc. Chemistry, Brown University, 2010
