I am a historian interested in how race, gender, poverty, and politics play out over physical space. My first book project examines public housing in the late 20th century. However, as a graduate student and postdoctoral fellow at UVA I also developed an expertise on the history of Charlottesville and UVA in the 20th and 21st centuries. Early in my time here, I began to ask about the statues that populated the area. With two colleagues in English, I interrogated how the built environment here evolved over the 20th century. In the several years since we started that project, I continued to research and teach these histories both individually and collaboratively. My course draws from the expertise I’ve developed about UVA and Charlottesville. Students will learn to use the empirical methodologies of historians in the context of UVA’s built environment. I have found that teaching students about the history of their school and home can make larger historical developments more tangible and immediate and can also make learning to evaluate different kinds of historical evidence easier and more exciting. The Engagements curriculum offers a unique opportunity to teach this way.