History surrounds the University of South Carolina. Stroll the Horseshoe and you’ll see plaques, monuments and well-worn bricks hinting at a long, complicated past. In his Oct. 16 column for The Daily Gamecock, Samuel J. Cancilla argued for a digital, self-guided history walk to bring those stories to life. He’s absolutely right, and the good news is that it already exists, and it’s growing.
I joined USC in late summer 2024 as the university historian to research, teach and share our history collaboratively across campus and with the public — work that builds on years of scholarship, curation and community partnerships. Since the role was announced by University Libraries last year, I’ve been working with faculty, staff and students across USC to bring to light more stories and make them easy to find and experience.
In my previous role as a history professor at SUNY Cortland, I led several class projects that involved local history, walking tours and digital maps. I knew early on during my time here that I wanted to build a digital guide focusing on USC’s history.
The culmination of this work lives on Bloomberg Connects, a free arts and culture app used worldwide to deliver audio tours, archival images and wayfinding. Launched in 2019 to help connect audiences to collections anytime and anywhere, the platform now hosts interactive guides for well over 1,000 museums and historic sites. Now, USC is among them. Open the app and search “University of South Carolina,” or browse our public listings on the site, and a selection of self-guided tours are available.
So, what’s in our selection right now? Start with walking tours tied to campus historical markers and exhibits that interpret places you pass every day. We highlight the McBryde Quadrangle — built in the 1950s as USC’s first fraternity housing and now at a turning point in its own story — as well as the State Normal School, the Reconstruction-era program that trained Black teachers at USC in the mid-1870s. Of course, we are continually refining routes and adding content based on feedback, scholarship and curricular needs.
And we aren’t just doing traditional history; a brand-new collaboration pairs the guide with Geology 101, inviting students to look down as well as around. Working with the School of the Earth, Ocean and Environment, we connect building stones and monuments to South Carolina’s geologic story so learners can read the campus like a rock record and practice close observation. It’s a fun and simple interdisciplinary way to blend humanities and the sciences on a single walk.
Cancilla’s piece was a timely nudge to situate this work within USC’s broader public history ecosystem. The Horseshoe, which has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1970, functions as a living classroom. University Archivist Elizabeth Cassidy West leads free noon tours on the second Thursday of each month, departing from the South Caroliniana Library. These are a great on-ramp for newcomers and longtime Gamecocks alike.
USC’s museums and libraries also invite discovery. The Museum of Education, tucked inside Wardlaw College, hosts rotating exhibits and digital projects that probe the history of schooling, including Reconstruction-era milestones when USC was the only Southern state university to enroll Black and white students together.
On the east end of the Horseshoe, the McKissick Museum regularly combines campus history and material culture interpretation; its galleries and Visitor Center programming make it easy to step off your route and into an exhibit. Meanwhile, the renovated South Caroliniana Library and the Ernest F. Hollings Special Collections Library showcase collections that tell South Carolina’s stories with depth and care.
The coordination of all this was no simple task. From 2019 to 2021, USC’s Presidential Commission on University History studied how the university presents its past and recommended concrete steps to document and share underrepresented histories more fully — and it is this guidance that continues to shape our work. The commission’s final report and related university statements remain essential reading for anyone invested in how a flagship institution narrates its place in the American story.
And that story is not insignificant. Chartered in 1801, USC’s timeline mirrors national transformations — slavery and the antebellum era; Civil War and closure; Reconstruction and multiracial education; segregation and the long arc toward integration; debate over the Vietnam War; 20th century growth into a leading university; and the student-centered, modern campus we enjoy today. The Horseshoe’s landscape retains material traces of each chapter.
So what’s next? This project and guide would be impossible without community support. Faculty, staff, students and alumni often know stories and sources we haven’t incorporated — family photos, student organization records, departmental milestones and public-facing research. On campus, I’m part of a new working group on university history that is bringing together scholars from across campus to foster stronger collaboration on future projects.
If you have materials or expertise to enrich our tours, get in touch with me. The more diverse the voices shaping USC’s narrative, the better we tell it with nuance and honesty.
To close, I’ll echo Cancilla’s eloquent conclusion: “USC’s Horseshoe is not simply a picturesque backdrop. It is a testament to the university’s place in American history.” That spirit animates this work. Our goal is to make it easy — delightful, even — to encounter that history and to see how your own time at USC fits a larger continuum.