Begun as the Southern Maryland Documentation Project in the
early 1980s…

the SlackWater Center is a consortium of students, faculty, and staff from St. Mary’s College of Maryland, as well as community members from the surrounding region of Southern Maryland, focused on documenting and interpreting the region's changing landscapes.

The backbone of this effort is oral histories that St. Mary’s College students do with Southern Marylanders. also explore the region's landscapes through historical documents, images, literature, and scientific and environmental evidence. Some of this work is published in the print journal—which launched its eighth volume in 2022—and now also at SlackWater Online.

Oral Histories

The heart of the SlackWater Center has always been oral history. The SlackWater Archive includes over 600 oral histories, and we’re adding more all the time. You can browse this collection by name or category and see, in most cases, verbatim transcripts of the interview.


Podcasts

Since 2019, students at St. Mary’s College of Maryland have been producing podcasts about Southern Maryland, using both new and archived interviews. Some of these are now available on SlackWater Online, as well as through normal podcast distribution channels like Spotify and Apple Podcasts.


Stories

These stories are rooted in the lives of Southern Marylanders. Many of the pieces in this section are edited oral histories; others are journalistic or creative pieces.

Photos

Browse through our catalog of Southern Maryland photos, or dig deeper in the SMCM photo archives


SlackWater Print Volumes

From 1998’s volume about St. George Island, to 2022’s volume about “Times of Watershed on the Chesapeake,” you can order paper copies of the back issues of the SlackWater print Journal.