Southern History Seminar
The Southern History seminar at the University of Virginia features papers and presentations concerning the history of the U.S. South. The seminar creates a forum for students, faculty, and visiting scholars to present works in progress. A listing of previous schedules is kept here.
Some papers are made available through the World Wide Web. They are removed immediately after each seminar. Anyone interested in receiving copies of papers from past seminars should contact The Corcoran Department of History.
Fall 2005
Wednesday, September 28, 7:30 p.m. Location: George Gilliam’s house. Professor Claudrena Harold will initiate the fall schedule with a discussion of her paper, “We Are Constantly on the Firing Line": New Orleans Garveyites and the Struggle to Make a Diasporan Movement Locally Relevant.” Ms. Harold holds a joint appointment at the University of Virginia as an Assistant Professor in both the Department of History, and Afro-American and African Studies. Focusing her scholarship on Garvey Movement in the urban American South, Ms. Harold received her Ph.D from the University of Notre Dame in 2004.
Monday, October 17, 7 p.m. Location: George Gilliam’s house. An Associate Professor of English and American Studies, Franny Nudelman will lead a discussion of her most recent book, John Brown’s Body: Slavery, Violence, & the Culture of War wherein she examines the historical and cultural context for understanding death in war. In the chapter for seminar discussion, Professor Nudelman explores the manner in which photographs of the Civil War dead challenged conventional commemorative practice. Please read the fourth chapter, “Photographing the War Dead,” which is available here. Refreshments will be provided.
Thursday, November 17, time and place: 7:30 PM, The home of Melissa Estes and Ross Blair, 419A, Altamont Street. Art historian Maurie McInnis will discuss her fascinating paper, “The Most Famous Plantation of All: The Politics of Painting Mount Vernon.” This paper will explore the flourish of images created in the 1850s featuring George Washington's home--pictures that were deeply embroiled in the sectional tensions of the decade. Ms. McInnis is an Associate Professor in Department of Art and Art History at the University of Virginia. Her previous publications include The Politics of Taste in Antebellum Charleston (UNC: 2005). A copy of her paper is available here (password required). Refreshments will be provided.
Spring 2005
• Friday, February 18, 12 p.m. Location: Miller Center of Public Affairs. Visiting the Miller Center as part of its American Political Development colloquium series, and co-sponsored by the Southern History Seminar, Glenda Gilmore will discuss her paper “From Chapel Hill to Cape Town: The Collapse of Interracialism during the Popular Front.” Peter V. and C. Vann Woodward Professor of History at Yale University, Ms. Gilmore has worked most recently on Defying Dixie: Southerners at War with White Supremacy, 1919-1948, to be published by W.W. Norton. Defying Dixie examines southerners—black and white, residents and expatriates—who tried to overturn Jim Crow before the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s. The paper is available at the Miller Center website at www.americanpoliticaldevelopment.org. Click on the 2005 Spring Colloquia Schedule, and then on the paper. Lunch to be served. Please RSVP to Chi Lam at the Miller Center at 20ckl2q [at] virginia [dot] edu">ckl2q [at] virginia [dot] edu.
• Wednesday, March 16, 7 p.m. Location: Grace Hale’s house. On his way to UNC for the 75 th Anniversary of the Southern Historical Collection, Ed Ayers will present his absolutely most recent thoughts on the state of southern history, with a particular emphasis on competing historiographical traditions, the promise of digitial history, and related topics. Mr. Ayers is the Dean of Arts and Sciences and the Hugh P. Kelly Professor of History at UVA. His most recent book is the award-winning In the Presence of Mine Enemies: War in the Heart of America, 1859-1863, published in 2003. Southern cooking to be served.
• Wednesday, April 20, 7 p.m. Location: Grace Hale’s house. Focusing on issues of region in southern and American history, the Southern History Seminar will present a graduate panel entitled “Rethinking Regional History.” Original papers will be presented by Melissa Estes, Scott Matthews, Andrew Torget, and Lori Schulyer. Respondents will include UVA history professors Ed Ayers and Peter Onuf, co-authors of the 1996 collection All Over the Map: Rethinking American Regions. In addition to its exploration of historical and methodological issues, the event will provide a model for graduate and professional conference participation, and discuss other aspects of academic professionalization, including publishing, grant writing, the job search, and so on. Southern cooking.
Fall 2004
• Tuesday, September 28, 8 p.m. Location: Grace Hale’s house. Initiating the fall schedule of events, Julian Bond will discuss several topics of interest. Mr. Bond is a professor in the Department of History at the University of Virginia whose courses have addressed the history of the Civil Rights Movement, southern African American politics, and related areas. He has been Chairman of the NAACP since 1998. Among his many earlier activities were his participation in the founding of the Southern Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) while a student at Morehouse College in 1960, and his service for more than twenty years in the Georgia State Assembly. Refreshments will be served.
• Friday, October 8, 7 p.m. Location: Grace Hale’s house. An Associate Professor of History at Duke University, Laura Edwards will talk about her current book project, We the People: Constituting Difference and Inequality in the Post-Revolutionary United States. Exploring changes in the way inequality operated, Ms. Edwards’s work focuses on the relationship of domestic dependents to the developing post-Revolutionary states. Slaves, ordinary white women, propertyless families, and children are considered amid the changing contours of state institutions in the Carolinas. Please read a draft of the first chapter, “Excavating a Local State from Beneath the Layers of Southern History,” which is available in Word format. Refreshments.
• Monday, November 1, 8 p.m. Location: Ronald Dimberg's house. As a tantalizing build-up to election day, Grace Hale will discuss “The Southern Black Roots of Postwar American Culture and Politics, or The Strange Career of the White Negro.” Ms. Hale, an Associate Professor of History at the University of Virginia, has current research interests in the multifarious expressions of cultural and political rebellion in the post-1945 United States. Her first book, Making Whiteness: The Culture of Segregation in the South, 1890-1940 (Pantheon, 1988), articulated the elaborate cultural formations of southern racial identities between the emerging New South after Reconstruction and the advent of World War II. Refreshments.
• Wednesday, November 17, 7:30 p.m. Location: Grace Hale’s house. A leading figure in southern literature and intellectual history, Fred Hobson will discuss the lead essay in his forthcoming book, The Silencing of Emily Mullen and Other Essays (LSU, 2005). A Professor of English and the Lineberger Professor in the Humanities at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Mr. Hobson has written and edited many books, including But Now I See: The White Southern Racial Conversion Narrative (LSU, 1999) and Mencken: A Life (Random House, 1994). A draft of “The Silencing of Emily Mullen” is available in Word format. Refreshments.
