News
Professor Elizabeth Varon's latest book, Longstreet: The Confederate General Who Defied the South, is a finalist in the Biography category for an LA Times Book Prize! Congratulations Professor Varon! View announcement here: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2024-02-21/l-a-times-book-prize-finalists-2023
Congratulations of graduate student Bethany Bell on winning the "Memphis State Eight" third paper prize at Graduate Association for African-America History annual conference.
Professor Claudrena Harold was recently featured in the PBS docuseries Gospel, the latest history series from Henry Louis Gates, Jr., that digs deep into the origin story of Black spirituality through sermon and song. Episode subjects include: The Gospel Train (the sonic influences of blues and jazz), The Golden Age Of Gospel (from the Lord’s music to the mainstream), Take The Message Everywhere (gospel goes mainstream, taking the good news everywhere), and Gospel's Second Century (gospel and preaching achieve platinum-selling success). The series first aired on February 11 and 12 but is available online. https://www.pbs.org/show/gospel/
Grace Hale recently published a review of Dawoud Bey’s, which is currently showing at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond, as a part of her ongoing series called Shutter that examines how photographers especially, but also other visual artists think about the US South published by Southern Cultures: https://www.southerncultures.org/article/dawoud-beys-meditations-on-history-and-vision/?utm_source=Southern+Cultures&utm_campaign=053313cb65-12.21+Cat+Square+%2B+Emmet+Gowin_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_6c45226e84-053313cb65-69397197&mc_cid=053313cb65
Professor Neeti Nair's interview with the Social-Legal Review discussing her latest book, Hurt Sentiments, is now available on the SLR forum!
The editorial board members of the Socio-Legal Review, a journal published by the National Law School of India University, Bengaluru, (the #1 law school in India) have published a transcript of a conversation with Professor Nair from last December. https://www.sociolegalreview.com/post/hurt-sentiments-an-interview-with-neeti-nair
Professor Neeti Nair was recently quoted in The Print! Check out the full article, "The self-pitying Hindu has a litany of woes—evolution to Taj Mahal. Yogi’s UP is their balm."
https://theprint.in/ground-reports/the-self-pitying-hindu-has-a-litany-o...
Professor Justene Hill Edwards recently appeared on NPR’s Marketplace to discuss the Freedman’s Bank and her forthcoming book, Savings and Trust: The Rise and Betrayal of the Freedman’s Bank.
https://www.marketplace.org/2024/02/15/how-a-bank-failure-150-years-ago-...
Congratualtions to Professor Kristina Richardson on being selected as a 2024-2025 Phi Beta Kappa Visting Scholar!
Since 1956, the Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar Program has been offering undergraduates the opportunity to spend time with some of America's most distinguished scholars. Each year, top scholars in the liberal arts and sciences are selected to visit universities and colleges where Phi Beta Kappa chapters are located. Visiting Scholars spend two days on each campus meeting informally with undergraduates, participating in classroom lectures and seminars, and giving one major lecture open to the academic community and general public.
The press release can be found here!
Join Lifetime Learning and Professor Grace Elizabeth Hale, as she discusses "In the Pines: A Lynching, A Lie, A Reckoning." In her new book, Hale researched the unsolved murder of a Black man in rural Mississippi while her grandfather was a local sheriff, upending what she thought she knew about her family and this tragedy. Professor Claudrena Harold will moderate the discussion.
Professor Emeritus Brian Balogh recently published articles in TIME and The Atlantic! These articles derive from his recently published book, Not in My Back Yard: How Citizen Activists Nationalized Local Politics in the Fight to Save Green Springs (Yale University Press, 2024). Check them out!
"The ‘Southern Lady’ Who Beat the Courthouse Crowd, " The Atlantic, February 4, 2024. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/02/the-southern-lady-who-beat-the-courthouse-crowd/677335/
"NIMBYs and YIMBYs Have More in Common Than It Might Seem," TIME, February 6, 2024. https://time.com/6565036/nimbys-vs-yimbys/
Check out Professor Neeti Nair's opinion piece, A death on the altar of inclusive India: Remembering Gandhi in 2024, for Newslaundry
Erik Linstrum’s new book, Age of Emergency: Living with Violence at the End of the British Empire (Oxford University Press) was reviewed in The Times Literary Supplement: https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/age-of-emergency-erik-linstrum-book-review-miles-taylor/
Congratulations to Professor Kyrill Kunakhovich, whose book, “Communism’s Public Sphere: Culture as Politics in Cold War Poland and East Germany,” was shortlisted for the Waterloo Center for German Studies Book Prize!
Read here: https://uwaterloo.ca/centre-for-german-studies/wcgs-book-prize
Kunakhovich also did a Q&A for WCGS: https://uwaterloo.ca/centre-for-german-studies/2022-book-prize-finalist-kyrill-kunakhovich
Professor Chris Gratien recently discussed The Unsettled Plain: An Environmental History of the Late Ottoman Frontier on the Indian Ocean World Podcast. Listen here: https://www.appraisingrisk.com/2023/12/13/chris-gratien-the-unsettled-plain/
Professor Elizabeth R. Varon recently appeared on the "Key Battles of American History" podcast to discuss her new book, Longstreet: The Confederate General Who Defied the South! Check it out!
https://www.spreaker.com/user/10740198/kbah-longstreet-with-elizabeth-varon-wit
Congratulations to all the students who received department awards! These students will be contributing to so much amazing research!
The awardees are as follows:
Finger Family Undergraduate Research Award
Ella Sher, 3rd year double major in History and Environmental Thought & Practice, to research An Environmental History of the Jaffa Orange with mentor Chris Gratien
History Department Research Assistantships
Sarah Ahmad, a 2nd year History & Foreign Affairs major, will work with Kevin Gaines on “Reconstructing Blackness: The World in the Civil Rights Movement”
Carson Arnold, a 3rd year History major, will work with Grace Hale on her book project, Working Class Heroes: The Past and Future of the American Labor Movement.
Sydney Bradley-Black, a 4th year History and Foreign Affairs major and Spanish minor will work with Lean Sweeney on “Rights Without Rites: Concubinage in the Post-Colony"
Jiawen Davis, a 3rd year double majoring in History and Statistics, will work with Justene Hill-Edwards to research the Freedman’s Savings and Trust Company.
Blanche Delrieu, a 4th year double major in History and Economics will work with Laurent Dubois on his comic book history about the Haitian Revolution.
Tyler Dooling, a 4th year History major and Social Entrepreneurship minor, will work with Lean Sweeney on “Rights Without Rites: Concubinage in the Post-Colony"
Nash Ford, a 4th year American Studies major and History minor, will work with Erica Sterling on her book, Innovating Inequality, about federal education policy, Black politics, and philanthropy.
Ella Sher, a 3rd year History and Environmental Thought & Practice double major, will work with Chris Gratien on an environmental history of the Jaffa orange.
Congratulations to Professor Grace Elizabeth Hale on the recent publication of her book, In the Pines: A Lynching, A Lie, A Reckoning!
Link to book here: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/grace-elizabeth-hale/in-the-pin...
Congratulations to Professor Brian P. Owensby on winning the American Historical Association's Friedrich Katz Prize in Latin American and Caribbean history for his book, New World of Gain: Europeans, Guaraní, and the Global Origins of Modern Economy (Stanford Univ. Press, 2022).
The American Historical Association offers the Friedrich Katz Prize in Latin American and Caribbean History, which honors Friedrich Katz, an Austrian-born specialist in Latin American history, whose nearly 50-year career inspired dozens of students and colleagues in the field. Full announcement here: https://www.historians.org/research-and-publications/perspectives-on-his...
Congratulations to Professor Christian McMillen on being selected as the 2023-2024 Resident Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities at UVA.
Every year, IATH awards a two-year Resident Fellowship to UVA humanities faculty. IATH Fellows work closely with IATH staff to design and implement research projects that use digital tools and methodology to develop and publish their scholarship. His project, American Indian Land Loss: Land Sales and the Loss of American Indian Property in the Twentieth Century, will create and analyze quantitative data sets to study the tragic and deeply fraught history of land ownership by U.S. tribal nations and individual American Indians.