News
Click here to watch History Professor John Mason discuss his research projects in photography and how watching drag races at Eastside Speedway led him to his work.
The American Historical Association recently announced the winners of its 2019 prizes, to be awarded at the 134th annual meeting in New York City on January 3–6, 2020. Professor James Loeffler’s Rooted Cosmopolitans: Jews and Human Rights in the Twentieth Century (Yale University Press, 2018), won the Dorothy Rosenberg Prize. The Dorothy Rosenberg Prize for the history of the Jewish diaspora recognizes the most distinguished work of scholarship on the history of the Jewish diaspora published in English during the previous calendar year. Please join us in congratulating Professor Loeffler for this wonderful honor.
On September 19th, the University of Virginia Press held a launch event at the Rotunda Dome Room to celebrate the publication of the book, Educated in Tyranny: Slavery at Thomas Jefferson's University (UVA Press, 2019). Co-edited by Maurie McInnis and Louis P. Nelson, Educated in Tyranny also features an essay from history faculty affiliate Kirt von Daacke. Two stories are available here: UVA Today | NBC 29
In other news, Justene Hill Edwards was quoted in a New York Times article about Attorney General Mark Herring’s recent announcement that couples in Virginia no longer need to declare their race as a requirement for a marriage certificate.
Our former graduate student, Shira Lurie (supervised by Alan Taylor), wrote an editorial in the Toronto Star. In her editorial, Shira argues that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's “brownface” scandals are just a small part of a problem plaguing Canada. “We take pride in our liberal, multicultural identity” she notes “and ignore (and hope others ignore) the ways we have failed to enact it.” Shira is currently a University College Fellow in Early American History at the University of Toronto.
Another former graduate student in our department, Melissa Gismondi (supervised by Alan Taylor), wrote about Prime Minister Trudeau in a recent New York Times editorial. "Down here, Trudeau’s brownface and blackface episodes are bursting the Canadian exceptionalism bubble,” Gismondi notes.
Professors Claudrena Harold’s and Kevin Everson’s short film, Black Bus Stop, will screen in the Projections section of the 57th New York Film Festival on October 5th and 6th.
Black Bus Stop will also screen at the London Film Festival on October 5th.
“In Black Bus Stop, Kevin Jerome Everson and Claudrena N. Harold resurrect an informal meeting ground for black students at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville....In a collaboration with members of the student body, the filmmakers stage a nocturnal celebration of this sacred and historic space through an exuberant display of choreographed song and dance.” -- New York Film Festival
This article by UVA Today contains an interview from Professor Grace Hale. Click here to read the full "Woodstock at 50: 'The Dream Is Over Yesterday'" article.
Please join us in congratulating Professor Elizabeth Varon on her recent publication: Armies of Deliverance: A New History of the Civil War (Oxford University Press).
Professor of History and Law emeritus, Chuck McCurdy, delivered the fifth annual Salmon P. Chase Distinguished Lecture, sponsored by the Supreme Court Society and Georgetown Law, at the Supreme Court of the United States. His lecture was entitled “The Problem of General Constitutional Law: Thomas McIntyre Cooley, Constitutional Limitations, and the Supreme Court 1868-1878.” The lecture took place on November 30.
History department student, Shira Lurie, published “Liberty Poles and the Fight for Popular Politics” in the Journal of the Early Republic (accessible here).
Below is a recap of recent important department news.
Professor Will Hitchcock's book The Age of Eisenhower (2018) was recently named one of the top twenty history books by Amazon's editorial board.
Professor Fahad Bishara's book A Sea of Debt: Law and Economic Life in the Western Indian Ocean, 1780-1950 (2017) won the Peter Gonville Stein Award from the American Society for Legal History. This is the book's third award.
Professor Cynthia Nicoletti's book Secession on Trial: The Treason Prosecution of Jefferson Davis (2017) won the Cromwell Book Prize from the American Society for Legal History.
Professor David Singerman won the inaugural 1500 Penn Prize of the Treasury Historical Association (THA) for his paper, "Science, Commodities, and Corruption in the Gilded Age." For more information, please see THA.
Tom Butcher (recent PhD and current lecturer for the History Department) has published a piece in The Washington Post. The piece, titled "The bad science behind the Trump administration’s anti-trans policy," can be read in full here.
Philip Zelikow was recently named an Advisory Board member of the new Sine Institute of Policy and Politics at American University. You can read the full story here.
The History Department's own Professor Kevin Gaines has been featured in a piece for UVA Today. You can read the full piece here!
Department News
UVA Today published a piece about Claudrena Harold and Louis Nelson's new book, Charlottesville 2017: The Legacy of Race and Inequality. You can read the piece online here, and you can find out more information on the book here.
Prof. John Mason participated in an interview for the Washington Post along with Vogue's Creative Director, Andre Leon Tally, discussing how it took the magazine 125 years to feature a cover photo shot by an African American photographer.
Prof. Waitman Beorn contributed this op-ed to the Washington Post about the toppling of "Silent Sam" at UNC.
Upcoming Events
9/17/2018: THE ANTISEMITIC ORIGINS OF “FAKE NEWS” AND THE FATE OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY
9/20/2018: THE MEMOIRS OF ULYSSES S. GRANT
9/21/2018: NEW REGISTERS FOR OLD DEBTS: MUNICIPAL COURTS AND MICRO-LENDING IN NINETEENTH CENTURY MEXICO
10/03/2018: NOTES ON THE STATE OF JUPITER: THOMAS JEFFERSON AND HIS BODYSERVANT JUPITER EVANS
10/17/2018: BEYOND JEFFERSON: THE RANDOLPHS, HEMINGSES, AND THE IDEA OF THE WEST, 1820-1900
The Digital Humanities program seeks a Curriculum Research Assistant. This is a paid position beginning in mid to late August. The expected time committment is 25 hours a week in August and 10-20 hours a week during the school year. The position is open to graduate students and pays $15 an hour. To apply, please send your CV and cover letter to mapp@virginia.edu
Please see the attached flyer for more information.
Congrats to grad student Chris Halsted, who has won a Gerda Henkel Stiftung Scholarship for 2018-2019 to support his research on 10th-century Slavic state formation!
You can find out more about the Gerda Henkel Stiftung here.
Congratulations to history grad students Monica Blair, Brian Neumann, and Abeer Saha, who have won 2018 Jefferson Scholars Foundation GSAS Fellowships! Funding from this fellowship will enable them to spend more time concentrating on their dissertation research.
In related news, grad student Justin McBrien has won a 2018 JSF National Fellowship, which will give him support for his final year of dissertation writing. Congrats everyone!
You can check out more about the Jefferson Scholars Foundation here.
Congratulations to Profs. Risa Goluboff and Joe Miller, who have been elected to the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences!
https://news.virginia.edu/content/uva-laws-goluboff-historys-miller-elec...
With Mark Zuckerberg's congressional testimony and the recent FBI seizure of Michael Cohen's legal record, concerns about privacy of information have been making a lot of headlines recently. To provide a historical perspective, Brian Balogh recently spoke (along with his BackStory co-host Nathan Connolly) on NPR's Here and Now about the long history of American privacy and infringement, stretching back to Colonial-era search and seizure and the early origins of the National Security Agency.
Check out the interview here!
http://www.wbur.org/hereandnow/2018/04/12/american-privacy-history
Congratulations to L. Kent Merritt, the history department's administrative supervisor, who has won the University of Virginia Alumni Association's 2018 Distinguished Service Award!