News
Congratulations to Neeti Nair, Associate Professor in the Department, who has been awarded a Frederick Burkhardt Fellowship by the ACLS. She will spend next year at the Kluge Center, in the Library of Congress, working on her project on blasphemy laws in South Asian history. Read more about the award HERE.
Under the guidance of John Mason, Associate Professor in the Department, the largest group of photos by Gordon Parks collected in decades is now on display at an exhibition at Wichita State University.
The exhibition, Visual Justice: The Gordon Parks Photography Collection, will be at WSU, presented at the Ulrich Museum of Art from January 16 through April 10, 2016.
You can read more about the exhibition and Professor Mason's work HERE.
Congratulations to Kate Geoghegan, Noel Stringham, and Jeff Zvengrowski who each recently successfully defended their PhD theses. Their dissertation titles are as follows:
Kate Geoghegan "The Specter of Anarchy, The Hope of Transformation: The Role of Non-State Actors in the U.S. Response to Soviet Reform and Disunion, 1981-1996"
Noel Stringham “Marking Nuer Histories: Gender, Gerontocracy, and the Politics of Inclusion in the Upper Nile from 1400-1931”
Jeff Zvengrowski "They Stood Like the Old Guard of Napoleon: Jefferson Davis and the Pro-Bonaparte Democrats, 1815-1870"
Members of the Math Department can teach us all how ridiculous lotteries are as a way for individuals to use their money. But it takes a historian to explain why people keep buying lottery tickets nonetheless, and how and why our governments promote them. One of our grad students, Jon Cohen, has been doing just this of late. You will enjoy seeing his opinion piece in The Hill as well as his discussion of the issues on BackStory. These arise from his dissertation work on lotteries.
Read the opinion piece in The Hill.
Listen to the discussion on BackStory.
Alexandra F. Levy, Program Director at the Atomic Heritage Foundation, who received her MA from the Department in 2012, published an article, "Promoting Democracy and Denazification: American Policymaking and German Public Opinion", in Diplomacy and Statecraft. The article, which treats the subject of her Master's thesis, analyzes the differece in practical action from policy goals of the denazificaiton program in American-occupied Germany at the close of WWII.
Read the article (access required) HERE.
The following resolution was prepared and read at the A&S Faculty Meeting last week by Phyllis Leffler. Many thanks to Phyllis for this wonderful tribute to a remarkable force in American life—and in the life of this department.
Read the resolution HERE.
The Chronicle contains a very interesting discussion of presidential studies (link below), featuring Brian Balogh’s recent edited volume, Recapturing the Oval Office.
Read the article HERE.
Grace Hale has won an NEH grant from the Department of Public Programs for a Digital Humanities project Participatory Media. She will examine community documentary making in the 1960s and ‘70s.
She will be working with a former UVA American Studies undergrad, Lauren Tilton, now a PhD candidate at Yale. As Grace notes, Lauren "was one of those amazing UVA students who do everything--she was the head of student government and lived on the lawn AND was a terrific student."
Brian Balogh and Peter Onuf discuss the controversy about Woodrow Wilson's name at Princeton on NPR.
Listen HERE.
Olivier Zunz, Commonwealth Professor in the Department, participated in an event launching a new permanent exhibition at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History about philanthropy, inspired in large part by his book, Philanthropy in America: A History (Princeton UP, 2012). He was joined on stage by David Rockefeller and Warren Buffett.
With the launch of the Philanthropy lnitiative, the National Museum of American History embarks on a long-term project to collect research, document, and exhibit materials relating to the history and impact of American philanthropy. Rotating exhibits, programs, and public outreach will explore the collaborative power of giving in all forms and at all levels across a wide spectrum of issues and movements.
Come study the world's greatest book on democracy at the institution founded by America's greatest democratic thinker. Over two mid-summer weeks on the idyllic grounds of Thomas Jefferson's historic University of Virginia, 16 NEH Summer Scholars will read and discuss the entirety of Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America with two leading experts on Tocqueville and his thought: Arthur Goldhammer (Harvard) and Olivier Zunz (University of Virginia).
For more information, including how to apply, click HERE.
“Backstory” has done another of their special live shows, this one at the Smithsonian on the occasion of the centenary of “Birth of a Nation.”
Listen to the show HERE.
Tom Klubock has been awarded the Forest History Society’s Charles A. Weyerhaeuser Award for the best book on forest and conservation history for La Frontera: Forests and Ecological Conflict in Chile’s Frontier Territory (Duke, 2014).
Read more about the award HERE.
If you have been following debates about science and policy related to global warming, you will be interested to hear this clip of Sarah Milov, Assistant Professor in the Department, speaking on SiriusXM. She discusses the ways in which these debates may or may not track earlier debates about the science and policy related to smoking.
Listen to the discussion HERE.
Engineering & Society Chair Wins Unprecedented Two Sally Hacker Prizes
Professor W. Bernard Carlson, chair of the University of Virginia Department of Engineering and Society, has earned a Sally Hacker Prize and a William and Joyce Middleton Electrical Engineering History Award for his book, Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age.
He is the only author to achieve two Sally Hacker Prizes since the Society for the History of Technology established the award in 1999 to honor exceptional scholarship appealing to a broad audience. Carlson first earned the award in 2008 for his book, Technology in World History.
The William and Joyce Middleton Electrical Engineering History Award is bestowed by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
Princeton University Press, which published Tesla, says: “Nikola Tesla was a major contributor to the electrical revolution that transformed daily life at the turn of the twentieth century. His inventions, patents, and theoretical work formed the basis of modern AC electricity, and contributed to the development of radio and television. Like his competitor Thomas Edison, Tesla was one of America's first celebrity scientists, enjoying the company of New York high society and dazzling the likes of Mark Twain with his electrical demonstrations. An astute self-promoter and gifted showman, he cultivated a public image of the eccentric genius. Even at the end of his life when he was living in poverty, Tesla still attracted reporters to his annual birthday interview, regaling them with claims that he had invented a particle-beam weapon capable of bringing down enemy aircraft.
Plenty of biographies glamorize Tesla and his eccentricities, but until now none has carefully examined what, how, and why he invented. In this groundbreaking book, W. Bernard Carlson demystifies the legendary inventor, placing him within the cultural and technological context of his time, and focusing on his inventions themselves as well as the creation and maintenance of his celebrity. “
Tesla has been translated into eight languages and has sold more than 45,000 copies.
Carlson’s accomplishments also include establishing a strong network for support for UVA students interested in entrepreneurship, and his efforts helped lead to the Faculty Senate’s approval last spring of a University-wide entrepreneurship minor.
If you make it to this year’s History Film Forum, in Washington DC, be sure you make it to the live show by Brian Balogh and the rest of the Backstory Boys!
Information about the Forum is HERE.
For those of you following the political contest in the GOP, you may be interested to read Brian Balogh’s analysis of the branding exercise that is happening at the same time!
Read the article HERE.
The Nau Center for Civil War History, which promotes scholarship, teaching, and public outreach regarding the United States in the era of the Civil War, launched this October. The Center‘s expansive program will include support for graduate and undergraduate research, funding for lectures and conferences designed to reach academic and lay audiences, a book prize for superior scholarship in the field, a postdoctoral fellowship, and undergraduate internships at public historical sites and institutions.
Visit the Center's website to learn more:
John. L. Nau III Center for Civil War History