News

Saturday, April 29, 2023

A University of Virginia Karsh Institute of Democracy team, featuring Professor William Hitchcock as one of its co-host, has won a coveted Webby Award for its podcast “Democracy in Danger,” beating out productions from NBC News, the Washington Post and The Economist. Please view the UVAToday's coverage of the announcement: https://news.virginia.edu/content/democracy-danger-podcast-wins-webby-award-against-stiff-competition

Saturday, April 29, 2023

Professor Justene Hill Edwards discusses slavery on Grounds before the Civil War and the intersections of slavery and legal pedagogy at UVA Law on Legal Knowledge podcast. Legal Knowledge is a Podcast that chronicals the history of UVA Law School. Listen to Hill Edwards' discussion on episode two entitled, "Teachgin the Laws of Slavery."

https://soundcloud.com/uva-law-archives/teaching-the-laws-of-slavery?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=social_sharing

Thursday, April 6, 2023

Thomas Klubock's recent book, Ránquil: Rural Rebellion, Political Violence, and Historical Memory in Chile (Yale U. Press, 2022) won the Whitaker Book Prize from the Mid-Atlantic Council of Latin American Studies (MACLAS). 

http://www.maclas.org/2023http://www.maclas.org/2023

Thursday, April 6, 2023

Bradly Reed won this year's AAPI (Asian and Asian Pacific American Alumni) Advancement Award. This award was established in 2022 to honor current UVA faculty members who have made significant contributions towards greater understanding and appreciation of Asian culture or Asian-American relations.

 

Thursday, March 23, 2023

Check out Professor Zelikow's co-authored Washington Post opinion piece, "The moral and legal case for sending Russia's frozen $300 billion to Ukraine."

Read here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/03/20/transfer-russian-froz...

Tuesday, March 14, 2023

UVAToday highlights how, through a partnership between the Governing America in a Global Era Initiative (GAGE)and Washington Post's "Made by History," several of our grad students have produced remarkable work! GAGE director William Hitchcock discusses the programs importance to grad students’ professional development. Also, Bethany Bell and Brianna Frakes share their experiences! 

The article can be read here: https://news.virginia.edu/content/remarkable-uva-students-expand-possibilities-through-washington-post-partnership?fbclid=IwAR2BEBE4uSfiK3FZU08S0o7bY_kl6MQVDkscieXjqJQSagVyIqCQI8iTCFM

Monday, March 13, 2023

Professor Neeti Nair recently appeared on “The Agenda,” a nightly current affairs program on Canada’s TVO Today. The episode is titled “Is India’s Democracy in Crisis?” 

The episode can be viewed here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZPLM_EyFw0

Friday, March 10, 2023

Congratulations to Professor Neeti Nair on the publication of her new book, Hurt Sentiments: Secularism and Belonging in South Asia!

Her book can be found here: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674238275

Wednesday, March 1, 2023

Professor John Edwin Mason was interviewed by PBS NewHour about the Holsinger Studio Collection's "Visions of Progress: Portraits of Dignity, Style and Racial Uplift" exhibit — open through June 24 — that he curated for UVA's Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library : Images of 'Black life, Black joy' are immortalized in historic Charlottesville portraits
 

Friday, February 10, 2023

Congratulations to Professor Kristina Richardson, who has been awarded the 2023 Monica H. Green Prize for Distinguished Medieval Research by the Medieval Academy of America. 

The prize “honor[s] scholarship and public engagement that demonstrates the importance of studying the past to understand the present.”  The prize's description can be found here: www.medievalacademy.org/page/MonicaHGreenPrize

 

 

Friday, February 3, 2023

Congratulations to Professor Melvyn P. Leffler on the publication of his new book, Confronting Saddam Hussein: George W. Bush and the Invasion of Iraq.

His book can be found here: https://academic.oup.com/book/44895

An excerpt/adaptation appeared in the Atlantic. 

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/01/fear-power-and-hubris-bush-and-iraq-war/672759/

 

Friday, February 3, 2023

In a recent Washington Post "Made by History," article Brianna Frakes (PhD Candidate) explains how resistance to the Emancipation Proclamation relates to the contemporary moment.  

"The Emancipation Proclamation sparked fierce resistance. That matters today." can be read here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2023/01/31/emancipation-p...

Tuesday, January 31, 2023

Professor Justene Hill Edwards was featured in WalletHub's recent article about States with the Biggest and Smallest Wealth Gaps by Race/Ethnicity. You can find the article here: https://wallethub.com/edu/states-with-the-highest-and-lowest-financial-gaps-by-race/9842#expert=Justene_Hill_Edwards.

 

Thursday, January 26, 2023

Congratulations to Miller Center Professor Marc J. Selverstone on his recently published book, The Kennedy Withdrawal: Camelot and the American Commitment to Vietnam (Havard University Press 2022) 

 

The book can be found here: https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674048812

Description:

A major revision of our understanding of JFK’s commitment to Vietnam, revealing that his administration’s plan to withdraw was a political device, the effect of which was to manage public opinion while preserving United States military assistance.

In October 1963, the White House publicly proposed the removal of United States troops from Vietnam, earning President Kennedy an enduring reputation as a skeptic on the war. In fact, Kennedy was ambivalent about withdrawal and was largely detached from its planning. Drawing on secret presidential tapes, Marc J. Selverstone reveals that the withdrawal statement gave Kennedy political cover, allowing him to sustain support for U.S. military assistance. Its details were the handiwork of Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, whose ownership of the plan distanced it from the president.

Selverstone’s use of the presidential tapes, alongside declassified documents, memoirs, and oral histories, lifts the veil on this legend of Camelot. Withdrawal planning was never just about Vietnam as it evolved over the course of fifteen months. For McNamara, it injected greater discipline into the U.S. assistance program. For others, it was a form of leverage over South Vietnam. For the military, it was largely an unwelcome exercise. And for JFK, it allowed him to preserve the U.S. commitment while ostensibly limiting it.

The Kennedy Withdrawal offers an inside look at presidential decisionmaking in this liminal period of the Vietnam War and makes clear that portrayals of Kennedy as a dove are overdrawn. His proposed withdrawal was in fact a cagey strategy for keeping the United States involved in the fight—a strategy the country adopted decades later in Afghanistan.

 

Thursday, January 26, 2023

In a recently published Washington Post "Made By History" article, Bethany Bell (Graduate MA student) explains the role of the United Daughters of the Confederacy in school curriculums. Bell draws connections between UCD and the Florida Governor's recent announcement of the state's rejection of the new AP African American Studies course.

Read article here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/made-by-history/2023/01/25/ap-african-american-history-florida/

Thursday, January 26, 2023

Congratulations to Professor Cong Ellen Zhang the recently published co-edited and co-translated volume,Chinese Autobiographical Writing: An Anthology of Personal Accounts (Patricia Ebrey, Cong Ellen Zhang, and Ping Yao; University of Washington Press, 2023).

Description:

Personal accounts help us understand notions of self, interpersonal relations, and historical events. Chinese Autobiographical Writing contains full translations of works by fifty individuals that illuminate the history and conventions of writing about oneself in the Chinese tradition. From poetry, letters, and diaries to statements in legal proceedings, these engaging and readable works draw us into the past and provide vivid details of life as it was lived from the pre-imperial period to the nineteenth century. Some focus on a person’s entire life, others on a specific moment. Some have an element of humor, others are entirely serious. Taken together, these selections offer an intimate view of how Chinese men and women, both famous and obscure, reflected on their experiences as well as their personal struggles and innermost thoughts.

With an introduction and list of additional readings for each selection, this volume is ideal for undergraduate courses on Chinese history, literature, religion, and women and family. Read individually, each piece illuminates a person, place, and moment. Read in chronological order, they highlight cultural change over time by showing how people explored new ways to represent themselves in writing.

The open access publication of this book was made possible by a grant from the James P. Geiss and Margaret Y. Hsu Foundation.

Link to the book: https://uwapress.uw.edu/book/9780295751221/chinese-autobiographical-writing/

Monday, January 23, 2023

Congratulations to Kyrill Kunakhovich on his recently published book, Communism's Public Sphere: Culture as Politics in Cold War Poland and East Germany! 

The book can be found here.

Please see the book description below:

Communism's Public Sphere explores the political role of cultural spaces in the Eastern Bloc. Under communist regimes that banned free speech, political discussions shifted to spaces of art: theaters, galleries, concert halls, and youth clubs. Kyrill Kunakhovich shows how these venues turned into sites of dialogue and contestation. While officials used them to spread the communist message, artists and audiences often flouted state policy and championed alternative visions. Cultural spaces therefore came to function as a public sphere, or a rare outlet for discussing public affairs.

Focusing on Kraków in Poland and Leipzig in East Germany, Communism's Public Sphere sheds new light on state-society interactions in the Eastern Bloc. In place of the familiar trope of domination and resistance, it highlights unexpected symbioses like state-sponsored rock and roll, socialist consumerism, and sanctioned dissent. 

By examining nearly five decades of communist rule, from the Red Army's arrival in Poland in 1944 to German reunification in 1990, Kunakhovich argues that cultural spaces played a pivotal mediating role. They helped reform and stabilize East European communism but also gave cover to the protest movements that ultimately brought it down.

Thursday, December 8, 2022

Professor James Loeffler recently published an article entitled, "The Religions of Human Rights" in Harvard Theological Review. The article can be found here: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/harvard-theological-review/artic...

 

Abstract

The modern human rights movement arose during a moment of unprecedented encounter between global religions in the mid-twentieth century. Yet attempts to parse the historical relationship between human rights and religious thought have almost exclusively taken the form of case studies of individual religious traditions. This focus on intellectual genealogies obscures the fact that much of human rights doctrine emerged from interreligious contacts and conflicts between Judaism and Christianity, particularly in the context of the decolonizing Middle East. This article retraces this interreligious encounter through the writings of Amnesty International founder Peter Benenson, diplomat and theologian Charles Malik, and rabbi and activist Maurice Perlzweig. Together they represent three different theopolitical responses to the problem of religious pluralism after global empire: minoritarian human rights, majoritarian human rights, and cosmopolitan human rights. Recovering these interrelated human rights conceptions exposes the frames of religious difference embedded in the modern Western human rights imagination.

Saturday, December 3, 2022

Congratulations to Professor Chris Gratien who is a Middle East Studies Association 2022 Nikki Keddie Book Award Co-Winner for The Unsettled Plain: An Environmental History of the Late Ottoman Frontier!

#MESA2022

Check out the book here: https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=32948

Thursday, December 1, 2022

Congratulations to Professor J.E. Lendon whose book, That Tyrant, Persuasion: How Rhetoric Shaped the Roman World was chosen by Brian Vickers as a Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year!

Read article here: https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/tls-books-of-the-year-2022/?fbclid=Iw...

 

Pulled Quote: “That Tyrant, Persuasion. . . breaks new ground by tracing the influence of rhetoric on public life. . . . drawing on vast erudition, Lendon writes beautifully. He deserves to be widely read.”—Brian Vickers, Times Literary Supplement

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