Department News

  • Olivier Zunz gives this year's annual Robert Cross Memorial Lecture titled "Philanthropy in the American Century" on Friday October 23rd at 3:30 PM in the Auditorium of the Harrison Institute at Small Special Collections Library.
  • Jennifer Burns appears on the Daily  Show with Jon Stewart to discuss her new book Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right.
  • Brendan Dooley, a visitor in the Italian department this semester will present a workshop at 3:30 on September 16 in the Large Seminar Room of the Batten Institute— that is Varsity Hall on the third floor. The paper is entitled "Donna Livia's New Clothes: Fashion and Danger in Late Renaissance Italy"
  • The History Department and University community have recently lost a
    scholar, friend, and gentleman in Bill Abbot. The history department has compiled a biography of Mr Abbot and sentiments from faculty and friends The History Department and University community have recently lost a
    scholar, friend, and gentleman in Bill Abbot here.
  • Colleagues recently honored Anne Schutte (emerita) with a festschrift, commemorating her contributions to early modern European history. LINK
    Erik Midelfort (emeritus) recently received a second festschrift from colleagues in early modern European history, honoring him on the occasion of his retirement. LINK
  • UVa History Alum Deborah Kanter '93 recently published Hijos del Pueblo: Gender, Family, and Community in Rural Mexico, 1730 - 1850 (University of Texas Press, 2009).
  • The Chronicle of Higher Education recently published an article on Backstory, a radio program with our own Peter Onuf, Brian Balogh, and, formerly, Ed Ayers.

  • Students Agree, UVA History Professors Rock! The current edition of A&S Online, the web-based magazine of the University’s College of Arts and Sciences, contains an article in which present and former UVA students talk about their favorite professors. Among those mentioned Julian Bond, Paul Kershaw, Joseph Kett, Elizabeth Thompson, and Phillip Zelikow, all of whom are members of the Corcoran Department of History. Former UVA history professor and former dean of the College of Arts and Sciences Edward Ayers is on the list, as well. Also included are emeritus professors Paul Gaston and Norman Graebner, plus Robert Cross, Gary Allinson, and Stephen Innes, who are deceased. For what it’s worth, there are more "Favorite Professors" in the history department than in any other department in the University.

  • GMU's History News Network has released an article by Brian Balogh on his recently published book A Government out of Sight: The Mystery of National Authority in Nineteenth-Century America

  • The Meaning of Obama. Department member (and civil rights icon) Julian Bond discusses the meaning of Barack Obama’s election to the presidency and its implications for race relations in America, in an interview in the current issue of A&S Online, the web-based magazine of the University’s College of Arts and Sciences.

  • The Virginia Historical Society awarded Phyllis Leffler the William M. E. Rachal Award for her essay "Mr. Jefferson's University: Women in the Village!" which they published in the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography in 2007. In the article she uses administrative reports as well as a later survey of alumnae to describe women enrolling first in the Nursing School and by the 1970s in the College.

  • Mel Leffler will receive the 2008 George Louis Beer Prize in recognition of outstanding historical writing in European international history which will be awarded at the January meeting of the AHA. Please join us in congratulating Mel. For the Soul of Mankind is an important and engaging book certainly worthy of this prize. 
  • Christian McMillen has had a busy fall— marvelous for all sorts of reasons — but amongst other things he has completed an academic hat trick: He was one of the authors of an amicus brief submitted to the Supreme Court; And this weekend at the Annual meeting of the American Society for Legal History, his Making of Indian Law won the John Philip Reid award for best overall book in legal history regardless of stage of career or subject and the William Nelson Cromwell prize for best book by a junior scholar.
  • BackStory with the American History Guys is a prototype one-hour, weekly call-in radio program with interviews, discussion and special features. This unique show, in development for national distribution by VFH Radio at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, is designed to provide perspective on the present, by connecting current circumstances with the broad range of U.S. history. Each week, nationally and internationally renowned historians Ed Ayers, Brian Balogh, and Peter Onuf—the genial, sometimes gregarious, and always thought-provoking hosts—rip a topic from the headlines and drill down into America’s past. Moving far beyond the superficial or merely celebratory, they explore depths of historical ambiguity, offering anecdotes, analysis and, as often as not, a healthy dose of humor. Topics in Season One of theBackStorytest and development series, produced with broadcast support from three partnering Virginia public radio stations, have included controversial wars, environmental crises, traditional family values, debt, the Fourth of July, punishment, transportation, racial purity, leisure, and outsiders in America—all treated in the context of U.S. history. To learn more about Backstory, or to download a show, go to www.backstoryradio.org
    If you do not regularly read the Charlottesville Daily Progress (and thereby miss some of the local news that is fit to print), you might want to check the online edition. They have a very nice story about Peter, Brian and Ed Ayers and Backstory which just won an award from the Federation of State Humanities Councils. The story is here.
  • October 14, 2008 — "Technology in World History" (Oxford University Press, 2005), a seven-book series edited by W. Bernard "Bernie" Carlson has won the Sally Hacker prize from the International Society for the History of Technology.The series illustrates how cultures throughout history have used technology — from improved farming techniques to cell phones — to make their way in the world. Besides Carlson, U.Va. contributors to the volumes include Fred Damon, a professor of anthropology, and Bryan Pfaffenberger, an associate professor in the Engineering School.
  • October 15th, 2008  — Mr Holt presented this year's Robert Cross Memorial Lecture titled "Deja Vu: The Disputed Presidential Election of 1876. A recording of the talk is available here.