Media, News and Events
Media, News and Events
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A list of books compiled for the Association of University Presses
- The Peaceful Transfer of Power: An Oral History of America’s Presidential Transitions by David Marchick and Alexander Tippett with A. J. Wilson
- Watchdogs: Inspectors General and the Battle for Honest and Accountable Government by Glenn A. Fine
- Year Zero: The Five-Year Presidency by Christopher P. Liddell
- Constitutional Powers and Politics: How Citizens Think about Authority and Institutional Change by Eileen Braman
- Fighting Political Gridlock: How States Shape Our Nation and Our Lives by David J. Toscano
- The Elections of 2020 edited by Michael Nelson
- Forthcoming: The Elections of 2024...
A contribution to the #StepUP Blog Tour Celebrating University Press Week 2024
By Nadine Zimmerli, Editor in Chief at the University of Virginia Press
Yesterday, I watched an event at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center (a nonpartisan affiliate of the university that specializes in presidential scholarship, public policy, and political history, providing critical insights for the nation's governance challenges) on “Election 2024: Moving toward the transition”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yULvou-T9QM&t=1s
During the opening minutes of this very informative panel discussion on presidential transitions and the process currently underway to transfer power from the outgoing Biden administration to the incoming Trump administration, moderator William...
When Vice President Kamala Harris takes the stage for the presidential debate at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, she will fulfill a prediction made in 1787 that American women would desert the drawing room for “the forum and the college.” That summer, the first woman public speaker in the United States lectured to George Washington, Constitutional Convention delegates, and many women. And the Constitution was drafted to allow a woman to become President. Behind Harris are generations of women whose example of public speaking demanded full political participation.
On May 4, 1787, just before the Constitutional Convention began, George Washington...
This year marks the 70th anniversary of Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window, a film that has held audiences spellbound since it first hit the big screen in 1954. Recently, Rear Window had a limited re-release in theaters, giving new generations (and die-hard fans) the chance to experience it in all its grandeur once again. If you've never seen it—or even if you have—you'll find there’s always something new to discover in this tightly woven thriller. And, as I explored in my book, The Architecture of Suspense: The Built World in the Films of Alfred Hitchcock, you may discover that this...
The University of Virginia Press and the editors of The Revolutionary Age book series are saddened by the death of our beloved friend and colleague Trevor Burnard. A prolific historian of the British Atlantic, with a specialization in the history of Jamaica and the Caribbean, Professor Burnard was one of the most distinguished scholars of his generation. Among his many books was Writing Early America: From Empire to Revolution, which we were proud to publish in our series in 2023. It is an open-access publication, for the benefit of established and emerging scholars in the...
In 2021 President Joe Biden signed legislation establishing June 19 as a federal holiday commemorating the end of slavery. With its roots in nineteenth-century Texas, Juneteenth has become central to not only commemorating emancipation, but also to celebrating African American culture. June 19 was the date in 1865 when the Union Army arrived in Galveston and announced that the Civil War was over and that enslaved persons were free under the Emancipation Proclamation. Although the proclamation had become official more than two years earlier on January 1, 1863, freedmen in Texas adopted June 19 as the date they celebrated freedom...
The University of Virginia Press is proud to announce a new partnership with the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic (SHEAR) on the SHEAR Dissertation Prize, awarded annually to an exceptional unpublished dissertation pertaining to the history of North America from 1776 to 1861.
“As the scholarly press of the university founded and designed by Thomas Jefferson," said director Eric Brandt, "a partnership with the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic seems all too fitting. We are honored to collaborate with SHEAR on their mission to foster the study of the early republican period, encouraging broad diffusion...
Here at UVA Press, we have a lovely holiday tradition. Every year, staff members have the opportunity to pick press books for our private collections. Rather than a “Best of 2023” list, then, here is a sample of the books—backlist classics and new releases—that we enjoyed reading as the year came to an end. The list below reveals the breadth and depth of UVA Press’s catalog, from fun trade titles to weighty academic tomes. We hope our brief thoughts on them inspire you to click on these titles and explore a smattering of what UVA Press has to offer:
Wolfgang Behringer,...
The University of Virginia’s Karsh Institute of Democracy and the University of Virginia Press are pleased to announce “Democratic Ideals in Global Perspective,” a new book series to advance innovative approaches to scholarship on democratic governance from antiquity to the present.
“We at the Karsh Institute are thrilled to be partnering with UVA press to publish innovative and impactful work on the ideals and practices of democracy,” said Melody Barnes, Executive Director of the Institute. “We are equally delighted that two of our recently hired faculty will be leading and shaping this series.”
Eric Brandt, Director of the UVA Press, agreed. "We...
Charlottesville, Va. (October 11, 2023) - After a nationwide search, the University of Virginia Press is proud to announce the appointment of Patricia Searl as its new Director of Digital Publishing. Originally joining UVA Press’s Rotunda Digital Imprint in 2013, Patricia has played multiple key roles, most recently as its Acting Manager, in implementing and expanding Rotunda’s eminent collection of peer-reviewed digital publications. Patricia took the lead in the redesign and continuing development of Rotunda’s SAH Archipedia, a popular open-access collaboration with the Society of Architectural Historians documenting the notable works of the United States’ built world.
Before...
Charlottesville, Va. (Aug. 3, 2023) - The University of Virginia Press is proud to announce that Dr. Beth Colón has accepted the position of Associate Acquisitions Editor for Africana Studies. The creation of this new role reflects UVA Press’s commitment to promoting diversity in both its organization and in its publications. Encompassing the deepest history and most timely issues of today, the Africana Studies list will keep UVA Press at the center of key discussions in the academy and beyond.
Dr. Colón will assume responsibility for a number of distinguished book series, including the Carter G. Woodson Institute Series;
“When I think about Juneteenth, I think about chicken and waffles. White people tell me that chicken and waffles is a Southern black delicacy. But I was born and raised black in the South, and we never ate that dish in my house…. Black folks ate chicken and waffles like we celebrated Juneteenth. That is to say we didn’t.”
The above quote is the response I received from a friend of mine about his opinions on the Juneteenth holiday. Responses like this are not uncommon in black circles. For many people across the country, Juneteenth meant nothing until it became a...
As we celebrate Women’s History Month this year, I want to take the opportunity to reflect on the long legacy of women as writers, scholars, and intellectuals. As a London essayist noted in an 1813 issue of The Quarterly Review: “The mere existence of three or four extraordinary women in a country is of comparatively little value.” Cultural critics could dismiss such individual examples as exceptional anomalies, rather than as representative trends. “Within the last twenty years,” however, there were “more women distinguished for their literary talents. . . than in the twenty centuries that had elapsed.” This author regarded...
UVA Press is proud to celebrate Vernon Burton, co-editor - with Elizabeth R. Varon - of our series The American South Series and A Nation Divided: Studies in the Civil War Era, who has been awarded the 2022 John Hope Franklin Award for Lifetime Achievement in Southern History by the Southern Historical Association (SHA).
The SHA released the following statement: “The John Hope Franklin Award is made every five years in recognition of an individual who has not only made outstanding contributions to scholarship on the American South but also exhibited the qualities of citizenship embodied by the award’s namesake.
In...
In the wake of the Congressional hearings on the January 6 attack on the Capitol, the fragility of presidential transitions is a topic more timely than ever. David Marchick, coauthor with Alexander Tippett and A.J. Wilson of The Peaceful Transfer of Power: An Oral History of America's Presidential Transitions, discusses his book and the fascinating history of transitions, from Buchanan and Lincoln to Trump and Biden, through the following in-person events and online appearances.
Author events
October 10: Politics & Prose
October 11: Partnership for Public Service
November 10: The Miller Center, University of Virginia
January 19: White House Historical Association –...
The University of Virginia Press is proud to announce the appointment of Eric Brandt as its new Director. Eric is a widely respected publishing professional with a long and versatile career in both scholarly and trade publishing. He began his career managing publicity at Columbia University Press after receiving his PhD from Columbia, then moved on to a productive period with several trade houses, including Basic Books and HarperCollins, where he had a highly successful tenure directing marketing and publicity. Eric shifted to acquisitions, acquiring New York Times best-selling titles for Harper, before rejoining the university press world—first at Yale,...
Five years ago, on August 11th and 12th 2017, hate groups descended on Charlottesville and the University of Virginia, seeking to terrorize the community and garner attention for their contemptible views. The deadly result reverberated around the country and the world. Ever since, people have tried to understand the events of those infamous few days; to put them into their proper political, cultural, and historical context so that they and future generations could grasp the full impact of what happened here. The following summer, UVa Press published two books that sought to help do that.
UVA Press extends our congratulations to David Marchick, coauthor of the forthcoming The Peaceful Transfer of Power: An Oral History of America’s Presidential Transitions, on his appointment as the new Dean of American University’s Kogod School of Business. Marchick is the former director of the Partnership for Public Service’s Center for Presidential Transition, former managing director at the Carlyle Group, adjunct professor at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, and served as chief operating officer and senior Biden appointee at the United States International Development Finance Corporation.
In his new position at the Kogod School of Business,...
Excerpted from R. Marie Griffith’s Making the World Over: Confronting Racism, Misogyny, and Xenophobia in U.S. History
"I really do feel like the work and time we spend avoiding having difficult conversations is so much more wasteful and painful and time-consuming than actually having the difficult conversation."
-Shonda Rimes
Abortion, it isn’t said nearly often enough, is a singular experience for each person who has one, in large part because of how strongly we are individually conditioned to feel about it by religion and other social and cultural influences. It seems to me that the fear of telling the wrong person and...
Today, we are happy to feature a post by UVA Press author Paul D. Escott on Black political organizations in the Civil War period. This is the final post in our three-part blog series for Juneteenth 2022. You can read Part I here and Part II here.
We can rejoice that June 19th is an official federal holiday, for until recently most white Americans had not heard of Juneteenth. The Associated Press tells readers that Juneteenth was “the effective end of slavery in the U.S.” and explains that on that date in 1865 “Union soldiers brought the news of...
Juneteenth is our newest national holiday, and today it is celebrated by people of all races throughout the United States. This is the way it should be. Juneteenth should not be seen as a Black holiday; it is a national commemoration of the end of slavery in the United States. The institution of slavery had been deeply entrenched throughout the nation at its founding, and eliminating slavery took the bloodiest war in American history. As traumatic as that process was, however, the abolition of slavery in the United States was one of the great steps forward in our long effort...
“You can’t give me the right to be a human being. I’m born with it,” said an elderly, formerly enslaved man to the White folklorist and radio show host John Henry Faulk. Faulk had been explaining to the man “what a different kind of White man I was,” telling the older gentleman that he was in favor of giving Black people civil rights and giving them access to education and giving them any job for which they were qualified. Faulk admitted to initially being stunned and angered by the elder’s retort. Although Faulk had an epiphany in that moment, namely...
Fifteen years ago — on April 17, 2007 — a lone gunman killed thirty-two students and faculty members at Virginia Tech. Blacksburg is less than 200 miles from Charlottesville but the university communities joined hands in grief. Thomas Kapsidelis, a journalist, and at the time a fellow at Virginia Humanities, described the events of that tragic day in a 2019 book. After Virginia Tech: Guns, Safety, and Healing in the Era of Mass Shootings gives us pause and perspective for contemplation. It was not an isolated event. Nor was Sandy Hook or Columbine. According to the Associated Press there...
This is the only surviving British flag of the several captured by Bernardo de Gálvez during the American Revolutionary War. The flag was the only one that he kept for himself and was finally placed in his family’s mausoleum in the church of Macharaviaya, the Gálvez family’s hometown, in Andalusia. It was kept until 1903 when his descendants donated it to the Museo del Ejército (Spanish Army Museum).
A manuscript note in French, accompanying the case in which the flag was preserved, tells of a remarkable story.
“When the French wanted to enter the village during the War of Independence (1808-14), the...
University of Virginia Press announces the release of a new digitized version of The Papers of Frederick Law Olmsted on the bicentennial of Olmsted’s birth. Through a partnership with the National Association of Olmsted Parks (NAOP) and ROTUNDA, the University of Virginia Press’s digital imprint, the searchable site will provide scholars, students, and practitioners an entirely new level of research on this venerable designer.
Frederick Law Olmsted’s work touched communities across North America—from Palo Alto to New York City to Montreal to Pittsburgh to Atlanta—with creativity and vision. His lasting legacy goes beyond green space to a way...
President Biden signed the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Bill into law on March 30, 2022, making lynching a federal hate crime. As I write these words it is hard to believe it would take one hundred years since anti-lynching legislation was first proposed to become the law of the land. The collaboration of Brian Stevenson and the Mass Design Group’s National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, shows in stark terms the scope of these heinous crimes. The Tuskegee University Archives reports that there were almost 5,000 lynchings between 1882 and 1968 and more than 70 percent...
Below, Patrick Griffin, co-editor, with Francis D. Cogliano, of Ireland and America: Empire, Revolution, and Sovereignty, reflects on the origins and meaning of this celebration.
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St. Patrick’s Day is all about connection. And disconnection.
Although the Irish have been celebrating the day for centuries, often with a great deal of drinking and partying before the Famine, the day as we know it is really one for the diaspora. Americans, New Yorkers especially, were the first to parade. They did so to claim space in the city and to assert themselves in a plural new world. They had to take what they...
I met Eliza Harriot—I did not know that was her name—many years ago. Over the years as I have studied the convention, one entry in George Washington’s diary from May 1787 nagged at me. The convention was supposed to start on Monday, May 14. Washington arrived in Philadelphia the day before and waited as delegates slowly trickled into town. He drank tea at Robert Morris’s house: “The State of New York was represented. Dined at a club at Greys ferry over the Schuylkill & drank Tea at Mr. Morris’s— after wch. went with Mrs. Morris & some other Ladies to...
As Duke Divinity School reports, The Society of Christian Ethics recently announced that Stanley Hauerwas, Gilbert T. Rowe Professor Emeritus of Divinity and Law and author most recently of FULLY ALIVE: The Apocalyptic Humanism of Karl Barth, has been awarded the 2022 Lifetime Achievement Award.
With permission, we have included Professor Hauerwas's acceptance speech below.
On Receiving the SCE Lifetime Achievement Award
Stanley Hauerwas
“I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth”—Lou Gehrig. Though I never aspired to be a first baseman for the Yankees—Jon Stock must bear that burden—Gehrig’s sentiments expressed at his retirement due to his...
We are pleased to offer this original blog post in honor of MLK Day by Emily K. Abel and Margaret K. Nelson, coauthors of LIMITED CHOICES: Mable Jones, a Black Children's Nurse in a Northern White Household, with a foreword by Andrea Douglas.
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In a speech before the Teamsters and Allied Trade Councils, New York City, in May 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr., said, “Today Negroes want above all else to abolish poverty in their lives, and in the lives of the white poor. This is the heart of their program. To end humiliation was a start, but to end poverty...
The University of Virginia Press shares in the loss felt by many in the scholarly and documentary editing community at the news of Jennifer Steenshorne’s passing. Many of us were privileged to work with her on several flagship projects, including the select edition of the Papers of John Jay and the comprehensive edition of the Papers of George Washington. On these publications, she demonstrated the inestimable quality to which most editors aspire—the ability to make informed choices about how best to present, contextualize, and annotate documents that make evident the complexities of individual lives, and what these tell us about...
Thanks to Sharon Aronofsky Weltman, author of VICTORIANS ON BROADWAY: Literature, Adaptation, and the Modern American Musical, for this original reflection on the life and work of Stephen Sondheim.
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On Friday after Thanksgiving, I never shop. I’ve never been a Black Friday shopper, not even before the pandemic made the idea scary. Instead, I hang out with the family I’ve flown to see, making turkey soup and joining my husband and niece around the piano for show tunes—he plays, she sings, both extremely well. She’s a mezzo. This year it was a joyous visit, cozily together again after two years....
We are pleased to offer this original blog post by David J. Toscano, author of FIGHTING POLITICAL GRIDLOCK: How States Shape Our Nation and Our Lives with a foreword by Senator Mark R. Warner. You can read more in the Falls Church News-Press here.
Lessons from Virginia
As the former Democratic leader in the Virginia House of Delegates, I witnessed Terry McAuliffe’s lead in the 2013 governor’s race collapse in the aftermath of the botched rollout of the federal health care exchanges. He won, but only because the campaign ended before the full force of the public’s anger could be felt.
Four years later, it...
UVA Press, a longtime member of the Association of University Presses (AUPresses), is proud to celebrate University Press Week (UP Week). The theme for Tuesday is: SURPRISE!
To celebrate, we asked Walter Hood and Grace Mitchell Tada, coeditors of BLACK LANDSCAPES MATTER, to comment on the success of their book. We thank them for their thoughtful response below.
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In the summer of 2020, while reviewing final proofs of Black Landscapes Matter, someone congratulated us. The book, which we had quietly been working on for the past several years, had climbed to the top of a list of best-selling books on Amazon.
There was some panic associated with...
We share today in mourning the loss of Linwood Holton, Virginia's First GOP Governor in the Twentieth Century and Giant of Civil Rights, who died yesterday at 98.
From the Richmond Times-Dispatch:
"Linwood Holton, vanguard of two-party competition in once solidly Democratic Virginia as its first Republican governor of the 20th century and whose progressive views on race and public investment ultimately isolated him from a GOP that would lurch right in an alliance with the Old South conservatives he long opposed, died Thursday morning at his home in Kilmarnock. He was 98.
"Mr. Holton’s death was announced by his four children.
"A native of the...
Our heartiest congratulations to Julie Bargmann for being selected as the inaugural winner of the Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize for her vision and persistent in reclaiming “fallow” lands—those damaged during the industrial economy and since. “Julie Bargmann is a true pioneer in her field but also has instructed all of us in what to keep and what to save as we reimagine cities,” says Suzanne Morse Moomaw, director of UVA Press and UVA Architectural School colleague. Bargmann has devoted her teaching and practice to reclaiming and repurposing wastelands in rural and urban areas. Her regenerative approach to design...
We are pleased to offer this original op-ed by Daniel Wirls, author of the new book THE SENATE: From White Supremacy to Governmental Gridlock, out this month.
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Early October’s donnybrook in D.C. over, among other things, raising the debt ceiling, was yet another demonstration of the danger and dysfunction of the Senate filibuster, no matter which party is in the majority. The filibuster should die, and the sooner the better. We all, Republicans and Democrats alike, would be much better off without it.
Amid the deadlock over raising the debt ceiling, Democrats were poised to further limit the filibuster by manufacturing another ad hoc exception...
We are delighted to offer this blog post by Margaret Grubiak, author of MONUMENTAL JESUS: Landscapes of Faith and Doubt in Modern America, on the new film The Eyes of Tammy Faye and Heritage, USA in Fort Mill, South Carolina.
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In the new film The Eyes of Tammy Faye, actress Jessica Chastain portrays Tammy Faye Messner (1942-2007), Pentecostal televangelist partner to first husband Jim Bakker (played by Andrew Garfield). The dramatic ups and downs of Tammy Faye’s life have long been the subject of popular culture interest, one often focused on her physicality. Tammy Faye was famous for her overly done clothing, hair, and makeup, particularly...
Virginia’s removal of the Robert E. Lee statue from Monument Avenue in Richmond this week made national news. Adam H. Domby, associate professor of history at Auburn University and author of The False Cause: Fraud, Fabrication, and White Supremacy in Confederate Memory, here offers his take on the monument’s history and Lee’s true legacy.
As a statue of Robert E. Lee was lowered to the ground in Richmond, Virginia, on Wednesday, perhaps the most contested Confederate monument had finally met its fate. It was then cut up into multiple pieces to be sent into storage. When I started researching Confederate monuments, I...
We are delighted to announce that David Sewell, Manager of Digital Initiatives and the Rotunda Imprint at the University of Virginia Press, has won The Association for Documentary Editing's 2021 Lyman H. Butterfield Award. The award, presented in memory of Lyman Henry Butterfield, whose editing work included contributions to The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, the Adams Family Papers, and the The Letters of Benjamin Rush, was given in recognition of Sewell's creative and groundbreaking innovations in scholarly editing and documentary publication, which have made possible the widespread digital publication of scholarly editions.
Rachel Monroy, Chair of the Butterfield Award Committee, said in her presentation remarks:
"David began as a...
This month, right in time for SHEAR, UVA Press is proud to release Ireland and America: Empire, Revolution, and Sovereignty, edited by Patrick Griffin and Francis D. Cogliano, and featuring contributions by Rachel Banke, T. H. Breen, Trevor Burnard, Nicholas Canny, Christa Dierksheide, Matthew P. Dziennik, S. Max Edelson, Annette Gordon-Reed, Eliga Gould, Robert G. Ingram, Peter S. Onuf, Andrew J. O’Shaughnessy, Jessica Choppin Roney, and Gordon S. Wood.
To celebrate the release of this volume, Frank Cogliano here answers a few questions that provide a glimpse behind the curtain on how this volume came to be, its main lessons, and what’s...
We share in mourning the loss of William "Bill" Robertson, the first African American to serve as an aide to a Virginia governor. He subsequently served in five presidential administrations. Before his passing, Robertson also was finishing work on his memoir LIFTING EVERY VOICE: My Journey from Segregated Roanoke to the Corridors of Power, to be published in the Spring of 2022.
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The Roanoke Times offers a remembrance:
"One day in September 1968, the principal of Roanoke’s Hurt Park Elementary School took a phone call from a prominent lawyer in town. Linwood Holton asked if he could come pay a visit. Naturally, Bill Robertson said yes....
June is Pride Month, and I’m proud to be a member of the LGBTQ community, working on LGBTQ literary and cultural history. My book, Sapphic Crossings: Cross-Dressing Women in Eighteenth-Century British Literature (UVA Press, 2021), looks at the lesbian, transgender and nonbinary histories that many people today haven’t heard of—yet.
Many people associate Pride celebrations with parades, rainbow gear, and parties, and for many people, Pride is associated primarily with gays and lesbians. In fact, sometimes Pride is called “Gay Pride.” What many do not know is that the Stonewall Riots that happened at the end of June 1969—the reason why Pride...
“I hate the myth of Hemingway. And the reason I hate the myth of Hemingway: It obscures the man. And the man is much more interesting than the myth.” So says Michael Katakis, the manager of the Hemingway estate, toward the very beginning of Ken Burns’s and Lynn Novick’s (excellent) recent documentary, Hemingway, on PBS. It is hard to imagine a more incomprehending attitude toward Hemingway, for whom – as Hemingway shows itself to know perfectly well throughout – the “man” and the “myth” are entirely entwined.
One wonders if Katakis’s comments are given such prominence at the beginning of Hemingway in order to underscore, by...
Rotunda, UVA Press's digital imprint, is seeking feedback on the user experience of its American History Collection. If you have used this collection* for research, school, or personal interest, please consider taking a few minutes to fill in this survey, as it will greatly help develop these resources so they can be most effective for your research:
Fill out the survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/RJLQMQX
*note: this survey is related only to content within our Rotunda academic editions, not the open-access Founders Online site with content deriving from the Rotunda collection.
About Rotunda:
In 2002 the University of Virginia Press launched its electronic imprint, Rotunda,...
UVA Press joins the architecture community in mourning the loss of acclaimed landscape architect Cornelia Hahn Oberlander, who passed away on May 22, 2021. We asked Susan Herrington, a personal friend of Oberlander's and author of the biography Cornelia Hahn Oberlander: Making the Modern Landscape to share her remembrances, which we offer below.
When Cornelia Hahn Oberlander passed away on May 22, 2021, we lost an amazing landscape architect and my good friend. I wrote Cornelia Hahn Oberlander: Making the Modern Landscape, which was published by the University of Virginia Press in 2013. I remember telling Boyd Zenner, the architecture and landscape acquisition...
UVA Press is proud to be publishing the memoir of one of America's great public servants, former Virginia Governor and Senator Chuck Robb. IN THE ARENA: A Memoir of Love, War, and Politics moves from a White House wedding to the trenches of Vietnam to the halls of power in Washington D.C. to create a portrait of a man and an era that were innovative, refreshingly less partisan, and impactful on us to this day. "In my lifetime," President Bill Clinton writes in his foreword, "few have served our country as ably and honorably as Chuck Robb."
Governor Robb will be taking part in a series of online author events....
by Clayton J. Butler, Ph.D., Editorial Fellow at UVA Press
April 12, 2021 marks 160 years to the day since the firing on Fort Sumter, the opening salvo of the Civil War. It can be tempting to think of that stretch of time as a massive gulf, practically unbridgeable—at least in the timeline of American history. But consider this: we are now exactly as far removed from the attack on Pearl Harbor, eighty years ago, as Pearl Harbor was from the bombardment of Fort Sumter. Eighty years (four score, if you will) before that, George Washington accepted the surrender of Lord...
February 2021; Charlottesville, VA: The University of Virginia Press is pleased to announce “The Black Soldier in War and Society: New Narratives and Critical Perspectives,” a new series for innovative scholarship on the Black military experience to highlight the diverse and complex experiences of African-descended people and to explore the implications of their participation in war.
“We are delighted to welcome this important series to UVA Press,” said the Press’s director, Suzanne Morse Moomaw. “The books in it will highlight the enormous contributions of Black soldiers in protecting our freedoms over the centuries but also the racist challenges they faced in the...
In July 2020, UVA Press was proud to publish Dr. Adrian Brettle’s debut book: Colossal Ambitions: Confederate Planning for a Post-Civil War World. Recently, Dr. Brettle’s book was named a finalist for the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize, awarded annually to the best scholarly work in English on Abraham Lincoln, the American Civil War soldier, or the American Civil War era. Past winners include Elizabeth Varon’s Armies of Deliverance, Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals, and David Blight’s Race and Reunion. As the editorial fellow at the press, Clayton Butler recently had the opportunity to interview Dr. Brettle about his work. Our discussion touched on Confederates’...
In celebration of Black History Month, we are pleased to offer this selection from the introduction of Dr. Johnetta Cole's new book RACISM IN AMERICAN PUBLIC LIFE: A Call to Action.
As I was completing my final revisions for this book, two monumental events occurred in the United States. The first was the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, the most deadly health crisis since the flu pandemic of 1918. The second was the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020, and the subsequent demonstrations that in June alone involved as many as 26 million people nationwide, with...
We are pleased to offer this guest blog post by Dr. Dustin Gish, coeditor with Andrew Bibby of RIVAL VISIONS: How Jefferson and His Contemporaries Defined the Early American Republic to be published in February.
Rival Visions vs. Insurrections: The Challenge of an Inaugural Address in a Time of Crisis
This past week in America we have been witnesses to an appalling event in our national history. Words matter, and ideas have consequences. Rival visions have agitated American national politics from the beginning. The revolution of 1776 tested whether our enduring political commitments would be grounded upon inherited views determined by consanguinity, tradition, and chance, or would be...
We are pleased to offer this essay for Inauguration Day by Robert M. S. McDonald and Peter S. Onuf, editors of the new book Revolutionary Prophecies: The Founders and America’s Future. Enjoy!
Hopes, Fears, and Prophecies
Do these seem like extraordinary, unprecedented times? Did the 2020 election and its seemingly endless aftermath expose and exacerbate deepening divisions among Americans that threaten our very existence as a people? Historians can’t answer these questions. They can only tell you that the future, like the past, is a “foreign country” and that we’ll get there somehow, despite ourselves. After all, we remind ourselves, history does not repeat...
We join everyone celebrating MLK Day with this blog post from Peter Eisenstadt, author of the new book Against the Hounds of Hell: A Life of Howard Thurman (February 2021).
Honoring Dr. King: Creating the Path to Non-Violence
Every four years, the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday is celebrated about two weeks after a joint session of Congress certifies the results of the recent presidential election. Until this year, the closeness of the two events has been unremarkable and unremarked upon. This year, of course, is different. On January 6, a violent mob breached several layers of security at the Capitol...
Putting Enlightenment Science into Practice: Humboldt, Jefferson, and the Transatlantic Fight against Smallpox
A guest post by Sandra Rebok, author of Humboldt and Jefferson: A Transatlantic Friendship of the Enlightenment.
As 2020 turns into 2021, the role of the sciences in society and the importance of target-oriented scientific progress have been visible on all media channels. The need for close and well-functioning ties between scientific evidence and political decisions, when it comes to overcoming health challenges caused by pandemics, has been at the center of many discussions. This, however, is nothing new to our historical moment. A look into Alexander von Humboldt’s...
Booker T. Washington, who emerged from slavery to become one of the leading African American intellectuals around the turn of the 20th century, had ties to Charlottesville that eventually led to a city park being named after him.
A new connection between Washington and this area will be forged virtually via the University of Virginia Press’ electronic imprint, Rotunda, which has acquired “The Booker T. Washington Papers” to create a digital edition.
Washington – an author, pioneer in higher education, adviser to presidents and business leaders, and a pillar in the emerging Black elite and middle class – helped conceive a future...
Last year, UVA Press was proud to publish Tom Kapsidelis’s After Virginia Tech: Guns, Safety, and Healing in the Era of Mass Shootings, which illuminates the experiences of the survivors of the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre—then the deadliest to date—and other community members and portrays in depth their advocacy for reforms in gun safety, campus security, trauma recovery, and mental health over the past decade. Now this book is also available in paper, and the author has created study guide questions for college students and book club questions for general readers to ponder. We invite you to check out these resources and to...
Over 98 million U.S. citizens have already voted in this year’s presidential election. Many millions more will do so today. Voting has been central to U.S. democracy since the country’s inception, and the right to vote has been fought over and suppressed for various groups, most notably Black Americans, for just as long. Of course as a press that publishes books we’re biased, but our team believes that books are one of the best ways to recount these struggles, to assess the country’s political history and present situation, and to encourage us to act and to ensure that all Americans have and...
As the Editor for History, I am always gratified when UVA Press books illuminate the country’s past while also speaking to our present moment. A few months ago, Christopher Pearl’s Conceived in Crisis: The Revolutionary Creation of an American State appeared as part of our Early American Histories series, and his book’s insights into good governance appear deeply relevant as municipal, state, and national elections loom on the horizon and early voting is well underway. Prof. Pearl recently spoke to the History Channel’s podcast History This Week about the Stamp Act and its consequences, and I am happy to share the link to his...
UVA Press author Adrian Brettle, whose book COLOSSAL AMBITIONS: Confederate Planning for a Post–Civil War World was published this July, writes about the history of globalization and the dangers of it being under attack.
We live at a time when globalization is under attack, blamed for both enabling the apparently dangerous rise of China and endowing big tech with power to limit free speech, and now castigated--through the facilitation of mass movement of people--with the rapid spread of the novel Coronavirus. History shows us that in the past we praised and blamed a development that few bothered to understand and define....
We are delighted to announce dates for Daniel Mendelsohn's virtual book tour around THREE RINGS: A Tale of Exile, Narrative, and Fate (September 8). Tune in this fall to hear Mendelsohn discuss his new book, of which Kirkus in a starred review said "[a] luminous narrative . . . this slender, exquisite book rewards on many levels."
October 25: Albertine, in conversation with Edouard Louis: https://www.albertine.com/events/three-rings-an-evening-with-daniel-mendelsohn/ (REGISTER here: https://bit.ly/30Luvjh)
October 26: Oblong Books, in conversation with Eric Trudel: https://www.oblongbooks.com/event/mendelsohn-trudel
November 8: Texas Book Festival, in conversation with Alex Ross: https://www.texasbookfestival.org/events/sacred-monsters-wrestling-with-the-legacies-of-complicated-artists/
...Christopher R. Pearl, author of Conceived in Crisis, finds echoes of the past in our current moment.
I, like many of you, planned to be at SHEAR this year, listening to new ideas shared by colleagues in panels and over a cold pint, but, sadly, we can’t do that. Instead we are home, navigating ways to keep ourselves and our families safe and happy during a global pandemic.
These disruptions to normal life have provided time for reflection. For historians, that reflection has resulted in a consistent effort to identify echoes of the past in our own times. Unfortunately, we have a lot to...
**The pathbreaking multimodal digital book—Furnace and Fugue—was developed with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
**July 2020: Charlottesville, VA—**The University of Virginia Press is pleased to announce the publication of Furnace and Fugue: A Digital Edition of Michael Maier’s Atalanta fugiens (1618) with Scholarly Commentary, the first born-digital scholarly monograph developed by the Center for Digital Scholarship at Brown University. Published by UVA Press as part of the distinguished academic series Studies in Early Modern German History and under Brown University’s Digital Publications Initiative, Furnace and Fugue re-renders Michael Maier’s seventeenth-century multimedia masterpiece as an enhanced and interactive digital scholarly work that allows contemporary readers to hear,...
The University of Virginia Press is pleased to announce “The Revolutionary Age,” a new series designed to bring a fresh and international perspective to the study of the American Revolution within the broader context of the Age of Revolution.
Frank Cogliano and Patrick Griffin will guide this new publishing venture, which will provide space for junior and senior scholars alike to reflect on and move beyond national and nationalistic paradigms to place the American Revolution, including its causes and consequences, in a broad perspective. They especially encourage contributions from specialists outside of the United States, such as Latin America, Europe, South...
The University of Virginia Press is pleased to announce the new UVA Press Reading Club, which will feature themed books throughout the year at a 40% discounted rate. The 2020 theme, already underway, is Virginia Pathways and People and is geared towards all those interested in the flora, fauna, and people of Virginia. Selected by Press staff, these books are journeys through beautiful landscapes, remarkable and conflicting histories, and engaging ideas and perspectives through fiction, biography, and design.
“UVA Press has a storied sixty-year history in the Commonwealth and around the world with over 1700 titles in print. A number of these include the...
We’re pleased to announce the addition of the recently published edition of George Washington’s Barbados Diary, edited by Alicia K. Anderson and Lynn A. Price, to The Papers of George Washington Digital Edition, and to offer this wonderfully annotated text free of charge to interested readers through the middle of August.
George Washington's Barbados Diary, 1751–52, is noteworthy as one of the only documents of any length and complexity from Washington’s youth before his appearance on the public stage. Because he kept the diary only for himself, the entries—despite their often exasperating brevity—evidence interests and emotions not revealed in any other source. His...
UVA Press author Maurice M. Manring, whose book Slave in a Box: The Strange Career of Aunt Jemima was published in 1998, writes about his experience researching and writing about the figure of Aunt Jemima. You can read more from Manring in this article published in The Associated Press on 6/19/20.
About 25 years ago, I predicted that the racially charged joke that advertisers told about a character named Aunt Jemima “has a long time to go before it is over.” That conclusion was eventually published in Slave in a Box in 1998. Now, in June 2020, the parent company of Quaker Oats has announced...
UVA Press author Michael Lackey, whose book The Haverford Discussions: A Black Integrationist Manifesto for Racial Justice was published in 2013, reflects on the murder of George Floyd, Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, systemic racism, and massive protests:
Ralph Ellison’s novel Invisible Man has become increasingly more painful to teach. One of the most tragic scenes involves Tod Clifton, a smart and charismatic black man who is fatally shot by a white police officer. Other than law enforcement, the narrator is the only person to witness the crime, which leads him to reflect on who controls “reality.” As he says, “the cop would be Clifton’s historian, his...
The University of Virginia Press is pleased to announce that Charlene M. Boyer Lewis, Annette Gordon-Reed, and Robert G. Parkinson have joined existing Jeffersonian America series editors Peter S. Onuf and Andrew J. O’Shaughnessy to identify and publish the best new scholarship on the American republic’s formative decades.
Initially overseen by Peter Onuf, James Horn, and the late Jan Lewis, Jeffersonian America has a decades-long tradition of publishing seminal monographs and landmark volumes that illuminate the critical social, cultural, economic, religious, and political issues facing the founding generations as they sought to establish a nation.
The current team of editors will seek innovative and...
We are pleased to offer this blog post from UVA Press author Shane Graham, whose book Cultural Entanglements: **Langston Hughes and the Rise of African and Caribbean Literature was published this May.
The COVID-19 pandemic posed a challenge to my new book’s argument before it was even published, but the worldwide uprising now breaking out over police violence makes the subject of my study more relevant than ever.
Cultural Entanglements: Langston Hughes and the Rise of African and Caribbean Literature attempts to convey both the scope and depth of the black literary networks developed by the great American poet Langston Hughes. I document...
As The New York Times Book Review writes of Maryse Condé in their review of her newly translated book The Belle Créole, "For the past half century, Condé has been chronicling the black diaspora in novels that are rollicking and scandalous, that examine gender and culture, class and religion, African and Caribbean society. She performs a kind of alchemic conversion from abstract theories of power to very human lusts and appetites, where costs are paid in the flesh.
"One of the hallmarks of her genius is to approach her themes from unexpected subject positions, like the enslaved woman who faces a witchcraft trial in 'I, Tituba,...
Published this week in UKSG Insights, "Towards inclusive scholarly publishing: developments in the university press community," coauthored by Niccole Leilanionapae‘aina Coggins, UVA Press Editorial, Design, and Production Coordinator and Assistant Project Editor, provides an overview of the ways in which the members of the Association of University Presses are working towards more inclusive practices in scholarly publishing.
Coggins, along with coauthors Gisela Concepción Fosado of Duke University Press, Christie Henry of Princeton University Press, and Gita Manaktala of MIT Press, provide an overview of recent steps taken by AUPresses to explore and advance our core value of diversity, with a goal of empowering inclusion, equity and, ultimately, justice. They consider the Mellon...
Thanks to the generous support of the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation, the Institute for Thomas Paine Studies (ITPS) and the University of Virginia (UVA) Press are collaborating to launch a two-year post-doctoral residential fellowship, in any area of American studies from 1700 to 1900, at Iona College in New Rochelle, New York.
Description
Beginning in August of 2020 and concluding in May of 2022, this fellowship is focused on two components. The first is research, writing, and publication, and the second is archival development, preservation, and access. The appointed fellow will divide their time between research and writing on his/her/their individual...
As the noted possum-philosopher Pogo bleakly commented from a trash-strewn Okefenokee Swamp on a 1970 poster announcing the first Earth Day, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.”
Fifty years on, evidence of the damage we humans have wrought upon the environment is everywhere around us: in rising seas, disappearing species, increasingly powerful storms, and soaring temperatures. Tiny Tangier Island’s inevitably losing battle to stave off the waters of the Chesapeake offers one potent example; the 2019-20 Australian bushfires whose images horrified millions the world over illustrate another.
The Australian scholar Kate Rigby got...
By Nadine Zimmerli, editor for history and social sciences
Last week was supposed to be my busiest yet since assuming the mantle of editor of history and social sciences here at UVa Press. I had been looking forward to attending my first Virginia Forum, on “Crafting History,” which—I’m given to understand—would have involved an evening presentation on the equally important topic of “Crafting Beer” at one of my favorite Richmond breweries on March 26. Then, the Thursday thereafter, precisely a week later, I was bound for Washington D.C. to set up our booth at the OAH and immerse myself in its...
University of Virginia Press and the University of Virginia Darden School of Business have announced a publishing partnership to launch UVA Darden Business Publishing, an imprint of the University of Virginia Press. Through the partnership, UVA Press will publish books in print and digital editions under the auspices and imprint of the business school.
UVA Darden Business Publishing will continue as a standalone publisher of case-based classroom content for management education, while expanding operations to publish scholarship on business and economics from scholars at colleges and universities worldwide. The new imprint’s first title will be Marketing Analytics by Darden Professor Rajkumar Venkatesan, scheduled...
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