Virginia Humanities

Exploring the Wilds: The Violin in Early America

In an era before recordings, live music was prevalent, and the violin was king. The same instrument was used in barns and at royal courts, for rustic country dances and for fashionable classical concerts—and the same players would do it all. Join national fiddle champion Tim MacDonald to enjoy a huge range of early violin […]

Crafting and Sharing Your Immigration Experience

This workshop is an opportunity for community members to learn how to craft stories of their immigration experience through narrative and digital mapping tools. The workshop will encourage participants to share these stories with family members as a celebration of the contributions of immigrants and refugees in the Harrisonburg, Virginia area. High school students of […]

Peter Meineck’s Warrior Chorus Project

Staged Reading of Greek Tragedy by and for Veterans

Former British Royal Marine and Theatre and Classics professor Peter Meineck will direct a performance of the Warrior Chorus Project, a program that teaches veterans to perform works from ancient literature. Dr. Meineck will coordinate with veteran-actors recruited from community partners such as the Virginia Stage Company to craft a staged reading of scenes from […]

Women Front and Center

2020 is shaping up to be a significant year for women in Virginia and across the country. In addition to the Virginia General Assembly finally ratifying the Equal Rights Amendment (after failing to do so since 1973), this year we will celebrate the centennial of women achieving the right to vote.

Exhibit: Voices from Richmond’s Hidden Epidemic

Featuring oral histories collected by Laura Browder and Patricia Herrera with accompanying photographic portraits by Michael Simon, Voices from Richmond’s Hidden Epidemic offers a nuanced look at the HIV/AIDS crisis through the stories of survivors, caregivers, activists, and health care workers on the front lines. Despite years of medical and social progress, misconceptions about HIV/AIDS […]

Exhibit: Visionaries

View original artworks by students ages 14-18 who, led by JMU Art Professor Susan Zurbrigg, participated in a summer 2019 workshop on racial healing and transformation.

The Saving Grace of Spring Rolls

A Q&A with Kim O'Connell & Sarah McConnell

By Nora Pehrson Growing up in the 1970s in College Park, Maryland with a Vietnamese-born mother and an American-born father, Virginia Humanities Fellow Kim O’Connell’s experience of identity has always been complicated. How can immigrants assimilate into a new place without sacrificing their heritage? What does citizenship mean in a state that includes nearly one […]

Desperately Seeking Scarlett

Searching for Tara in the Land of Gone with the Wind

Since the release of Margaret Mitchell’s bestselling novel in 1936 and its blockbuster film adaptation three years later, Gone with the Wind has sparked a desire to find Tara, the fictional home of Scarlett O’Hara. In this presentation, Virginia Humanities Fellow Philip Mills Herrington, will guide you through the physical and imagined spaces of “finding […]

Bay to Belly

A Grantee Q&A

By Nora Pehrson Thanks to a grant from Virginia Humanities, the Watermen’s Museum in Yorktown, Virginia is developing a traveling exhibit devoted to the food systems of the Chesapeake Bay region. By looking at a wide range of topics including keystone species, sustainability, and the stories of indigenous peoples, the exhibit—Bay to Belly—teaches participants how […]

Announcing the Rosel Schewel Fund

Uncovering and Celebrating Stories of Women in Virginia

Scheduled to Launch with October 2020 “Women and Democracy” Events in Lynchburg During the Centennial of the Ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment Virginia Humanities announces the establishment of the Rosel Schewel Fund, an endowed fund of $100,000 that will support public humanities programming that amplifies women’s stories—many of them as yet untold—and their ongoing contributions […]

Singing the Nation Into Being

The ‘Black National Anthem’ and the Politics of Performance

What can videos and metadata tell us about Black subjectivities, nation, and diaspora? What might we gain by considering performances as part of an ephemeral archive? Virginia Humanities Fellow Sonya Donaldson (New Jersey City University) will discuss a digital humanities project she’s working on that curates performances of James Weldon Johnson’s “Lift Every Voice and […]

One Community, Una Comunidad

Join us and Roanoke Valley Points of Diversity for an evening of shared food, stories and conversations centered on Hispanic Roanoke. Learn the long history of Hispanics in the area and the diversity within that community. Brainstorm ways to truly become One Community,Una Comunidad. You must rsvp to [email protected] or [email protected] by November 8. This […]