Virginia Humanities

Uncovering the Story of an Enslaved Woman at Lumpkin’s Jail

Virginia Humanities Fellow Kristen Green is working on a book that will tell the story of Mary Lumpkin, an enslaved woman who is believed to have given birth to at least five children fathered by Robert Lumpkin.

Ballad Keepers of Appalachia’s Musical Crossroads

The author of African Banjo Echoes in Appalachia, a cultural history of the gourd “banjar” and later American five-string banjo in the South, Virginia Humanities Fellow Cece Conway will discuss her current book project and how she traces the earlier musical history of the ballad singing genre, the arrival of the fiddle and its influence upon […]

Making the Digital Physical

Exhibit by Virginia Humanities Fellow tells the story of early online publishing

In 1996, Virginia Humanities Fellow Katherine McNamara started one of the earliest online literary journals, Archipelago. She recently partnered with UVA’s Rare Book School to produce an exhibit —  An Archipelago of Readers: Forming a Literary Culture in Digital Media — that tells the story of this pioneering digital publication.

An Archipelago of Readers

Forming a Literary Culture in Digital Media What did it mean to found a literary journal on the web at the dawn of online publishing? And what kinds of archives and physical objects tell the story of digital publishing? Join VFH Fellow Katherine McNamara for a discussion of the Rare Book School’s exhibition in the […]

We Face the Dawn

We Face the Dawn: Oliver Hill, Spottswood Robinson, and the Legal Team That Dismantled Jim Crow

Join VFH Fellow, author, and retired journalist Margaret Edds for a public presentation about her latest book, We Face the Dawn, which offers the first comprehensive account of the South’s most significant grassroots legal team and how it successfully challenged racial separation in the 1940s and 1950s.

Book Launch: Margaret Edds

We Face the Dawn: Oliver Hill, Spottswood Robinson, and the Legal Team That Dismantled Jim Crow

Join VFH Fellow, author, and retired journalist Margaret Edds for the launch of her latest book, We Face the Dawn, which offers the first comprehensive account of the South’s most significant grassroots legal team and how it successfully challenged racial separation in the 1940s and 1950s.

Margaret Bayard Smith: The Considered Life of a Writing Woman in the Early American Republic

VFH Fellow Beth Taylor, is engaged in a new book project, a biography of Margaret Bayard Smith (1778-1844), a Washington insider during the first four decades of the newly-created District of Columbia. An author, Smith’s powers of expression are likewise evident in the voluminous collection of her letters and diaries held by the Library of Congress. […]

Patrick Henry: A Forgotten Legacy

Join us as VFH Fellow John Ragosta speaks to why Patrick Henry’s legacy has been largely forgotten or, more accurately, suppressed. While Henry is remembered as a great orator and firebrand, this fails to do justice to his role in launching the American Revolution as well as his critical role as the leading anti-federalist in opposition […]

Lulu Miller

Why Fish Don’t Exist

NPR’s Lulu Miller, a Fellow at VFH, reads an excerpt from her forthcoming book, ‘Why Fish Don’t Exist’. Her reading is set to the live musical accompaniment of Wes Swing.