
Front Porches of the Dead
VFH Residential Fellow Alison Bell teaches anthropology at Washington & Lee University in Lexington, Virginia. Bell has been studying cemeteries in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley and says that in the 1980s a shift started happening in these spaces where the living and the dead come together. Bell recently sat down with Trey Mitchell, director of web communications at VFH, to discuss her work.

Eleven Scholars in Residence
Charlottesville, Va. – Virginia Humanities is pleased to announce eleven new Residential Fellows for the 2018-2019 academic year. The Residential Fellowship program affords scholars the time, space, and access to …

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.

Making the Digital Physical
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.

Lulu Miller
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.

The End of Mormon Polygamy
Jane Barnes is an independent scholar in residence at Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. In 2007 she was the writer for the Frontline/American Experience documentary The Mormons and in 2012 …

At the Common Table
Jamie S. Ross is the director of Red Dirt Productions and a non-residential Fellow at VFH. She’s working on a film, At the Common Table, that traces the history of …

The Art of Emancipation
Throughout the mid to late 19th century, Europe was in a state of social upheaval. Political changes, from the Revolutions of 1848 to the Franco Prussian war of 1871, swept …

Telling Untold Stories
These three fellows—of the dozen typically in residence at VFH during an academic year—are each at work on a biography of a relatively unknown figure whose story illuminates an era.

The Legacy of Kepone
Gregory Wilson, professor of history at the University of Akron, is researching the history of the Kepone disaster that took place in Hopewell, VA in the 1970s. Wilson recently sat down to talk with us about what he’s learned during his fellowship at VFH.

The Lost Art of Cherokee Letterpress
In 2009, VFH fellow and book artist Frank Brannon, began work with the Oconaluftee Institute for Cultural Arts in Cherokee, Norther Carolina, to revitalize the nearly lost art of Cherokee letter press printing. Now, he talks about his with the Cherokee community, as well as history of the Cherokee written language itself.

Remembering the Forgotten War
While researching and cataloging the many World War I memorials throughout Virginia, Virginia Humanities fellow Lynn Rainville became fascinated with the extensive, and little explored, role that Virginia played in the Great War.