
Southern Landscapes: Real and Imagined
Authors Ralph Eubanks (A Place Like Mississippi), Jocelyn Nicole Johnson (My Monticello), and Imani Perry (South to America) take center stage at this Festival headliner event to discuss the storied …

The Illimitable Freedom of the Human Mind: A Conversation with Andrew O’Shaughnessy
Historian Andrew O’Shaughnessy, (The Illimitable Freedom of the Human Mind) discusses his most recent book, a twin biography of Thomas Jefferson in retirement and of the University of Virginia in …

Winning and Losing the Nuclear Peace: A Conversation with Michael Krepon
Foreign affairs and policy specialist Michael Krepon (Winning and Losing the Nuclear Peace), discusses his definitive guide to the history of nuclear arms control, including how the practice was built …

Lives of the Unfree: Activism and Survival
Authors Justene Hill Edwards (Unfree Markets: The Slaves Economy and the Rise of Capitalism in South Carolina) and Vanessa M. Holden (Surviving Southampton: African American Women and Resistance in Nat …

SHELF LIFE—The Silent Shore with Charles L. Chavis, Jr.
In partnership with the Maryland Center for the Book at Maryland Humanities, the Virginia Center for the Book at Virginia Humanities presents Charles L. Chavis, Jr. (The Silent Shore: The …

REPLAY: The Conflicting Ideals in Jefferson’s Architecture
The history of segregation is not just in our architecture, but in other public arts

Virginia Estelle Randolph
Virginia Humanities grantee Elvatrice Belsches’ research into the life of this educator, community leader, and social activist is changing the historical landscape.

The Historical & Cultural Value of Virginia’s African American Midwives
Linda Janet Holmes is an independent scholar, writer, and women’s health activist with a longstanding interest in the historical and cultural value of traditional African American midwifery. During a recent …

Pandemics Past
There’s been a lot of coverage about the challenges of distributing the Covid-19 vaccine. How do we get it to distant areas? How do we use a whole vial before it expires? What about the special refrigerators needed to keep it cold enough? But these problems seem minor compared to the very first vaccine distribution in the early 1800s. Historian Allyson Poska shares the story of 29 orphan boys who crossed the Atlantic Ocean as live incubators for the smallpox vaccine and what lessons we can learn from this early campaign.

London Fog, LA Smog
Almost overnight, things that had not been crimes became criminalized in a new Victorian era.