University of Virginia Corcoran Department of History

05/06/2026

Please join us in congratulating Professor Christa Dierksheide on the publication of Jefferson’s Wolf: A Founding Father’s Troubling Answer to the Problem of Slavery (co-authored with Nicholas Guyatt, Cambridge). The book was released just yesterday!

04/30/2026

Please join us in congratulating Professor Kyrill Kunakhovich! He is a recipient of this year's ACLS Fellowships!

Formed in 1919, ACLS is a nonprofit federation of 81 scholarly organizations. As the preeminent representative of American scholarship in the humanities and social sciences, ACLS holds a core belief that knowledge is a public good.

04/13/2026

Professor Kahrl's book has received the "Best Book in Urban Affairs" Award from the Urban Affairs Association. Congratulations Professor Kahrl!

Dr. Andrew Kahrl (University of Virginia) has been selected to receive the 2026 Best Book in the Field of Urban Affairs Award for The Black Tax: 150 Years of Theft, Exploitation, and Disposition in America (University of Chicago Press, 2024). This annual award is given to a book that is well-written...

04/06/2026

Please join us in congratulating Professors Sarah Milov and Joshua White! They have been offered a National Humanities Center Fellowship for the 2026 - 2027 academic year!

04/01/2026

A modern opera, "Intelligence," based in part on Liz Varon’s Southern Lady, Yankee Spy: The True Story of Elizabeth Van Lew, a Union Agent in the Heart of the Confederacy, has recently debuted in Virginia and won a Grammy. Please read/watch the Virginia Opera's chief conductor’s interview of Liz and the librettist about the history behind the opera storyline here:

https://www.facebook.com/VaOpera/photos/join-us-for-a-special-virtual-book-club-inspired-by-our-upcoming-production-of-i/1353628910135197/



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUtuuGTzyuk

Watch Virginia Opera host a special virtual book club inspired by Intelligence. We discuss Southern Lady, Yankee Spy: The True Story of Elizabeth Van Lew, a ...

03/19/2026

Andrew Preston’s Total Defense: The New Deal and the Invention of National Security (Harvard 2025) just won the Society for Military History's 2026 Distinguished Book Award:

The Distinguished Book Awards recognize the best book-length publications in English on military history, whether monograph, bibliography, guide, or other project copyrighted in the previous three calendar years. Awards are given out at the Society's annual meeting the spring following the competiti...

03/17/2026

Professor David Singerman’s book, Unrefined,​ has been awarded the 2026 Paul Bunge Prize in the history of scientific instruments by the German Chemical Society.

Here you will find our current press releases. Links to the press releases from previous years can be found in the column on the left. (If you are surfing with a mobile device, in the menu at the top right.)

03/12/2026

Christa Dierksheide, UVA Department of History, discusses how Thomas Jefferson’s vision continues to shape the University more than 200 years later.

Monticello and UVA reflect on the Albemarle County native who helped shape the foundations of the United States.

03/04/2026

Carrie Janney wrote a review, “Lincoln as You’ve Never Known Him Before,” for Washington Post.

Matthew Pinsker reveals how the 16th president carefully built a partisan base essential to his rise.

02/26/2026

Andrew Preston’s book Total Defense: The New Deal and the Invention of National Security was named as one of The New Yorker's best books of 2025:

The New Yorker’s editors and critics choose this year’s essential reads in fiction, poetry, and nonfiction.

02/19/2026

We are happy to announce Christian McMillen’s recent publication in the Western Historical Quarterly, entitled “‘I Didn’t Know That a Patent Was a Dangerous Thing’: Forced Fee Patents, Native Resistance, and Consent.” You can find the essay here:

Abstract. Between 1906 and 1920 the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) issued more than 32,000 fee patents, covering 4.2 million acres of land. More than half