University of Virginia Press

11/14/2025

Happy to "Words Colliding: The Debate over Slavery and Black Exclusion in Nineteenth-Century America" by Andrew F. Hammann!

In 1787, Thomas Jefferson declared that the United States was destined to become a nation free of slavery—and of its entire Black population. Following his cue, Henry Clay and other prominent politicians founded the American Colonization Society in 1816, launching the Black expatriation ('colonization') movement, a political force that, over the next eighty years, promoted the removal, with federal support, of the nation’s Black population. Throughout this time, the vast majority of Black Americans, Frederick Douglass among them, opposed this movement with great vigor and conviction, characterizing it as one of their greatest enemies, second only to slavery itself.

"Words Colliding" offers the fullest account to date of this political debate, highlighting its dramatic impact on the national conversations regarding slavery and Black civil rights. From the beginning, Black Americans expressed grave concern that the rhetoric of colonization framed Black freedom as a national 'problem'. Throughout the nineteenth century, even after the Civil War and through the Jim Crow era, they argued that the colonization movement, no matter its professed aim, functioned mainly to encourage and justify racial oppression in America.

"With remarkable research and bold historical imagination, Andrew Hammann has recast our understanding of a desperate debate waged across generations of American history: the place of Black Americans in the United States."
—Edward L. Ayers

"Provides a long-arc of this history – one that shows continuity and change within various expatriation initiatives on the federal and state level and how this ideology is central to the emergence of Jim Crow in the South by the end of the century."
—Ousmane K. Power-Greene, Clark University

"Grounded in stellar research, and written with passion and clarity, 'Words Colliding' gives voice to the Black Americans who pushed not only for the end of slavery but for their place in the body politic."
—Justene Hill Edwards, University of Virginia



https://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/10143/

11/12/2025

Happy to "The Star-Spangled Republic: Political Astronomy and the Rise of the American Constellation" by Eran Shalev!

Why does the American flag use stars to represent the states? In 'The Star-Spangled Republic', Eran Shalev answers this and many other questions, considering the cosmic imagery—so familiar today but so peculiar on reflection—that suffused the United States’ early political culture. In this comprehensive study, Shalev uncovers how “political astronomy”—the discussion and representation of politics through astronomical models, allusions, and metaphors—reflected and facilitated the emerging worldview that enabled Americans to justify and find meaning in the country’s new democratic modes of governance and its federal system. No other scholar has looked at American political rhetoric through this lens; in so doing, Shalev is able to explain in fascinating detail how Americans turned away from the sun of heliocentric monarchy toward the night sky full of federated constellations, and to discover republicanism imprinted in the firmament.

https://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/10148/

11/08/2025

11/07/2025

Happy to "Nuremberg's Citizen Prosecutor: Benjamin Ferencz and the Birth of International Justice" by Gregory S. Gordon!

On September 29, 1947, in Courtroom 600, before the Nuremberg Military Tribunal, twenty-seven-year-old Benjamin Ferencz approached the lectern to deliver the prosecution’s opening statement against Hitler’s brutal henchmen of the Einsatzgruppen—the SS killing units responsible for more than 1.5 million deaths during the Holocaust—in what the Associated Press dubbed “the biggest murder trial in history.” As the field of international criminal justice was being born in the aftermath of World War II, only Ferencz led in all its phases: investigation, prosecution, and restitution—an extraordinary feat given his humble origins as an impoverished immigrant escaping antisemitic persecution in Eastern Europe and growing up in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen. A Harvard Law scholarship student, Ferencz had been General Patton’s lead war crimes field investigator before becoming a chief prosecutor at Nuremberg. Horrified by what he encountered, he dedicated his career to Holocaust survivors, pioneering key restitution efforts and helping negotiate the landmark reparations treaty between West Germany, Israel, and Jewish civil society. Later, he became a peace advocate and driving force behind the creation of the International Criminal Court, remarkably joining the prosecution for the Court’s first trial as the last living prosecutor.

Gregory Gordon, a former war crimes prosecutor himself and the first scholar with full access to Ferencz’s personal papers, has produced an expansive, page-turning biography that uncovers incredible, and previously unknown, details about Ferencz’s remarkable life. In this first major biography of the Nuremberg prosecutor in English, Gordon reveals fascinating missing links running through Ferencz’s career which throw into a whole new light his landmark achievements.

https://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/10088/

11/07/2025

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-243-peter-henriques-explores-george-washingtons/id1560876048?i=1000735183180

Podcast Episode · Booknotes+ · 11/04/2025 · 1h 7m

11/06/2025

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/very-fine-people-charlottesville-eight-years-later/

Aniko Bodroghkozy considers recent books on the 2017 Charlottesville attack as a watershed moment in contemporary neo-Nazism.

11/05/2025

Évelyne Trouillot's novel DESIREE CONGO, newly translated into English, is "bursting with color" and "has something for everyone," according to a rave review in World Literature Today. Check it out for yourself: https://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/10021/

Trans. M. A. Salvadon. University of Virginia Press. 2024. 216 pages.

11/05/2025

A tip for anyone n Virginia this weekend: the Frontier Culture Museum in Staunton is hosting its first cider festival. No way this isn't going to be a good time. You might even bump into Glen Hansard, author of VIRGINIA CIDER: A GUIDE FROM COLONIAL DAYS TO CRAFT'S GOLDEN AGE. More on the book here: https://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/10014/

The event features historians, authors, music, food trucks and a cider tasting.

10/31/2025

https://www.tenement.org/events/virtual-architecture-tour-with-andrew-dolkart/

On Wednesday, November 12 Andrew Dolkart leads a virtual architectural tour of 97 Orchard Street.

10/31/2025

https://www.lemonde.fr/livres/article/2025/10/30/le-grand-prix-du-roman-de-l-academie-francaise-attribue-a-l-autrice-haitienne-yanick-lahens_6650323_3260.html?lmd_medium=al&lmd_campaign=envoye-par-appli&lmd_creation=ios&lmd_source=mail

UVA Press author Yanick Lahens has won the Académie Française's Grand Prix du roman, one of the oldest and most prestigious literary awards in France. Please join us in congratulating her!

Récompensée pour son roman « Passagères de nuit », l’écrivaine l’a emporté de justesse face à Pauline Dreyfus, qui concourait avec « Un pont sur la Seine ».

10/30/2025

https://news.darden.virginia.edu/2025/10/27/uva-darden-mourns-passing-of-professor-emeritus-andy-wicks/?utm_source=marketingcloud&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=darden_report_october_2025

Wicks, the Ruffin Professor Emeritus of Business Administration for the University of Virginia Darden School of Business, passed away Thursday in Colorado from a neurodegenerative disease.

10/30/2025

"If students read only one book about the long shadow of enslavement on southern universities, 'After Emancipation' should be it."
—The Journal of Southern History

https://www.upress.virginia.edu/title/5925/