Virtual Event with Captions, Free, and Open to All
Overview
Across the nation and around the world, people are celebrating the 250th anniversary of the American Declaration of Independence. But those commemorations will have little impact if we don’t take some time to reflect on what it is we are observing. How did the Declaration come about? What did it mean for the beleaguered patriots in 1776? And what has been its impact and legacy over the past two and a half centuries?
Join UVA’s Lifetime Learning to explore these issues with Christa Dierksheide, Jefferson Scholars Foundation Professor of History, Department of History, A&S, and John Ragosta, Faculty Director, Lifetime Learning’s Summer Jefferson Symposium.
Speaker Biographies
John A. Ragosta, Faculty Director of the UVA Lifetime Learning’s Summer Jefferson Symposium (moderator)
John Ragosta, the inaugural James Madison Fellow at Montpelier and a fellow at Virginia Humanities, is the Faculty Director of UVA Lifetime Learning’s Summer Jefferson Symposium. He was previously the Interim Director of the International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello. He has taught law and history at the University of Virginia, George Washington University, and Hamilton, Oberlin, and Randolph Colleges.
Ragosta’s most recent book is For the People, For the Country: Patrick Henry’s Final Political Battle (UVA Press, 2023). He is also the author of Religious Freedom: Jefferson’s Legacy, America’s Creed (UVA Press, 2013) and several other works. Ragosta, an award-winning author and frequent commentator, holds both a PhD and a JD from UVA; he received an honorary doctorate from Hampden-Sydney College. Before returning to academia, Ragosta was a partner at Dewey Ballantine LLC in Washington DC. He is also a beekeeper.
Christa Dierksheide, Brockman Foundation Jefferson Scholars Foundation, Professor of History; Director, Center for the Study of the Age of Jefferson, Department of History, College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences
Christa Dierksheide is the Brockman Foundation Jefferson Scholars Foundation Professor of History at the University of Virginia, where she also directs the Center for the Study of the Age of Jefferson. She is the author of Beyond Jefferson: The Hemingses, the Randolphs, and the Making of Nineteenth-Century America (Yale, 2024) and Amelioration and Empire: Progress and Slavery in the Plantation Americas, 1770-1840 (Virginia, 2014). Her latest book, co-written with Nicholas Guyatt, is Jefferson’s Wolf: A Founding Father’s Troubling Answer to the Problem of Slavery (Harvard, 2026).