Virginia and the University

  Happy National Selfie Day! We are republishing a blog by Lisa Spaar, University of Virginia Horace W Goldsmith Distinguished Teaching Professor of Creative Writing. See other J-Term blogs here and post your favorite UVA selfie to our Facebook page to celebrate!   One of the most rewarding settings in which I teach my course […]

Written by Andrea Trimble, UVA Sustainability Director In pursuit of an ambitious UVA Sustainability Plan to reduce the University’s environmental footprint and to provide associated educational opportunities, UVA is advancing the evaluation and installation of renewable energy both on and off Grounds.  UVA’s five-year Sustainability Plan compiles new ideas, as well as feedback generated over […]

  This next installment in the J-Term series has been written by Lisa Speidel, Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies faculty. See the other J-Term blogs here.     January 2017 marked the fourth January that I had the honor of teaching the J-term course Gender-Based Violence. I have taught many different kinds of classes in […]

  This next installment in the J-Term series has been written by Laura Alexander, Career Counselor in the Office of University Career Services and J-Term Instructor. See the other J-Term blogs here.       Over the course of two weeks in January – including one snowy Saturday when instructor-provided donuts were not a luxury […]

  This next installment in the J-Term series has been written by Lisa Spaar, University of Virginia Horace W Goldsmith Distinguished Teaching Professor of Creative Writing. See a full list of her works here. See the other J-Term blogs here.         One of the most rewarding settings in which I teach my […]

This next installment in the J-Term series has been written by Lucy Guarnera, J-Term Instructor in Clinical Psychology. See the other J-Term blogs here. I love teaching “Criminal Minds: The Science of Modern Forensic Psychology,” a course I first taught in Fall 2015 and adapted for J-term in January 2017. Students come into the class […]

This next installment in the J-Term series has been written by Enrico Cesaretti, Associate Professor of Italian. See the other J-Term blogs here. From the many Northern European “Grand Tourists” who traveled to the Italian peninsula in search of warmer climates, famous art-works and other pleasures in the 18th and 19th century, to Thomas Jefferson’s […]

This next installment in the J-Term series has been written by Joseph E. Davis, Associate Professor in the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture. See the other J-Term blogs here. “One out of every five U.S. adults uses at least one drug for a psychiatric problem; 11 percent of all adults took an antidepressant in […]

This next installment in the J-Term series has been written by Rosalyn Berne, Associate Professor in the Department of Engineering and Society. See the first J-Term blog here. In January, for six hours a day, 25 second and third year students and I sat in a circle, talking about human conception. The act of conception […]

January Term at UVA has just wrapped up, the courses having taken place from January 3 – 13, 2017. With small classes, unique and intensive topics, and even study abroad opportunities, J-Term offers a chance for both students and faculty to take deep dives into intriguing topics. Lifetime Learning will release blogs from several UVA […]

  Written by Richard Guy Wilson, Commonweath Professor’s Chair in Architectural History, University of Virginia     The years 1784-1789 Thomas Jefferson spent in Paris and in Europe. They proved to be extremely important in the development of his appreciation of architecture, landscape and garden design, painting and sculpture, decorative and other arts. He loved the […]

Written by Summer Jefferson Symposium Lead Faculty John Ragosta Mount Vernon, the home of a Virginia president who was not a Jeffersonian, just announced a major initiative to include an exhibit concerning slavery in its museum. The exhibit, scheduled to open in October, will be entitled Lives Bound Together, and will look at the relationship […]

Written by: John Ragosta, Summer Jefferson Symposium Lead Faculty; Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, Fellow Teaching history has changed a great deal in my lifetime. Of course, the fixation on dates, names, battles, and speeches went out many years ago – although it lingers in too  many places like old leftovers in the fridge. And […]

  Written by John Ragosta, Summer Jefferson Symposium Lead Faculty; Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, Fellow   The week of March 14 I spoke at several venues in Culpeper and Orange Counties about the development of religious freedom during and immediately after the American Revolution. Of course, Thomas Jefferson played a large part in those […]

Written by Jody Lahendro, UVA Supervisory Historic Preservation Architect On this wintry afternoon in February, construction work at the Rotunda continues in the final push towards completion later this coming summer, 18 months after beginning. Whiting-Turner, the construction management firm, skillfully organized the project to have critical exterior work finished prior to this winter’s weather. […]

By: Richard Guy Wilson, Commonwealth Professor and Chair, Department of Architectural History Some of Jefferson’s earliest schemes (c.1768-70) for Monticello’s landscape were classical and balanced, but early on he begins to recognize that the building and the landscape were two different entities. One reason lay with the practical, his scheme for flatting the hill top was […]