Thomas Jefferson

What should we think about Thomas Jefferson? John Ragosta will discuss Jefferson’s contributions and contradictions at UVA’s Founder’s Day celebration on Friday, April 12 in Old Cabell Hall at 1:00 pm. Mr. Ragosta holds his PhD and JD from the University of Virginia where he is the faculty leader of Lifetime Learning’s Summer Jefferson Symposium. […]

Summer Jefferson Symposium, hosted by Lifetime Learning in UVA‘s Office of Engagement from June 21-24, was an opportunity for alumni, parents and friends to share in deep conversation about a brilliant and complicated man. John Ragosta, Summer Jefferson Symposium Faculty Leader, historian at the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello and […]

Written by John Ragosta, Summer Jefferson Symposium Faculty Leader and historian at the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello   Everyone has a first love: wildly impassioned, sometimes reckless, undoubtedly wrapped in dreams of a long life together. But what of last loves? More mature; a deep, abiding warmth for heat; […]

Written by Jeb Livingood, Assistant Professor of English; Associate Director of the UVA Creative Writing Program, College and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences   I served as a reservist in the Coast Guard for twenty-four years, and I’ve been teaching English at UVA for eighteen. Those are two different worlds—the military and academia—and I […]

Written by John Ragosta, Lead Faculty, Lifetime Learning Summer Jefferson Symposium; Fellow, Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. John Ragosta column: originally published by the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Reprinted with permission.   Today is Religious Freedom Day, a chance to remember the critical importance to our nation of Thomas Jefferson’s Virginia Statute for Establishing Religious Freedom and […]

Written by John Ragosta, Faculty Leader, Summer Jefferson Symposium; Fellow, Virginia Foundation for the Humanities   We remember Thomas Jefferson primarily for his great accomplishments as a statesman, philosopher, and political leader, including the Declaration of Independence, his presidency, and his leadership of a political movement. But Jefferson lived until he was 83 years old, […]

  Written by David T. Gies, Commonwealth Professor of Spanish, College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences; Editor of DIECIOCHO; Corresponding Member of the Spanish Royal Academy   Last year, I announced my retirement from UVA, effective May 2018. Yes, I know that I am now merely a statistic, one of dozens of senior […]

Written by John A. Ragosta, faculty director of the Summer Jefferson Symposium offered by UVA’s Lifetime Learning, authored Patrick Henry: Proclaiming a Revolution (Routledge Press, 2016) and is the lecturer for the Coursera online course Patrick Henry: Forgotten Founder, co-sponsored by the Lifetime Learning and the Patrick Henry Memorial Foundation.   Patrick Henry “certainly gave […]

In honor of National Poetry Month, Lifetime Learning is featuring poems written by esteemed faculty all month long. The fourth poem in this series is written by Lisa Russ Spaar, Horace W. Goldsmith Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Creative Writing Program in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Virginia. She is […]

  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: 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. […]