Schedule By Topic

Sky Walking: An Astronaut's Memoir

Astronaut Thomas D. Jones, Ph.D. (Sky Walking: An Astronaut's Memoir) discusses his experiences as a science specialist, including four space shuttle flights and three space walks on which he carried out various scientific missions. Cafe's lunch is available, $18.For lunch reservations, contact Allan Van Wickler at amvwdsvw@comcast.net (434-296-0439). Pay at the door (cash only). Capacity is 100.

Hosted by Charlottesville Aviation Luncheon Club.

Moderator: Luther Gore

Great Sports Stories: The Arenas, the Players, the Management

Chris Graham and Patrick Hite (Mad About U: Four Decades of Basketball at University Hall), Pete Williams (The Draft: A Year Inside the NFL's Search for Talent) and baseball-team owner Mike Veeck (Fun Is Good).

Moderator: Jim Tolbert

Here and Gone: Photography and Thoughts on American Memorials

Photographer Carol M. Highsmith and author Ryan Coonerty (Etched in Stone) join photographer David Plowden (A Handful of Dust) and contributor Jon Lohman (Spontaneous Shrines and Public Memorialization of Death) to discuss aspects of America's memorials and forgotten structures.

Hosted by National Geographic Society, Virginia Folklife Program.

Sponsored by the We the People Initiative of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Moderator: Barbara Brownell Grogan

The Civil War: Lessons for Today's Wars

Join William Freehling (The Road to Disunion, Vol. II) and Peter Onuf (Nations, Markets and War: Modern History and the American Civil War) in a lively discussion of how motives and machinations then help us understand what is happening now. Refreshments following courtesy of Bryan Hagen, Merrill Lynch.

Sponsored by UVa Bookstore.

Moderator: Roberta Culbertson

Virginia's Civil War

Historian Ed Bearss (Fields of Honor) will discuss Civil War events and battles that took place in Virginia, relating little-known facts, fascinating characters, and an intimate knowledge of terrain and troop movement. Refreshments before this event, courtesy of Bryan Hagen, Merrill Lynch.

Hosted by National Geographic Society.

Sponsored by UVa Bookstore.

Moderator: Len Riedel

Presidents at Work and Play

John Watterson (Games Presidents Play, Sports and the Presidency) and Dwight Young (Dear Mr. President) capture our Presidents in their more informal moments.

Moderator: George Gilliam

Passage to Freedom: Legacies of Slavery

The transatlantic slave trade was outlawed 200 years ago, but the journey to social equality for African Americans continued and continues. Explore untold stories with Betty DeRamus (Forbidden Fruit: Love Stories from the Underground Railroad), Ron Soodalter (Hanging Captain Gordon), Cassandra Pybus (Epic Journeys of Freedom) and Jon F. Sensbach (Rebecca's Revival).

Hosted by South Atlantic Humanities Center (VFH-UVa-VT).

Moderator: Pablo Davis

Sagas of Jamestown: Lives and Times Reimagined

Author John Thompson (The Journals of Captain John Smith) and the author-photographer team of Avery Chenoweth and Robert Llewellyn (Empires in the Forest) explore in words and images one colony's enduring historical imprint on American society.

Sponsored by the We the People Initiative of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Moderator: Garrett Brown

When Southerners Don't Act "Southern"

Susan V. Donaldson (I'll Take My Stand: The South and the Agrarian Tradition), M. Thomas Inge (William Faulkner: Overlook Illustrated Lives) and moderator John Lowe (Jump at the Sun) discuss Southern identity and those who describe or challenge it from within.

Hosted by South Atlantic Humanities Center.

Moderator: John Lowe

Build Up to World War II

With David L. Roll (Louis Johnson and the Arming of America), Werner Gruhl (Imperial Japan's World War Two: 1931-1945), and Lynne Olson (Troublesome Young Men: The Rebels Who Brought Churchill to Power and Helped Save England).

Moderator: Art Beltrone

For Chesapeake Adventurers: Tales from a Water Trail

Photographer William Portlock and author John Page Williams (Chesapeake: Exploring the Water Trail of Captain John Smith) join Susan Schmidt (Landfall Along the Chesapeake: In the Wake of Captain John Smith) to discuss the water trail in history and at present.

Moderator: Garrett Brown

The Declaration of Independence: A Global History

Author David Armitage places that most American of documents, the Declaration of Independence, into its international and global contexts from 1776 to the present day, to show its impact on the shaping of our modern world.

Sponsored by Thomas Jefferson Foundation, Monticello.

Moderator: Andrew O\'Shaughnessy

Barbie Dolls, Ginseng, Moonshine, and Moonpies: Americana

With Americana chroniclers Shari Caudron (Who are You People? A Personal Journey into the Heart of Fanatical Passion in America), David Magee (Moonpie: Biography of an Out-of-This-World Snack), David A. Taylor (Ginseng, the Divine Root), and Neal Thompson (Driving with the Devil: How Southern Moonshine and Detroit Wheels Collided to Ignite NASCAR).

Sponsored by the We the People Initiative of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Moderator: Jon Lohman

Civil Rights and Human Rights

Thomas Jackson (From Civil Rights to Human Rights: Martin Luther King Jr. and the Struggle for Economic Justice) and Hoda Zaki (Civil Rights and Politics at Hampton Institute: The Legacy of Alonzo G. Moron) discuss two individuals and one institution that sustained the attacks against segregation.

Hosted by VFH Fellowship Program.

Moderator: Christina Draper

The Japanese American Internment: A Granddaughter's Perspective

A Place Where Sunflowers Grow is a children’s book set in a Japanese American internment camp during WWII. Amy Lee-Tai will discuss the inspiration and motivation behind her book, do a reading, and take questions.

Hosted by Friends of Greene County Public Library.

Moderator: Deborah Willenborg

Reconstructions: Fiction with Mark Childress and Donald McCaig

Donald McCaig (Canaan) and Mark Childress (One Mississippi) read from and discuss their novels of the Post-Civil War and Post-Civil Rights South.

Hosted by the Library of Virginia in celebration of the Virginia Literary Awards.

Moderator: Hoke Perkins

Repeating the Past: Historical Fictions, Present Day Truths

Jewish novelists Michael Lowenthal (Charity Girl), Katharine Weber (Triangle), and Gabriel Brownstein (The Man from Beyond).

Moderator: Grace Zisk

Shaping a Nation: History and Policy

Peter Wallenstein (Cradle of America: Four Centuries of Virginia History) and Richard Labunski (James Madison and the Struggle for the Bill of Rights) illuminate the varying visions citizens and politicians have had for Virginia and the constitution from this country's founding to the present.

Sponsored by the We the People Initiative of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Moderator: Sheryl Hayes

Women Pushing the Boundaries

Lorraine Gates Schuyler (The Weight of Their Votes: Southern Women and Political Leverage in the 1920s), Caroline Weber (Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution), and Laura Browder (Her Best Shot: Women and Guns in America).

Moderator: Lawrie Balfour

Changing the Constitution: The 14th Amendment and Judicial Activism

Garrett Epps (Democracy Reborn), and Dahlia Lithwick (NPR and Slate.com judicial analyst) discuss Supreme Court activism, the Constitution and American society.

Sponsored by the We the People Initiative of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Moderator: Dahlia Lithwick

Communities of Memory: Stories from the Holocaust and Beyond

With Daniel Mendelsohn (The Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million), Robert Satloff (Among the Righteous: Lost Stories from the Holocaust's Long Reach into Arab Lands) and Yaacob Dweck (tr., Haim Sabato's The Dawning of the Day).

Moderator: Burton Zisk

Fact and Artifact: Unearthing Jamestown

Join two preeminent Jamestown scholars, William Kelso (Jamestown, The Buried Truth) and James Horn (A Land As God Made It: Jamestown and the Birth Of America) for a journey below the surface of Virginia's first colony.

Sponsored by the Library of Virginia in celebration of the Virginia Literary Awards.

Moderator: Andrew Wyndham

Disasters in Fact and Fiction

Authors Katharine Weber (Triangle: A Novel), Stefan Bechtel (Roar of the Heavens), Ken Foster (The Dogs Who Found Me), and Elise Blackwell (The Unnatural History of Cypress Parish) discuss stories surrounding famous fires, storms, and floods.

Moderator: Larry Baker

Not in a Vacuum: Science and Belief

Explore contexts of discovery where science and religion challenge each other. With Jeremy Campbell (Many Faces of God: Science's 400-Year Quest for Images of the Divine) and Joe Jackson (A World on Fire: A Heretic, An Aristocrat, and the Race to Discover Oxygen).

Sponsored by Tthe Library of Virginia in celebration of the Virginia Literary Awards.

Moderator: Stephen Macko

Treasures of Black History: Three Perspectives

Thomas C. Battle (Legacy: Treasures of Black History) and co-editor Donna M. Wells (Legacy) editor Christina Draper (Don't Grieve for Me), Jeanne Siler (Fayette Street), and Frances Latimer (Landmarks: African America Historic Sights on Virginia's Eastern Shore) discuss books on African American history that engage research on the local, state and national levels.

Hosted by South Atlantic Humanities Center (VFH-UVa-VT).

Moderator: Pablo Davis

Early American ABCs: Women, Children, and Reading

Jennifer Monaghan (Learning to Read and Write in Colonial America) examines the literacy instruction of boys and girls as Catherine Kerrison (Claiming the Pen: Women and the Intellectual Life in the Early American South) explores Southern women's 18th-century novels and their emerging sense of authority. 

Hosted by Literacy Volunteers of Charlottesville-Albemarle.

Moderator: Jane Fruchtnicht

Graphic Nonfiction: Brave New Genre

Comics editor Sid Jacobson and artist Ernie Colon (creators of The 9/11 Report: A Graphic Adaptation) and comic biographer Andy Helfer (Ronald Reagan, Malcolm X) display and discuss their recent forays into nonfiction.

Moderator: Beau Eichling

Our Part in the Past: A Poetry Reading

Places, histories, and our relationship to them with Darnell Arnoult (What Travels with Us), Constance Quarterman Bridges (Lions Don't Eat Us), and David Roderick (Blue Colonial).

Moderator: Aaron Baker

Thomas Jefferson on Wine: The Man, the Grape, Their History

John Hailman discusses his new book, Thomas Jefferson on Wine. A definitive study of the character of this great American as revealed in Jefferson's hundreds of letters devoted to the "restorative cordial."

Sponsored by Thomas Jefferson Foundation, Monticello.

Moderator: Mary Scott-Fleming

Wild Abandon: Change and Natural Landscapes

Follow Bland Simpson (The Inner Islands: A Carolinian's Sound Country Chronicle) and Charles Bowden (Inferno) into landscapes that have become crucibles of cultural, environmental, and economic concern.

Moderator: Jon Lohman

William A. James, Sr.: In the Streets of Vinegar Hill Booksigning

William A. James, Sr. will speak about and sign copies of his newest book, In the Streets of Vinegar Hill.

Hosted by Angus Bull Antiques.

Displaced Persons: Fiction Reading

Characters adapting to foreign environments with Marsha Mehran (Pomegranate Soup), Mary Sharratt (The Vanishing Point), and Peter Orner (The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo).

Moderator: Bella Stander

How! and Other Approaches to American Indians

American Indian historians and authors Gabrielle Tayac (Meet Naiche) and Karenne Wood (Markings on Earth) discuss ways in which American Indians have been marginalized through history, through the construction of their histories by non-Native scholars, and through the perpetuation of stereotypes in Hollywood, museums, and among the general public.

Hosted by Virginia Council on Indians.

Moderator: David Bearinger

All Governments Lie--and Journalists Who Told the Truth

Myra MacPherson (All Governments Lie: The Life and Times of Rebel Journalist I. F. Stone ) and Dorothy Fall (Bernard Fall: Memories of a Soldier-Scholar), discuss two journalists unafraid to tell the truth.

Moderator: Tico Braun

Poetry in the Papers

Explore poetry as a historical public force with Jonathan Gross (Thomas Jefferson's Scrapbooks: Poems of Nation, Family, and Romantic Love) and James Basker (Amazing Grace: An Anthology of Poems About Slavery, 1660-1810).

Moderator: Robert Vaughan

The Mystery's in the History: Crime Wave

Frankie Bailey (You Should Have Died on Monday), Louis Bayard (The Pale Blue Eye), Cordelia Biddle (The Conjurer), Dana Cameron (Ashes and Bones), and Jane Cleland (Consigned to Death) discuss their mysteries with historical aspects.

Moderator: Karen Wikander

Subjects of History: Virginia Indians Speak Out

Virginia Indian tribal leaders Anne Richardson (Rappahannock Tribe), Stephen Adkins (Chickahominy Tribe), George Whitewolf (Monacan Nation) and Wayne Adkins (Chickahominy Tribe) respond to books written about them, past and present, examining colonialism and cross-cultural understanding.

Hosted by Virginia Council on Indians.

Moderator: Karenne Wood

The Trials of Lenny Bruce

Ronald Collins, co-author, The Trials of Lenny Bruce,  and attorney Robert Corn-Revere will discuss the free speech trials of comedian Lenny Bruce, including their successful effort to earn Bruce the first posthumous pardon granted by the State of New York.

Hosted by Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression.

Moderator: Robert O'Neil

Immigration: Where Are We Going?

A discussion with Luis Alberto Urrea (The Devil's Highway), Hiroshi Motomura (Americans in Waiting) and Charles Bowden (Down By the River).

Moderator: David Martin

Figured in Fiction: Literary Figures as Characters

The life and times of great authors refigured in new fiction by Caroline Preston (Gatsby's Girl), Mameve Medwed (How Elizabeth Barrett Browning Saved My Life) and Louis Bayard (The Pale Blue Eye).

Sponsored by The Virginia Foundation Center for the Book and The Big Read in Virginia.

Moderator: Susan Coleman

Virginia Politics: Where Have We Been, Where Are We Going

Frank Atkinson (Virginia in the Vanguard: Political Leadership in the 400-Year-Old Cradle of American Democracy) and Garrett Epps (The Shad Treatment) talk Virginia Politics with Daily Progress political reporter Bob Gibson.

Sponsored by the We the People Initiative of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Moderator: Bob Gibson

Jews, Jive, and Jazz

Explore lesser-known aspects of American popular culture with John Leland (Hip: The History) and Ted Merwin (In Their Own Image: New York Jews in Jazz Age Popular Culture).

Moderator: Elliot Majerczyk

Press Pass: From the White House to the World

With journalists Helen Thomas (Front Row at the White House; Watchdogs of Democracy), Margaret Kilgore (Remember to Laugh: Writing My Way Around the World), Betty DeRamus (Forbidden Fruit), and Alicia Shepard (Woodward and Bernstein).

Sponsored by The Daily Progress.

Moderator: Maurice Jones

Vietnam: The War and Its Aftermath

Charles Jones (Boys of '67: From Vietnam to Iraq, the Extraordinary Story of a Few Good Men), Mark Moyar (Triumph Forsaken: The Vietnam War, 1954-1965), and Taylor Baldwin Kiland (Open Doors: Vietnam POWs Thirty Years Later) discuss the conduct of the war, and the fallout for soldiers who fought it.

Sponsored by the We the People Initiative of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Moderator: Art Beltrone