The Virginia Forum was held at Shenandoah University on its 20th anniversary over the weekend [March 19-21], bringing people together from different fields of study, such as Virginia history and literature. WMRA’s Ayse Pirge reports.
Warren Hofstra is on the history faculty at Shenandoah University and one of the founders of the Virginia Forum. He says that 20 years ago, there was a real shortcoming that led to his collaboration with another colleague to call for a conference.
WARREN HOFSTRA: There did not exist in the state of Virginia… an annual meeting or an organization for people who were from the history, and geography, and literature on various aspects of Virginia culture. And I also had been teaching Virginia history at Shenandoah University throughout my career.
They sent out a call for papers in 2005.
HOFSTRA: ...Thinking we might get 20 or 30 responses. We got close to 80. And then we thought maybe 30 or 40 people would come to this small event we were planning, and 250 people came. And it generated enough energy and enthusiasm to continue it. And this has happened year after year. Twenty years, meeting all over the Commonwealth of Virginia, different universities, museums, and historical societies.
He says that even though a large percentage of people who come to the forum work in fields related to history, the institution is growing to be more eclectic.
HOFSTRA: Virginia has such a rich and complex and even troubled history. So, there’s so much to write about. So, a large percentage of the people who come to the forum work in the field of history and history scholarship, and history teaching. But I think one of the ways it’s changed is to be always open to many different disciplines, different points of view.
Jonathan Noyalas is the Hugh & Virginia McCormick Chair in Civil War History at Shenandoah University. He is also the chair of this year’s Virginia Forum. Noyalas says the conference is where a lot of historians share their new research and insights.
JONATHAN NOYALAS: And it really covers the gamut of Virginia history, from you know, Jamestown Settlement colonial Virginia history, all the way through Revolution, you know, Civil War, and of course even into more modern times.
This year’s main theme is–
NOYALAS: “Revolutions and Resistance” … There are a number of panels that focus on the American Revolution, but it’s really about change, and resisting oppression throughout the course of Virginia history.
Noyalas says they had a broad array of papers.
NOYALAS: To me, one of the most interesting– I’m a Civil War historian by training– And so there was a session earlier this morning about the different ways that women in this part of Virginia tried to navigate the complexities of war, and how they cared for their families, and dealt with all the uncertainties of the conflict. So, for me that’s the highlight.
Dwana Waugh is an associate professor of history at Sweet Briar College, and was also one of the organizers of last year’s Virginia Forum. She studies Prince Edward County.
DWANA WAUGH: And I’m really interested in the stories of school desegregation there. How the community dealt with, responded to, rebounded from massive resistance.
Waugh says her work examines the period after schools reopened in 1964, to the early 2000s.
WAUGH: And I am interested in the policies that developed within the school, and how that demonstrated beliefs about education, thoughts about race within the community. But I’m also interested in the memory aspect of desegregation. And how those policies reflect that memory.
Evie Terrono is a professor of art history at Randolph-Macon College. Her focus is another example of the rich vein of history that runs through the Commonwealth, and infuses our politics in the present day.
EVIE TERRONO: I have been working on… Confederate monuments, in particular, the politics of Confederate monuments for about 20 years.
Terrono says that while she was researching her dissertation topic on sanitary fairs of the Civil War–
TERRONO: I realized how much of the Confederate landscape is intact. So, I began to research Confederate monuments.
Terrono says she had initially published on the Confederate monuments in Baltimore, because there was no scholarship at the time, and very little was known about the monuments. When living in Richmond, she says she became familiar with the politics of the Confederate landscape.
TERRONO: And my perspective was always that these were invisible. People were aware of them, but they didn’t necessarily engage with the rhetoric or the politics of the monuments, until obviously, the aftermath of Charlottesville, and the violence that occurred there. So, I began to look more broadly at the contemporary context.
Dan Thorp’s research digs deep into the issues of slavery and freedom.. He is an associate professor of history at Virginia Tech and the author of a recently published book called “Seeking Justice,” which deals with a historical lawsuit.
DAN THORP: Slaves could sue for their freedom, if they thought they were being held illegally. And the case that the book is about is, as far as I know, the longest running freedom suit in Virginia history. It was a family in, down near Christiansburg, Virginia that brought suit, and the case ran for 30 years.
The idea for the book emerged when Thorp came across a 500 page long file.
THORP: And I thought, I can’t deal with this now. But just flipping through it, it was really interesting, because it clearly went on for years, there were witnesses from Connecticut, Massachusetts, Illinois. So, it clearly was really spread out.
The Virginia Forum concluded on Saturday March 21, after more than a total of 30 sessions, and a celebration of its 20th anniversary.
