Yesterday the encyclopedia staff road-tripped it to Richmond, where we gathered with our friends at the Library of Virginia to inaugurate a new era for Encyclopedia Virginia and the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. We are now officially partners with the Library in this ambitious encyclopedia project of ours and, in particular, have become the [...]

Click to continue →

We’ve all heard how John Rolfe was the first to announce the arrival of Africans to Virginia. In a letter to Sir Edwin Sandys in January 1620, Rolfe tells of how “a Dutch man of Warr” landed at Point Comfort bearing “not any thing but 20. and odd Negroes.” Well, it turns out that ship [...]

Click to continue →

The Encyclopedia Virginia staff attended the National Council for Social Studies annual conference in Washington, D.C., last week. Highlights included a group photo with a ruddy-faced Commodore John Barry of the United States Navy, witnessing the legendary Kareem Abdul-Jabbar sign posters, and otherwise standing around hawking our cool travel mugs and telling teachers from around [...]

Click to continue →

At Wired magazine, Jon Stokes heralds Google’s digitalization of the Dead Sea Scrolls: [I]t’s rare that scholars get to compare a a high-quality, full-color facsimile of a source text to the edited critical edition that forms the basis of their work. But what’s even rarer is the opportunity to compare a high-quality image of a [...]

Click to continue →

A new article in Inside Higher Ed takes an in-depth look at the business of online encyclopedias, including Encyclopedia Virginia. Here’s a taste: Size Matters From a business standpoint, the most attractive aspect of Wikipedia might be the fact that unpaid volunteers create and edit most of the content. But to consumers, the site’s greatest [...]

Click to continue →

Encyclopedia Virginia was on TV last night. NBC29 in Charlottesville gave the project a thumbs up on the news last night. You can watch the video here.

Click to continue →

The University of Virginia takes notice of Encyclopedia Virginia today: EV also embraces the interdisciplinary nature of its entries. For instance, the entry for the “Wreck of the Old 97″ – which relates the story of the 1903 crash of a Southern Railways freight train in Danville – connects topics under transportation with music, folk [...]

Click to continue →

This e-mail made the rounds here at the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities yesterday: Dear Board Members and Staff, I am delighted to report that “With Good Reason” has just been named to receive a 2009 Gabriel Award in the category of “Best News/Informational Radio Programming.”  Presented by the Catholic Academy for Communication Arts Professionals, [...]

Click to continue →

The thing I love about BackStory is that they’re great at stirring the pot. Take their recent show on Independence Day. It prompted this comment on the website: I found several aspects of the piece on the Declaration rather sensational and disingenuous—a rather second year way of making things look important. It goes on, but [...]

Click to continue →

BackStory had a great live event on Friday. Now they’re asking for your help with show ideas. BackStory invites you to propose a topic for our fall season below and let us know why you think it would make for a compelling hour of radio. Which concerns facing Americans today could use historical unpacking by [...]

Click to continue →

If you look at our blog entries individually, you will see a “Welcome to reader-supported content” balloon toward the bottom of the page but above the comment box. This balloon and the badge underneath is part of a “micro-patronage” system that is currently under development to help content providers (newspapers, blogs, etc.) earn revenue so [...]

Click to continue →

All the buzz lately in humanities circles has been the nomination of Jim Leach as head of the National Endowment for the Humanities. (If you don’t hang out in humanities circles, you should. The buzz is great!) Leach, you’ll recall, is a moderate Republican with thirty years in Congress who was thwacked in the Great [...]

Click to continue →

This week’s Virginia Vignette is about an escape from Libby Prison in Richmond during the Civil War. Around 109 Union officers tunneled out, with fifty-nine of them eventually reaching the safety of their own lines. The last two sentences of the Vignette prompted skepticism from some readers, however. Here’s what we wrote: A prison employee, [...]

Click to continue →

When one considers the term massive–or “collective”–resistance, we might try and channel Thoreauian idealism and think of a movement by a downtrodden people to subvert or protest a tyrannical status quo. In the case of Virginia history, however,  “Massive Resistance” was anything but a subversive movement for high moral principles. Massive Resistance was the political–and [...]

Click to continue →

of Encyclopedia Virginia there was Andrew Chancey [pronounced 'An-drëw Chän-see'; aka VFH Director of Planning and Management and Executive Editor of Encyclopedia Virginia]. Andrew–known as “Andy” to his friends outside the office–came to the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities over eight years ago. He rose in the VFH ranks quickly, going from a half-time employee [...]

Click to continue →

Rachel Quimby, Associate Producer of the new history-focused radio show BackStory, has submitted this description of the program. Readers of the Encyclopedia Virginia blog should check it out . . . VFH radio is proud to announce the launch of BackStory with the American History Guys—the nation’s ONLY call-in history show! Each week, renowned (but [...]

Click to continue →

First it was Ed Ayers. Soon after he joined Encyclopedia Virginia‘s Editorial Advisory Board he was named the ninth president of the University of Richmond. Then it was Sandy Treadway. On July 1, 2007 she became the Librarian of Virginia after unanimous appointment. And we recently received more good news: yesterday Paul Levengood, another stalwart [...]

Click to continue →

Maurice Jones has been named the next publisher of the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot. Jones has been a Rhodes scholar, a corporate lawyer, and a senior state official, but most importantly for us, he is a member of the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities board and its subcommittee on Encyclopedia Virginia. From the Virginian-Pilot‘s story today: Jones’ [...]

Click to continue →

Welcome to the Encyclopedia Virginia blog. An online compendium of Virginia history written by scholars from across the country (even across the world), the encyclopedia is currently being compiled here at EV headquarters in Charlottesville. We plan to use these pages to explain what we’re doing and what it’s good for; to illuminate some of [...]

Click to continue →