In an era of "don't say gay" laws, Dr. Pippa Holloway, chair of the University of Richmond's Department of History, believes in the relevance and importance of teaching LGBT history to students for what they learn about courts, the Constitution, civil rights, and America as a whole.
Phi Alpha Theta and the History Dept. invite ALL students to join for the first trivia night of the semester!
Win prizes! Eat pizza! Bring a friend! Test your history knowledge!
Tuesday, Sept. 30, 5:30-6:30pm | Queally Center, Breed Pavilion B
On April 9, 1865, at Appomattox Court House, Ulysses S. Grant accepted Robert E. Lee’s surrender. Celebrated at the time and later on as the final act of the Civil War, was the surrender really the end? Confederate armies remained active for another two months. Even after those surrenders, was the war over? What about the fighting that continued with guerrillas, or with Native peoples, many of whom had aligned with the Confederacy? And how does the end of slavery fit into the story? So long as slavery persisted, which it did long after the Confederate surrenders, could the Civil War, which was a war against slavery, be deemed concluded? This lecture explores lingering questions about when and how the war ended, uncovering a prolonged struggle that thwarted efforts to achieve a lasting and just peace in the United States.
Michael Vorenberg is Professor of History at Brown University. His book Lincoln’s Peace, released in March 2025, was named one of the “top ten books to read in 2025” by the Los Angeles Times, and received coverage from the New Yorker, the Wall Street Journal, and MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” show. His earlier books include Final Freedom: The Civil War the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment, which was a major source for Steven Spielberg’s 2012 film Lincoln. At Brown University, he teaches courses on the Civil War and Reconstruction as well as Legal and Constitutional History. He also was a member of the university’s pioneering Slavery and Justice Committee.
Dr. Link joins the History Department in Fall 2025 as the Visiting Cornerstones Chair. He is a scholar of the social and political history of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century U.S. South. He has authored eleven books, most recently The Last Fire-Eater: Roger A. Pryor and the Search for a Southern Identity (2022) and Frank Porter Graham: Southern Liberal, Citizen of the World (2021). His newest book, Jesse Helms: Modern Conservatism and the Politics of Opposition, will be published by UNC Press in 2026.
Dr. Link was a member of the history faculty at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro from 1981 to 2004. While at UNC-G and UF, he taught two current University of Richmond history professors—Dr. Holloway and Dr. Broomall. In 2004, he was named the Richard J. Milbauer Chair in Southern History at the University of Florida, where he taught until his retirement in 2022.
This fall at the University of Richmond, Dr. Link will teach a course on the Watergate crisis, the series of events that began in 1972 with the burglary of the Democratic National Committee offices in Washington, D.C., and culminated in President Richard Nixon’s resignation. In addition to studying the events of this period and Nixon’s political career, students will examine broader questions about presidential authority and Congress’s constitutional role in responding to misconduct in the Oval Office. Throughout the semester, students will engage with the extensive primary sources available from this pivotal period in American history.
Michelle Kahn, associate professor of history, has been awarded a fellowship from the American Jewish Archives for 2025-26 to support research for her book tentatively titled Neo-Nazis in Germany and the United States: An Entangled History of Hate, 1945-2000.
Eric S. Yellin, associate professor of history, participated in the American Historical Association’s Congressional Briefing, offering historical perspectives on the federal civil service.
Michelle Kahn, associate professor of history, has been awarded a National Humanities Center Fellowship for 2025-26 to support writing her book tentatively titled Neo-Nazis in Germany and the United States: An Entangled History of Hate, 1945-2000. Learn more.
Pippa Holloway, Cornerstones Chair in History, won the A. Elizabeth Taylor Prize from the Southern Association of Women Historians for her article, “Virginia Penny’s ‘State of Desperation’: Anger, Insanity, and Struggle for Justice in Nineteenth-Century Kentucky,” which was published in Ohio Valley History.
Historian and president emeritus Edward Ayers is quoted.
History professor Michelle Lynn Kahn is interviewed.
History professor Eric Yellin is quoted.
President emeritus and historian Ed Ayers is interviewed.
Mailing address:
History Department
Humanities Building
106 UR Drive
University of Richmond, VA 23173
Phone: (804) 287-6041
Fax: (804) 287-1992
Department Chair: Dr. Pippa Holloway
Academic Administrative Coordinator: Catherine Hash