Department of History

Public History, Journalism, & Activism: A Conversation with Molly Conger

Wednesday, April 2nd | 5:30-7pm | Humanities Commons, Room 220

Co-hosted by the History Department and Journalism Department, this event is a public talk and Q&A with Molly Conger, a journalist and activist based in Charlottesville, VA, who is one of the country’s leading authorities on alt-right, white supremacist, and neo-Nazi movements in both the past and present. Conger gained national prominence while covering the 2017 Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, during which neo-Nazis and white supremacists marched with tiki torches, shouting “Blood and soil!” and You will not replace us!” She also has a highly acclaimed public history podcast called “Weird Little Guys,” with each episode focusing on the story of a different male rightwing extremist in U.S. history. She conducts her own historical research for each podcast episode, digging into old newspapers and court cases and weaving them into an accessible “true crime” story for a broad audience.

The event will be co-moderated by Professor Michelle Kahn and Maria Byrnes, a sophomore who is majoring in History and minoring in Journalism. Professor Kahn is writing a book about the history of neo-Nazism, and she recently testified as an expert witness in the criminal case against one of the organizers of the Charlottesville riots. Maria worked as Professor Kahn’s research assistant for the Charlottesville case, and last summer she completed an A&S Summer Research Fellowship investigating the radicalization of far-right extremists on mainstream social media sites.

2025 Ryland Lecture: Hidden Histories of Black Civil Rights

Monday, February 24th, 5:30-6:30pm | Brown Alley Room, Weinstein Hall

Dylan C. Penningroth, Professor of Law and Alexander F. and May T. Morrison Professor of History, Associate Dean, Program in Jurisprudence and Social Policy/Legal Studies

Based on his book Before the Movement: The Hidden History of Black Civil Rights, Penningroth will explore how African Americans thought about, talked about, and used the law long before the marches of the 1960s. In a world that denied their constitutional rights, African Americans built lives for themselves through common law “rights of everyday use.” Drawing from court records, family interviews, and church archives, Penningroth’s research offers a rich vision of African American life – a vision allied with, yet distinct from, the freedom struggle.

Welcome Dr. Marina Montesano

Dr. Montesano joined us this semester as the Visiting Cornerstone Chair. Her area of expertise is the Middle Ages and early Renaissance, particularly gender in the Middle Ages, East-West mobility in the Middle Ages, magic and witchcraft in Medieval and Renaissance Times, and cultural history. She has published many works, most notably Classical Culture and Witchcraft in Medieval and Renaissance Italy,  Folklore, Magic, and Witchcraft: Cultural Exchanges from the Twelfth to Eighteenth Century, and Cross-dressing in the Middle Ages. She has presented her scholarship at academic conferences and institutions across the world, including the Italian Cultural Institutes in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Cairo, Egypt, Hamburg, Germany, and Istanbul, Turkey.

Dr. Montesano graduated from the University of Bari and earned her Ph.D. in Medieval History from the University of Florence. During the final year of her four-year doctoral program, she spent a semester at Brown University. Upon returning to Italy, she was a fellow for one year at Villa I Tatti – The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies. Following this, she began her academic career as an adjunct professor in Genoa and Milan and now holds a tenured position at the University of Messina.

For spring semester 2025, Dr. Montesano is co-teaching HIST 298: Medieval Travel & Travelers: A Global Middle Ages with Dr. Joanna Drell.