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.
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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.
Dr. Jim Broomall joined us this semester as the William Binford Vest Chair in History. Professor Broomall is a cultural historian of Nineteenth-Century America. He specializes in American Civil War and Reconstruction, Southern History, and Public History. He is the author of Private Confederacies: The Emotional Worlds of Southern Men as Citizens and Soldiers, numerous articles and essays, and three major historic reports for the National Park Service.
For the past decade, Professor Broomall was on the faculty at Shepherd University, where he was the Director of the George Tyler Moore Center for the Study of the Civil War and the Robert C. Byrd Center for Congressional History and Education. He has led tours of battlefields and historic sites across the country, and he delivers numerous public presentations each year. Professor Broomall earned his M.A. at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and his Ph.D. at the University of Florida.
For spring semester 2025, Dr. Broomall is teaching HIST 204: The Civil War and Reconstruction.
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.
Michelle Kahn, associate professor of history, has been awarded a $26,000 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.
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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.
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Yücel Yanıkdağ, professor of history, published "Ottoman and Turkish Exception(alism): States of Exception in Turkey, 1909–1927" in First World War Studies.
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Tze M. Loo, associate professor of history and global studies, published “Actions toward Modern Japanese National Consciousness,” a translation of the Okinawan historian Gabe Masao's essay, “Kindai Nihon kokka ishiki e no taiō: Ryūkyū Okinawa chīki no ba’ai” and "Gabe Masao in Translation," an accompanying introduction to Gabe's scholarship in Pacific Historical Review.
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President emeritus and historian Ed Ayers is interviewed.
History professor Eric Yellin, the author of a book on the federal workforce, is quoted.
History professor Eric Yellin discusses the federal workforce.
History and Africana studies professor Jillean McCommons is quoted.
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