To unpack the full story that was being told by this provocative setup, we must first explore the symbolism behind each individual image, starting with David. According to University of Virginia history professor Paul Barolsky, there was a longstanding tradition in Italy of revering the Biblical figure as the patria, a father to and protector of both society and culture. Aiming to depict him as a guardian, Michelangelo rendered David taller, more handsome, and more muscular than Bible passages suggested.
It’s not clear how the current strain will evolve in the coming months. UVA modeling, widely relied on by state officials, suggests the state could see another peak through the week of Oct. 17. More pessimistic projections suggest cases could rise steadily through the holiday season even as vaccination rates continue to increase.
As University of Virginia professor Jeffrey Zvengrowski has recently demonstrated in his magisterial “Jefferson Davis, Napoleonic France, and the Nature of Confederate Ideology, 1815-1870,” popular impressions of the Old South stem not from historical fact but from post-Civil War glorification of the Lost Cause and from Leftist criticism.
(Subscription may be required) More than a third of U.S. consumers allow Facebook to provide a primary view into the world outside their town. It’s having its effects. A new UVA survey released late last week found that more than half of Trump supporters (52%) and more than four in 10 (41%) Biden supporters agree (strongly or somewhat) that it’s “time to split the country.” Eighty percent of Biden voters and 84% of Trump voters view the other side as a “clear and present threat to American democracy.”
The research was done before the pandemic, but it’s “hugely connected to current conditions and, I think, has huge implications for how we proceed,” lead researcher Daphna Bassok, associate professor of education and policy at the University of Virginia, said in a webinar last week hosted by Duke’s Center for Child and Family Policy.
(Commentary) Since I’ve been writing this column, I know I’ve harped a lot on the division we see in our nation, but there’s a reason — it’s the most important issue facing the United States. The reason I bring it up again is because of a piece which appeared on Sept. 30 on the UVA Center for Politics regarding a project the Center and Project Home Fire have undertaken to use polling and data analytics to “identify America’s political fissures, and explain ways to foster compromise.” I fully support the optimistic tone of the UVA Center’s author in that they want to “explain ways to foster com...
(Podcast; commentary) A new poll from the University of Virginia shows that huge swaths of Americans despise each other … but does that matter?
Washington Post reporter Craig Whitlock’s recent book, “The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War,”, draws evidence from interviews with some 1,000 people who participated in the war, including U.S. military officers, officials, aid workers, and Afghan leaders. The book also draws on interviews conducted by the U.S. Army and the University of Virginia’s Miller Center.
Constantly dieting may not only cause you to gain more weight in the end, but also lead to a slew of health problems. “A lot of the diseases associated with yo-yo dieting are similar to the diseases that are linked to obesity,” says study co-author Siddhartha Angadi, an assistant professor of education in UVA’s Department of Kinesiology. “Yo-yo dieting has been shown to increase your risk of cardiovascular disease. Yo-yo dieting has been shown to increase your risk of certain cancers. It has been shown to increase levels of inflammation. This is very much a case of where the ‘cure’ – tel...
(Co-written by Adam Lieve, assistant professor in the Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy) Proponents of work requirements for social safety net programs argue that they promote self-sufficiency by encouraging work, while opponents contend that they reduce benefits for the most vulnerable recipients in times of need. This column looks at the impact of the reinstatement of work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program in the U.S. following a hiatus during the Great Recession. The authors find that work requirements do not appear to improve economic self-sufficien...
Hamilton Lombard, a demographer for UVA’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, said he found several instances of population counts that didn’t match with what’s going on in college towns.
Once a bustling Black community filled with Black-owned establishments, the Greenwood district in Tulsa, Oklahoma, allowed its residents to flourish shortly after reconstruction. But the community endured a series of racially motivated attacks that led to its tragic end in 1921. The timeline of events leading from Greenwood’s inception to the Tulsa massacre and its restoration are captured in the documentary, “The Legacy of Black Wall Street,” directed by Deborah Riley Draper. UVA’s Center for Politics invited Draper to Charlottesville to host a viewing of her two-part docu-series at the Ting ...
Masks will continue to be necessary for indoor spaces at the University of Virginia. A letter sent to the UVA community on Friday announced that all people, vaccinated or not, will be required to wear a mask while inside spaces owned by the university of spaces it leases through at least the end of October.
If you plan to go to an event or game at John Paul Jones Arena anytime soon, you’ll need to provide proof of a COVID-19 vaccine or a negative COVID-19 test. The policy goes into effect Oct. 18.
Monday’s meeting of the Charlottesville City Council came with fireworks. Councilors disagreed on how to address the violence near the University of Virginia and the debate on whether to increase police presence near Grounds. It all started after two mothers of UVA students spoke, asking for more policing.
The handwritten manuscript of John Steinbeck’s masterpiece ,“The Grapes of Wrath,” complete with the swearwords excised from the published novel and revealing the urgency with which the author wrote, is to be published for the first time. The manuscript itself, the only one of “The Grapes of Wrath,” is kept in the University of Virginia’s archives.
(Video and transcript) Dr. Taison Bell, assistant professor of medicine in UVA’s Divisions of Infectious Disease and Pulmonary, Critical Care Medicine, discusses the latest coronavirus developments.
Libby Stropko Baird: Baird graduated from the University of Virginia’s law school in 2019 and clerked for Judge Kevin C. Newsom of the US Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit and for Judge Trevor N. McFadden of the US District Court for D.C. She was the Virginia Law Review’s articles editor.
(Subscription required) With a hand repeatedly thumping over his heart and tears glistening in his eyes, Ryan Zimmerman paced in front of the home dugout at Nationals Park on Sunday afternoon. The crowd in the stands above him roared. His teammates and coaches applauded. His opponents started their own standing ovation.
In early September, just before President Biden ordered 80 million workers to get vaccinated or undergo regular testing, a question went viral on the internet. “Would y’all report your unvaccinated co-worker(s) for $200K?” asked @RevampedCP on Twitter. … “I was not expecting this,” says Arianny Mercedes, the career strategist and public policy student at the University of Virginia who dashed off the original tweet as she contemplated how far people would be willing to go to get back to “normal.”