The question is, how did I from a suburban public school in Chicago wind up at UVA.
It's centered around a family trip to civil war battlefields and that lit
my fire. Those battlefields became part of reuniting this country. I came to the
realization there was no class in history on the mid 19th century at UVA
I believe that that period in American history is one of the most
critical I wanted to provide UVA with a center so that UVA becomes the best
university on mid 19th century American history. The center is going to be
important in many ways. It is going to deepen and expand our understanding to
absolutely vital part of the United States history. We have of course here
national battlefield parks and we want to place under graduates as interns at
these national parks, and this will be a wonderful illustration of the practical
application of the skills they learn in the classroom - interpreting history for
the public, preserving it, documenting it. It will be strengtheneing our already
strong graduate program. Our graduate students have distinguished themselves
in the field over the last twenty years. Tamika, she's a wonderful example of
the kinds of students who've come here
done splendid work and they've gone off and written their books and assume
positions of authority within the profession. I realize that I couldn't
study the later periods in American history without understanding
slavery and I couldn't understand American history without understanding
the Civil War, particularly when it comes to studying the experiences of enslaved
women and those stories have yet to be told. My work is linking the
criminalisation of black women to the larger construction of American legal
history. Elizabeth Barren and Gary Gallagher are excellent role models for
me. I was able to glean so much from both of them.
Mr. Nau is himself Civil War expert, someone who has worked tirelessly to
preserve the history, the artifacts, the documentary record of the war today.
About eighteen thousand items - it's about preserving it so that it's not just
about me, it's about generations down that'll still have the opportunity to look
at the original documents. Many people don't realize how far west these armies fought.
This pistol was carried by a Texan and he went all the way into New Mexico. He was
killed in the battle and this was taken off his body. The work we do isn't
possible without the kinds of work that people like Mr. Nau do. John Nau
obviously understand the impact of what that kind of center could do. We want to
be on the cutting edge, sort of asking the tough questions and getting us to
rethink and reconsider some of what we think we know; that's how history
advances as a field. The repercussions of the Civil War are still very much with
us., as controversies over the confederate flag and other issues tell us. And so
anyone who wants to pretend to understand American history or understand
the present has to come to terms with the mid-nineteenth century and there's not
going to be a better place to do that but at the University of Virginia
and the Nau Center is going to be at the heart of that. I can't explain how happy
I am to be able to fast forward from the mid 1960's to the year 2015 and be able to
pay back to the university and that history department, a subject that has been so
important to me and I believe is so important to the development of the
entire United States.