UVA philosopher Justin Bernstein questions whether Mill’s harm principle truly justifies vaccine mandates, especially when herd immunity limits an individual’s impact on others. In a new paper, he argues justice-based reasoning—weighing competing entitlements rather than direct harm—may offer a stronger philosophical foundation for mandates covering diseases like measles and COVID-19.
Historian Robert A. Strong examines how the 1874 and 1894 midterm elections triggered major political realignments, ending Reconstruction and launching Republican dominance under McKinley. He argues that while 2026 likely won’t match those dramatic shifts, even small seat changes could serve as a critical wake-up call for Trump, given today’s closely divided Congress.
UVA’s new ForgingUS project will make the documents, correspondence, and people behind America’s founding more accessible than ever. Supported by a $10 million NEH grant, the digital platform combines primary sources, maps, images, and data visualizations to illuminate the creation of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution
UVA doctoral candidate Elizabeth Mirabal won the Latin American Studies Association’s 2026 Best Article Award for her research on Puerto Rican writer Dolores Rodríguez de Tió’s poetic herbarium. Discovered during archival research in San Germán, the dried-plant collection reveals how exile, memory and nostalgia intertwine, offering fresh insight into ecocriticism and displaced writers’ connections to home.
Wendell Berry, the Kentucky farmer-writer who died in 2026, deeply influenced Christian farmers transitioning to sustainable agriculture across the rural South and Midwest. An anthropologist’s research reveals how Berry validated these “ex-conventional” farmers’ faith-based environmental convictions, offering them a model for reconciling stewardship, science, and Christianity amid pushback from skeptical church communities and apocalyptic rhetoric.
The UVA Center for Digital Editing has received a $10 million NEH grant to make founding-era primary sources publicly accessible through a new website called forgingUS. Launching around America’s 250th anniversary, the project goes beyond celebrated figures to highlight the correspondence and documents behind the Declaration of Independence and Constitution, combining images, maps, and data visualizations in a growing digital humanities ecosystem.
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UVA’s Nau Civil War Center launches Letters Home on Sept. 17, a digital history project featuring 13,500 searchable letters and diaries, 4,200 biographies, and interactive maps drawn from the John L. Nau III Civil War History Collection. Created with student collaborators, the site highlights everyday soldiers and families, revealing personal stories from both Union and Confederate perspectives.
Emilee Hacknee’s debut book, “All That’s Unseen: An Appalachian Memoir,” climbed to ninth this week on The New York Times’ combined print and e-book nonfiction best sellers list and 11th on the hardcover nonfiction best sellers list.
A University of Virginia scholar argues the Trump administration’s 2026 State Department report on Cuba draws on her book about the Tricontinental movement without credit, distorting its findings to falsely claim Cuba orchestrates left-wing terrorism in the U.S.
With his new album, “After the Fire,” associate professor of hip hop A.D. Carson explores what it means to be a human performer at a time when AI and other technological tools can rival the creations of live artists.
Patricia Nguyen and Natasha Heller were awarded prestigious Robert H. N. Ho Family Foundation Public Impact Grants for projects that connect Buddhist scholarship with wider audiences.
A new study published in Nature, co-authored by UVA doctoral student Thomas Storrs, provides the first national analysis of racial disparities in early federal mortgage lending. Examining over 100,000 records across 38 states, researchers found that from 1935 to 1947, Black Americans received just 2% of FHA loans and 5% of VA home loans despite comprising roughly 10% of the U.S. population and veteran population.