Where We Come From?
The exhibit items on this page come from two places: (1) UVA’s Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections Library and (2) student papers synthesizing selected works.
Throughout Spring 2021-Fall 2021, two sections of ENWR 2520 students worked to identify and study examples of writing from our institution’s past. We emphasized student writing, to see what our peers across time were creating during their own undergraduate years here.
In the gallery below, you’ll find examples of texts produced at UVA—mostly by students—that showcase the WIDE range of things people here were doing with their writing, from commonplace books and scrapbooks to research papers to letters fighting for social progress. We have also included a few outside pieces because they have influenced UVA’s culture.
We selected these pieces to examine in essays considering the history of UVA’s “writing culture”; all exhibit descriptions come from our class members. We have arranged them in chronological order, as part of an ongoing effort to recover and establish patterns in our history. As the arc of this course wraps up in Spring 2022, we hope to continue filling in gaps and making sense of where we’ve come from.
For now, what we hope you’ll see is a complicated history, worth studying. Our past is full of things that make us proud, curious, amused, ashamed, and determined, and it’s not a neat trajectory—people have been doing heroic, hilarious, and destructive work since our founding and up to today. Within any era, we see the urgency of critical thought, wisdom, and character to distinguish and commit to the good.
We weren’t able to digitize the entirety of what we examined, or even post all of what we digitized (there was a LOT), but we hope you enjoy the samples below—and that you’ll schedule a visit of your own with Special Collections! All exhibit descriptions written by the students who worked with them in their papers. (Papers linked below on this page.)
Hint: You can see larger versions of each image by clicking on it; you’ll be able to read the exhibit descriptions by hovering over the enlarged images.
Exhibit Pieces from Special Collections
Our Papers
After weeks in the archives, students brought their observations together into papers synthesizing selected works from the exhibit pieces you see above.
Spring 2021 papers
Topics included: Women and Writing at UVA; First Year Faces v. Political Writing; Silence of the Black Voice; Wartime Writings; Formality of UVA Writing; Informality of UVA Writing; Response to “A Rape on Campus”; UVA’s preservation efforts as seen through the “Unite the Right” collection; Eugenics at UVA; UVA culture as UVA subcultures; Student activism in influencing UVA culture; Faculty influence on student writing/ideology; Minority Inclusion via empowerment and administrator adaptation; Women at UVA; Raven Society and Scholarly Aspiration
Fall 2021 Papers
Topics included: Religious Writing; Writing for Coeducation; Writing during War Times; Student Activism through Writing; Student Rebellion and Unruliness in Writing; Exclusivity and Division at UVA; Tradition and Innovation; Writing as Progress and Regress; Writing and Athletics; Writing and Greek Life; Faculty Writing for Social Change; Humor in UVA’s Past Writing; Student Curiosity
