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Reviews
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The University of Virginia
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Susan Tyler Hitchcock |
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256 pages, 369 color and b&w illus., 9 x 12 |
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ISBN 0-8139-1902-9 • $39.95 |
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The history of the University of Virginia is, like the larger history of the United States, the story of Thomas Jefferson's vision and of how that vision grew into the lively, democratic place we know today. Jefferson believed that education was essential to the new republic--an education available universally, not just to those who could afford it. Nearly two hundred years later, within the walls of his academical village, men and women of all backgrounds debate--and often criticize--the ideas of their university's founder, perhaps the best testimony of all to the spirit and success of his vision. The University of Virginia: A Pictorial History traces the growth of Jefferson's favorite project through an appropriately rich pageant of images and text. The book's main chapters, arranged chronologically, follow the rise of the university from its founding "on a plan so broad and liberal and modern," in Jefferson's words, to John T. Casteen III's initiative for a university of the twenty-first century, where the myriad resources of the Internet are just a click away. Much has occurred in the intervening years. During the Civil War, students, faculty, and members of the administration watched with dread as tents were erected on the Lawn for wounded Confederate soldiers and as a Union column with George Armstrong Custer at its head approached the university grounds. At the current site of Alderman Library, law professor John B. Minor and others convinced Union troops not to sack the university. In 1895 the fire that nearly destroyed the Rotunda paradoxically raised the architectural stature of the grounds to national prominence. Stanford White was so awed by Thomas Jefferson's genius that it "scared [him] to death" to design new buildings that would turn the Lawn into a quadrangle, but the new century saw these projects and new homes for the professional schools come to fruition. Gradually, the university opened its doors to women, and to the first African American, Gregory Hayes Swanson, who sued for admittance to the law school in 1950. During the Vietnam War, when universities were closed nationwide, President Edgar Shannon's address commending students for acting according to their conscience brought condemnation from the governor and a majority of alumni, but it earned the president a standing ovation at commencement the following spring. During the same period, Shannon's faculty recruiting, of scholars like Fredson Bowers of the English department, was helping to build the "public Ivy" that has regularly topped national magazine rankings in academic excellence and educational value throughout the 1990s. Interleaved with this history are sections displaying the places and themes that have endeared the university and its Charlottesville home to generations of students, who appear in everything from the uniform of the 1830s to the "bare feet and Weejuns" of the 1970s. Athletes perform while their classmates cheer at Lambeth Field and Memorial Gymnasium, Scott Stadium and University Hall, and friends gather afterward in the restaurants and bars of the Corner. Thomas Jefferson's philosophy of education, according to his contemporary George Tucker, "allowed more latitude and indulgence to students than was usual," creating a community where the concept of honor rather than "the fear of punishment, or dread of disgrace" provides the ethic that inspires university life. Never before has this spirit been captured so engagingly between covers. |
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Susan Tyler Hitchcock holds a Ph.D. in English from the
University of Virginia. A freelance writer living in
Albemarle County, she is also the author of Gather Ye
Wild Things: A Forager's Year (Virginia) and Coming
About: A Family Passage at Sea. Related Links |
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The University of Virginia |
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http://www.upress.virginia.edu/hitchcock.html |
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Revised 6/24/99 |
