University of Richmond professor awarded grant for research focusing on memorializing the Civil War in Richmond

University of Richmond rhetoric and communication studies professor Nicole Maurantonio has been awarded a year-long fellowship from the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities for her book project, “Changing Hearts and Minds: Memory, Race and the Confederacy in 21st Century Richmond.”

Maurantonio’s book grows out of an undergraduate course she teaches about memorialization in Richmond. Her students research and visit historical sites throughout the city and discuss the ways difficult pasts are remembered today, attending carefully to the politics of memory – who remembers what, when, how, and why. 

Examining a variety of cultural artifacts including monuments, commemorative rituals, art, and unauthorized graffiti, her book will explore how memory of the Confederacy is enacted today. “My research interrogates the meanings of 21st century memory of the Civil War at a time when ‘Confederate culture’ occupies an increasingly visible, albeit contested, place in U.S. public culture,” Maurantonio said.

Maurantonio will conduct her research while serving as a residential fellow at the Library of Virginia in Richmond for the 2017-18 academic year.

She coordinates the University of Richmond’s Race and Racism project, which provides digital access to selected archival resources housed at Virginia Baptist Historical Society, Rare Books & Special Collections at UR’s Boatwright Memorial Library, and The Collegian Newspaper archive. 

Maurantonio holds a joint appointment in rhetoric and communication studies and American studies and has taught at UR since 2010. She earned a bachelor’s degree in economics and history from the University of Virginia and a Ph.D. in communication and history from the University of Pennsylvania.

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Virginia Foundation for the Humanities connects people and ideas to explore the human experience and inspire cultural engagement. By supporting and producing cultural, civic, local, and global educational programs for broad public audiences, VFH encourages discovery and connection through the humanities. Since its founding in 1974, it has grown to become the largest and most diversely funded state humanities council in the country, producing more than 40,000 humanities programs including festivals, public radio programs, and digital resources, and contributing to more than 3,500 grant projects and 350 individual and collaborate fellowships.