Dear VA-Hist members:

 

I would like to invite you to the next in the Library of Virginia's noon
lecture series.  On Tuesday, January 13, 2004, at noon, Dr. Thomas E.
Buckley, S.J., will present a talk entitled "Begging for Divorce:
Virginian's Petition Their Legislature." Dr. Buckley will discuss the
Library of Virginia's collection of legislative petitions, records he
has mined extensively, and the treasures the collection contains for
understanding the state's history and the lives of ordinary Virginians,
focusing on race, religion and especially divorce.  Dr. Buckley is
professor of American religious history at the Jesuit School of Theology
and the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. He has
written extensively on the history of church-state relations in
Virginia. Currently, he is writing a study of the efforts of Virginians
to implement Thomas Jefferson's Statute for Religious Freedom in the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A frequent visitor to Richmond
during summers and sabbaticals, he has been working in the collections
of the Library of Virginia for over thirty years.

 

After his talk he will sign copies of his book The Great Catastrophe of
My Life: Divorce in the Old Dominion, published in 2002 by the
University of North Carolina Press. Based on research in almost 500
divorce files, the book involves a wide cross-section of Virginians.
Their stories expose southern attitudes and practices involving a
spectrum of issues from marriage and family life to gender relations,
interracial sex, adultery, desertion, and domestic violence.  From the
end of the Revolution until 1851, the Virginia legislature granted most
divorces in the state. It granted divorces rarely, however, turning down
two-thirds of those who petitioned for them. Men and women who sought
release from unhappy marriages faced a harsh legal system buttressed by
the political, religious, and communal cultures of southern life. 

 

I have also appended a list of other talks to be held here at the
Library of Virginia in the month of January.  We have a full and
interesting line-up of lectures this spring and you can access the full
schedule of events for the Library by clicking on "Calendar of Events"
at: http://www.lva.lib.va.us/whoweare/events/index.htm 

 

Gregg Kimball

Director of Publications and Educational Services

_______________________________________________________________

 

Tuesday, January 20, 2004
Pardon Me: Executive Clemency in Virginia, 1776-present
Time: Noon
Place: Conference Rooms
FREE EVENT
Vincent T. Brooks, architectural archivist at the Library of Virginia,
will discuss the history of executive clemency powers in Virginia from
1776 to the present. Brooks also will offer suggestions for navigating
the files of the Governor's Office, Secretary of the Commonwealth and
related records using a number of examples from the collection.

 

Thursday, January 22, 2004
A Little Parliament
Time: Noon
Place: Conference Rooms
FREE EVENT


Author Warren M. Billings, Distinguished Professor of History at the
University of New Orleans and Historian of the Supreme Court of
Louisiana, will discuss and sign his new book, A Little Parliament. A
Little Parliament covers the founding and evolution of the oldest
legislative body in the New World, demonstrating how the legislative
traditions begun at Jamestown formed the basis of the American form of
representative government. Billings draws lively vignettes of many of
the colony's earliest political leaders and focuses attention on how
their actions shaped the lives of all the colony's residents between
1619 and 1700. A book signing will follow the talk. This talk
complements Elizabeth I: Ruler and Legend, a national traveling
exhibition organized by the Newberry Library's Center for Renaissance
Studies, in collaboration with the American Library Association's Public
Programs Office. The exhibition commemorates the 400th anniversary of
Elizabeth's death and is funded by the National Endowment for the
Humanities.

 

 

Thursday, January 29, 2004
Blinding Dates and the Red-Letter Daze of Early Virginia
Time: Noon
Place: Conference Rooms
FREE EVENT


Jon Kukla, director of Patrick Henry Memorial Foundation in Charlotte
County, Virginia, will offer an entertaining perspective on the findings
and foibles of contemporary scholarship about Jamestown and early
Virginia. This talk complements Elizabeth I: Ruler and Legend, a
national traveling exhibition organized by the Newberry Library's Center
for Renaissance Studies, in collaboration with the American Library
Association's Public Programs Office. The exhibition commemorates the
400th anniversary of Elizabeth's death and is funded by the National
Endowment for the Humanities.

 
Gregg D. Kimball
Director of Publications
  and Educational Services
Library of Virginia
804/692-3722
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