

Jai: I’ve lived in Virginia for quite awhile now and you are subconsciously immersed in history wherever you go. Our country continues to grapple with slavery’s legacy and that issue certainly played out in the state’s plantations. So we began to explore Virginia’s history and a great deal of that history, particularly about the Civil War, can be discovered by visiting plantations. in the 70s, we hadn’t spent much time in Virginia. Although we had lived in Washington, D.C. How did the two of you come together to write this book?Ĭharlene: About five years ago, my husband and I began dividing our time between New York City and Alexandria, Virginia. Jai and Charlene talk about what became for them a transformative journey, researching and writing Plantations of Virginia. These “works in progress” have fascinating stories to tell. Like so many other areas of the country, Virginia has become focused on preserving its history, which, in many cases, involves saving and restoring these homes and surrounding grounds. Their homes, Mount Vernon, Monticello, and Montpelier, remain the crown jewels and should be experienced by every American for their historic value.īut there are many other plantations worth a visit, including the grand mansions located along the James River. Virginia has produced eight presidents and three of those – George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison – were Founding Fathers whose leadership and inspiration were critical to the birth and success of the new country.

Their new book, Plantations of Virginia, has just been published by Globe Pequot Press. To learn more about our books and journals programs, please visit us at our website.Jai Williams and Charlene Giannetti spent six months visiting 40 plantations in Virginia, taking tours and talking with the families and the professionals tasked with caring for these historic properties. UNC Press publishes over 100 new books annually, in a variety of disciplines, in a variety of formats, both print and electronic. Many of our journal issues are also available as ebooks. UNC Press publishes journals in a variety of fields including Early American Literature, education, southern studies, and more.
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For a full listing of Institute books on click here. More information can be found about the Omohundro Institute and its books at the Institute's website. UNC Press is also the proud publisher for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture in Williamsburg, Virginia.

The purpose of the Press, as stated in its charter, is "to promote generally, by publishing deserving works, the advancement of the arts and sciences and the development of literature." The Press achieved this goal early on, and the excellence of its publishing program has been recognized for more than eight decades by scholars throughout the world.
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Founded in 1922, the Press is the creation of that same distinguished group of educators and civic leaders who were instrumental in transforming the University of North Carolina from a struggling college with a few associated professional schools into a major university. The University of North Carolina Press is the oldest university press in the South and one of the oldest in the country. In so doing, we determine how these plantations deploy local histories to distinguish themselves and whether, in their selective appropriation of the region’s past, they detach themselves from local histories of the enslaved. To more fully assess how the enslaved are present or absent in promotional historical narratives, we perform content and discourse analyses of twenty-seven James River plantation websites. Writing enslaved African Americans out of materials promoting these commemorative landscapes makes it possible for consumers of these sites to conclude that Black lives do not belong in the James River region’s past or present. As sites of local learning, these museums assert particular ways of knowing the past that reinforce exclusionary local and regional identities. Such research, however, seldom places plantation websites in the context of specific local histories. Previous studies of plantation websites note that the enslaved are marginalized in promotional materials featuring romanticized stories of plantation owners or the mansion’s architectural significance. The websites of plantation museums along Virginia’s James River promise visitors unique experiences based on their place within this region’s history.
