The Birth of the Republic of Colleges

This project grew first out of work conducted at the University of Virginia. Since 2012, a series of research projects were launched: a 2012 digital project on the founding and development of UVA in its first sixty years and also two university research and education projects examining slavery and segregation in the school’s history. Together, they have provided data for the ongoing Jefferson’s University-The Early Life Project, which is creating a thickly descriptive and deeply sourced history of the early university. It quickly became apparent that UVA was embedded in a dense network of exchange linking schools across both the state and the country: UVA students did graduate work at other schools, became professors and administrators elsewhere, became leaders in politics, education, medicine, and the law all across America. This project, now a collaboration of inclusive history projects largely stemming from Universities Studying Slavery (USS) member institutions, seeks to map the people who moved from school to school and state to state, frequently stepping into leadership positions across the young republic, and thereby trace the movement of people and ideas.