Kirt von Daacke
Assistant Dean and Professor
Department of History434-924-8986
[email protected]
269-A Monroe Hall
Degrees
B.A., University of Virginia
M.A., The Johns Hopkins University
Ph.D., The Johns Hopkins University
My research centers upon social constructions of race, community social hierarchies, and identity in eighteenth and nineteenth century America. I am especially fascinated with studying the complex interplay of race and culture in the antebellum South. My first book, Freedom Has a Face: Race, Identity, and Community in Jefferson's Virginia, was published in 2012. I was a contributing author for a new edited volume on slavery at the University of Virginia, Educated in Tyranny, in 2019. I am currently editing a volume on UVA’s post-1865 history, After Emancipation: A History of Race, Community, and the University of Virginia, which is currently under review with the University of Virginia Press.
I am honored to have co-chaired and led the research project for UVA President's Commission on Slavery and the University (PCSU), which published its report in 2018. I am similarly thrilled to co-chair the President’s Commission on the University in the Age of Segregation (PCUAS). The PCSU worked on research, acknowledgment, community engagement, and atonement for several years, culminating in the completion of a significant memorial to enslaved laborers that was completed in 2020 and dedicated in spring 2021. The PCUAS continues that process and investigates UVA’s difficult past from 1865 to 1965.
My scholarly interests dovetail neatly with my current professional work here and grew out of my experience as an undergraduate history major here at the University of Virginia, where so many of my professors challenged and inspired me as a thinker and scholar both inside and outside the classroom. I remain thrilled to get to participate in shaping this place in the twenty-first century and to have the opportunity to guide current University students as they discover and pursue their own academic interests.