John Edwin Mason: Documentary, Motorsports, Photo History

All Night Jazz Jam at Fellini's for the George Melvin Educational Fund

Last Saturday, the Charlottesville Jazz Society and Fellini's #9 (a great restaurant and my neighborhood pub) hosted an all night jazz jam session to benefit the George Melvin Educational Fund. George, who passed away last year, was a truly beloved figure on Charlottesville's musical scene -- a wonderful teacher and... Read more →

Place, Race, & Memory: South x Southeast Magazine & Photography in the South

I was sorely tempted to call this post "Grits, Greens, and Red-Eye Gravy." But I won't. Even though the phrase has a certain country-music charm, and even though I'm going to make an argument about the specificity of Southern photography, it just doesn't fit the photographs on view in South... Read more →

Motor Sports & Diversity in C-ville Weekly

As couple of weeks ago, Kyle Daly, a reporter for C-ville, a weekly newspaper, interviewed me in connection with an article that he was writing on racial diversity in motor sports. The story, "Speed is Colorblind," came out yesterday, and it's terrific. You can read it here. (By the way,... Read more →

Professor Speed

For the last several years, I've thought of myself as an iconoclast, of sorts -- the only member of the University of Virginia's faculty with a deep and enduring interest dragsters, hot rods, and all manner of fast cars. I've taken a not-so-secret pleasure in knowing that many of my... Read more →

4th of July Naturalization Ceremony at Monticello

...the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. --Martin Luther King, Jr. When my alarm clock went off at 6:00 this morning, I wasn't sure what I was going to do. The idea of turning it off, turning over, and going back to sleep was... Read more →