Symposia Brown College

Episode Notes
Give Me Liberty: Charlottesville and the American Revolution from 1776 to 2026

Historian Benjamin Bernard and producer Sage Tanguay hand the microphone to their University of Virginia students to interview history-lovers and experts in Charlottesville. How did Charlottesville experience the Age of Revolutions? In the lead-up to 2026—which will represent the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence—what should citizens of our sister cities know about revolutionary historical memory today?

Sister Revolutions is a limited-run documentary series made possible by the Charlottesville Sister Cities Commission, Brown Residential College at the University of Virginia, and America 2026. You can learn more about each of these organizations on their websites: www.cvillesistercities.org, https://browncollege.virginia.edu/ and www.america2026.eu


Sister Revolutions is produced and hosted by Benjamin Bernard and Sage Tanguay
With production assistance from Sophia Moore
French Transcription and Translation by Oriane Guiziou-Lamour
Music in this episode was provided by Blue Dot Sessions

This episode featured the voices of:


Iris De Rode
Emily Hemlinger
Kirt Von Daacke
Brennen Muller
Kay Slaughter
Lara Howell
David McCormick

Special thanks to


Elizabeth Smiley of the Charlottesville Sister Cities Commission
Ben Larsen of WTJU for running sound at our launch event
Bertrand Van Ruymbeke of America 2026
Prof. Ari Blatt, Chair of the University of Virginia French Department
Florent Werguet, Head of international relations for the City of Besancon
Hugo Toudic Associate director of the University of Chicago center in Paris

Sister Revolutions is hosted by Symposia: a production of Brown Residential College at the University of Virginia and the Virginia Audio Collective at WTJU 91.1 FM.

Episode Notes
Sister Revolutions III: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity (1776–1848)

How did the provincial military town of Besançon experience the French Revolution? University of Virginia historian Benjamin Bernard and producer Sage Tanguay consider the transition from monarchy to democracy in a city that produced many of France’s leading social thinkers of the early nineteenth century. This episode features discussions with French and American doctoral students and historians--as well as an extended interview with Léonel de Moustier, a descendant of François-Elie de Moustier, who was the French ambassador to America during the French Revolution.

Sister Revolutions is a limited-run documentary series made possible by the Charlottesville Sister Cities Commission, Brown Residential College at the University of Virginia, and America 2026. You can learn more about each of these organizations on their websites: www.cvillesistercities.org, https://browncollege.virginia.edu/ and www.america2026.eu


Sister Revolutions is produced and hosted by Benjamin Bernard and Sage Tanguay
Production assistance from Sophia Moore and Ben Larsen
French Transcription and Translation by Oriane Guiziou-Lamour
English voiceover by Nathan Moore, Tracey Gerlach, Russ Perry, and Dan Hennicke

The music in this episode was provided by Blue Dot Sessions and by violinist Daniel Sender, Charlottesville Sister Cities grantee performing music by Michel Blavet (1700-1768).

This episode featured the voices of:


Leïla Tnaïnchi
Oriane Guiziou-Lamour
André Ferrer from the Société d’émulation du Doubs and Professor Emeritus at the University of Burgundy Franche-Comté
Gaëlle Cavalli from the Citadelle of Besançon
Lionel Estavoyer
Léonel de Moustier
Amandine Royer

Special thanks to


Elizabeth Smiley of the Charlottesville Sister Cities Commission
Gaspard de Moustier
Bertrand Van Ruymbeke of America 2026
Prof. Ari Blatt, Chair of the University of Virginia French Department
Florent Werguet, Head of international relations for the City of Besançon
Hugo Toudic Associate director of the University of Chicago center in Paris

Sister Revolutions is hosted by Symposia: a production of Brown Residential College at the University of Virginia and the Virginia Audio Collective at WTJU 91.1 FM.

Episode Notes
Enlightenment: Besançon, 1740–1788

Besançon feels in many ways like an eighteenth-century city. In this second episode of “Sister Revolutions,” historian Benjamin Bernard and producer Sage Tanguay explore the intellectual and architectural efflorescence of the Enlightenment in Franche-Comté through interviews with historians—and a visit to Claude Nicolas Ledoux's imaginative Saline Royale (royal salt works) in the nearby village of Arc-et-Senans.

Sister Revolutions is a limited-run documentary series made possible by the Charlottesville Sister Cities Commission, Brown Residential College at the University of Virginia, and America 2026. You can learn more about each of these organizations on their websites: www.cvillesistercities.org, https://browncollege.virginia.edu/ and www.america2026.eu

Sister Revolutions is produced and hosted by Benjamin Bernard and Sage Tanguay
With production assistance from Sophia Moore
French Transcription and Translation by Oriane Guiziou-Lamour
And English voiceover by Lewis Reining and Nathan Moore
The music in this episode was provided by Blue Dot Sessions

This episode featured the voices of:


Andre Ferrer from the Societe d’emulation du Doubs and Professor Emeritus at the University of Burgundy Franche-Comte
Pascal Brunet public architectural historian
Gregory Le Moing at the Royal Salt Works of Arc-et-Senans
Sarah MacDonald and Yves al-Ghazi

Special thanks to


Elizabeth Smiley of the Charlottesville Sister Cities Commission
Bertrand Van Ruymbeke of America 2026
Prof. Ari Blatt, Chair of the University of Virginia French Department
Florent Werguet, Head of international relations for the City of Besancon
Hugo Toudic Associate director of the University of Chicago center in Paris

Sister Revolutions is hosted by Symposia: a production of Brown Residential College at the University of Virginia and the Virginia Audio Collective at WTJU 91.1 FM.

Episode Notes
Conquest: When Besançon Became French, 1670–1740

Join historian Benjamin Bernard and producer Sage Tanguay as they learn about the French conquest of Besançon in the late seventeenth century through visits to Besançon's Saint-Jean Cathedral and its citadel. They explore the significance of this period for the “sister city" relationship between Charlottesville and Besançon.

Sister Revolutions is a limited-run documentary series made possible by the Charlottesville Sister Cities Commission, Brown Residential College at the University of Virginia, and America 2026. You can learn more about each of these organizations on their websites: www.cvillesistercities.org, https://browncollege.virginia.edu/ and www.america2026.eu

Sister Revolutions is produced and hosted by Benjamin Bernard and Sage Tanguay
With production assistance from Sophia Moore
French Transcription and Translation by Oriane Guiziou-Lamour
And English voiceover by Tracey Gerlach
The music in this episode was provided by Blue Dot Sessions

This episode featured the voices of:


Dr. Katlyn Carter from the University of Notre Dame
Mathieu Fantoni from the Cathédrale Saint-Jean de Besançon
Gaelle Cavalli from La Citadelle Besancon
Noelle Antolin and Styvie Bearns

Special thanks to


Elizabeth Smiley of the Charlottesville Sister Cities Commission
Bertrand Van Ruymbeke of America 2026
Prof. Ari Blatt, Chair of the University of Virginia French Department
Florent Werguet, Head of international relations for the City of Besancon
Hugo Toudic Associate director of the University of Chicago center in Paris

Sister Revolutions is hosted by Symposia: a production of Brown Residential College at the University of Virginia and the Virginia Audio Collective at WTJU 91.1 FM.

About
Sister Revolutions is a public history community documentary podcast sponsored by the City of Charlottesville’s Sister Cities Commission (CSCC) and hosted by Brown College's Symposia podcast.

Through four episodes released weekly in Spring 2024, historian Benjamin Bernard, Ph.D. and audio producer Sage Tanguay explore the legacy of the American and French Revolutions through the sister city relationship between Charlottesville, Virginia, USA and Besançon, France.

The series features extensive conversations with scholars, public historians, curators, and community members at historic and civic institutions in both cities. Available wherever you get your podcasts!

This project was made possible by:
Brown Residential College
The Charlottesville Sister Cities Commission
WTJU 91.1FM and the Virginia Audio Collective,
The UVA Department of French
The America2026 project (america2026.eu)
Laurent Bruneau

Welcome to a poetry reading at the Monroe Hill House! John Casteen, the Director of Studies at Brown College is our host for the presentation by poets featured in the Southern Poetry Anthology IX: Virginia.

Robert Wood Lynn is a writer from Virginia. His debut poetry collection Mothman Apologia was the winner of the 2021 Yale Younger Poets Prize and 2023 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. His work has been featured in American Poetry Review, Poetry Daily, Poetry Magazine, The Yale Review and other publications. A 2023 National Endowment for the Arts creative writing fellow, he teaches creative writing at Juilliard.
 
Leah Naomi Green is the author of The More Extravagant Feast (Graywolf Press, 2020), selected by Li-Young Lee for the Walt Whitman Award of the Academy of American Poets.  She teaches environmental studies and English at Washington and Lee University specializing in Environmental Literature and Creative Writing. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming from The Paris Review, Tin House, Poem-a-Day, VQR, The Southern Review, Orion, Shenandoah, Ecotone, and Pleiades among other publications.
 
Amy Woolard is Chief Program Officer for the ACLU of Virginia, where she works on civil rights & civil liberties advocacy in Virginia. Her debut poetry collection, NECK OF THE WOODS, received the 2018 Alice James Award from Alice James Books. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Poetry, Boston Review, Ploughshares, Fence, & elsewhere, while her essays and reporting have been featured in publications such as Slate, The Guardian, Pacific Standard, and The Rumpus, as well as Virginia Quarterly Review, which awarded her the Staige D. Blackford Prize for Nonfiction in 2016.