Architectural Detail of Old Cabell

The Forums Curriculum

Are you coming to UVA with a particular passion, or are you interested in exploring relevant topics in depth? The Forums offer opportunities to explore critical questions of our time by tailoring groups of courses around a central theme/topic/problem. The Forums are designed and led by some of the University’s most committed scholar-teachers, each with years of expertise researching their Forum topic. Each Forum admits 40 students who will share a first-year introductory seminar on the specific topic. In the fourth semester (spring of your second year), the Forum students come back together in a Capstone class where they work on research pertaining to the topic. Over the course of the first two years, Forum students will enroll in courses (24-27 credits) from the full range of the liberal arts and sciences that are hand-picked by the Forum faculty and directly address the Forum topic.

Note: Students who leave the College to transfer to another school at the end of the first-, second- or third-semester will be removed from their Forum. The Forums are only for College of Arts & Sciences students

College students entering UVA in the Fall of 2020 can choose from one of the Forum topics listed below.

Attention: Forums will not be offered for the entering class of 2021. Please visit our General Education Website for information on the other general education pathways. 

Forums Beginning 2020

American Dreams

Investigate the imagined “perfect society” while exploring what it means to imagine a paradise on earth – and what earthly creations can hasten its arrival.

Information and Disinformation

Investigate why the proliferation of information and technologies have yet to solve the great problems facing the Earth and how we might live better – and do better – in this condition.

Democratic Statecraft: Democracy and the World

Examine the place of democracies and democratic governance in world affairs.

 

Forums Beginning 2019

Students working at Curry

Corruption, Governance and Institutions

Examine the caustic effects of corruption on both government and economic institutions

Ideals and Injustices

Consider ideals that have shaped democracies around the world and the realities of injustices that have accompanied them.

The World Gone Wrong

Question why the world seems unfair and how we build our worlds anew.

Visions of the Good

Tackle the philosophical and practical considerations of determining what is “good” in our contemporary world.

 

 

Past Forums