Academic Writings

This collection contains items from Donald Black’s life and career, spanning from the 1930s up until 2023, ranging from personal memorabilia from his high school years, to his research in graduate school, to drafts of his major published works, to his professional involvement as a leader in sociology and professor at the University of Virginia, including forthright and meaningful correspondence with colleagues and adversaries about sociology theories from academic institutions across the world leading up to his retirement from the University of Virginia in 2016.

His papers include his academic writings, manuscripts, conference papers and lectures, course readings, examination questions, syllabi, correspondence with students and colleagues, personal journals, and notes about ground breaking theories that he created in the fields of sociology, law, and criminology. They reveal the passionate, intellectual and personal thought processes of a dedicated scholar and professor who led a new way of thinking about sociology as a scientific approach to understanding social conditions, particularly situations involving conflict, by creating a model that was designed to be testable and that veered away from psychology and the study of the individual.



Roberta Senechal de la Roche papers are included in Subseries 5 of the collection. She was a full professor at Washington and Lee University where she taught sociology, history, and social history. Included are her articles, manuscripts, lectures, conference talks, correspondence with colleagues, and correspondence between her and Donald Black. Her published works of poetry have been catalogued separately.