News & Events

Professor Eliga Gould (University of New Hampshire) will deliver the 2026 Commonwealth Fund Lecture at UCL on Thursday 2 July. In this public lecture, Gould explores the contested legacy of resistance at the heart of the American Revolution, tracing how the events of 1775-76 shaped later debates over citizenship, rebellion, and political belonging across the Atlantic world.

Co-sponsored by the Black Press Research Collective at the Center for Africana Studies at Johns Hopkins University and the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University. This free two-day symposium at Howard University, the home of the Black Press Archives, convenes scholars, journalists, archivists, artists, and students to celebrate, commemorate, and critically examine the past, present, and futures of the Black Press. Building on the 2026 volume, A Full Measure of Freedom: The Black Press at 200, the symposium treats the bicentennial not only as a moment of reflection, but as an

We are inviting early-career scholars and ABD graduate students to participate in a two-day workshop at Brown University in October 2026 focused on the Global Black Press. The workshop will bring together emerging scholars to share and discuss draft essays for a collaborative scholarly project commemorating the bicentennial of the Black Press (1827–2027). Organized in partnership with African American Intellectual History Society, its digital platform Black Perspectives and the journal, Global Black Thought, the initiative examines the enduring and evolving role of Black journalism in shaping

The Arthur Miller Institute for American Studies is pleased to announce the winners of the 2026 Miller Prizes. The Arthur First Book Prize was won by Erin Pearson's Grievous Entanglement: Consumption, Connection, and Slavery in the Atlantic World (University of Virginia Press, 2025). The Article Prize winner is Sian Round's 'Lillian Smith’ s Strange Fruit and Periodical Readership' published in the Journal of American Studies.

Dear Colleagues, We are delighted to share with you the call for papers for our conference on “Quiet Desperation: Pessimism in Emerson and Thoreau” (University of Lodz / Sorbonne Université), which will be held online on 12-13 March 2027. Please send paper proposals (400-500 words) as well as a short bio to our dedicated email address quietdesperation2027@gmail.com by 31 October 2026. The conference will be held in English. There is no conference fee. Best regards, Justyna Fruzińska, Krzysztof Majer, Anna Shmatenko, and Barbara Bandos.

The special dossier is meant to delve into the evolution of (discursive, cultural, visual, and digital) aesthetics and performance that characterize Trumpism specifically, and/or cultural artifacts produced and “consumed” in the so-called Trump era.