Discovery & Inspiration

Mia Bay (NHC Fellow, 2009–10), Roy F. and Jeannette P. Nichols Chair in American History, University of Pennsylvania From stagecoaches and trains to buses, cars, and planes, “Traveling Black” explores when, how, and why racial restrictions took shape and brilliantly portrays what it was like to live with them. It also recounts the many forms of resistance deployed in the prolonged fight for freedo...

Jacquelyn Dowd Hall (NHC Fellow, 1996–97), Julia Cherry Spruill Professor Emerita of History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, National Humanities Medal Recipient Descendants of a prominent slaveholding family, Elizabeth, Grace, and Katharine Lumpkin grew up in a culture of white supremacy. But while Elizabeth remained a lifelong believer, her younger sisters chose vastly different liv...

Andrew Jewett (NHC Fellow, 2013–14), Elizabeth D. Rockwell Visiting Professor of Ethics and Leadership, University of Houston “Science under Fire” reconstructs a century of battles over the cultural implications of science in the United States, showing how suspicion of scientific methods and motivation has played a major role in American politics and culture since the 1920s with profound repercuss...

Thomas M. Lekan (NHC Fellow, 2009–10; 2010–11; 2022–23), Professor of History, University of South Carolina Demonstrating the conflicts between international conservation, nature tourism, decolonization, and national sovereignty, “Our Gigantic Zoo” explores the legacy of Bernhard Grzimek, Europe’s greatest wildlife conservationist, who portrayed himself as a second Noah, called on a sacred mission...

Kim F. Hall (NHC Fellow, 2016–17), Lucyle Hook Professor of English and Professor of Africana Studies, Barnard College, Columbia University Since her first book, “Things of Darkness,” appeared in 1996, Kim F. Hall’s work has helped generate a new wave of scholarship on race in Shakespeare and Renaissance/Early Modern texts. For this talk, she places “Othello: The Moor of Venice” in an Afrodiaspori...

Tsitsi Ella Jaji (NHC Fellow, 2017–18), Associate Professor of English, Duke University Zimbabwean poet and scholar Tsitsi Ella Jaji discusses and reads selections from “Mother Tongues: Poems,” her award-winning second book of verse, in which she explores our relationships with language, from the first words we learn to the vows we swear, examining how generations of love and loss are inscribed in...

Annette Gordon-Reed (NHC Trustee), Charles Warren Professor of American Legal History, Harvard Law School; Peter S. Onuf, Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Professor, Emeritus, University of Virginia Primarily set at Monticello, where Jefferson not only developed his Enlightenment values but oversaw the workings of a slave plantation, “Most Blessed of the Patriarchs” looks to shed light on perh...

Martin Summers (NHC Fellow, 2013–14), Professor of History, Boston College Founded in 1855 to treat insane soldiers and sailors as well as civilian residents in the nation’s capital, Saint Elizabeths became one of the country’s preeminent research and teaching psychiatric hospitals. From the beginning of its operation, Saint Elizabeths admitted black patients, making it one of the few American asy...

Alexis Pauline Gumbs (NHC Fellow, 2020–21), Independent Scholar, Writer, and Activist The second book in an experimental triptych, “M Archive ”is a series of poetic artifacts that speculatively documents the persistence of Black life following the worldwide cataclysm we are living through now. Engaging with the work of the foundational Black feminist theorist M. Jacqui Alexander, and following the...

Kathleen DuVal (NHC Fellow, 2008–09), Bowman & Gordon Gray Professor of History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Over the last decade, award-winning historian Kathleen DuVal has revitalized the study of early America’s marginalized voices. Now, in “Independence Lost,” she recounts an untold story as rich and significant as that of the Founding Fathers: the history of the Revolutionary...

Joseph Luzzi (NHC Fellow, 2004–05), Professor of Comparative Literature, Bard College On a cold November morning, Bard College professor Joseph Luzzi found himself racing to the hospital—his wife, Katherine, eight-and-a-half months pregnant, had been in a horrible car accident. In an instant, Luzzi became both a widower and a first-time father. In the aftermath of unthinkable tragedy, Luzzi relied...

Laura T. Murphy (NHC Fellow, 2017–18), Professor of Human Rights and Contemporary Slavery, Sheffield Hallam University “Freedomville” is the story of a small group of enslaved villagers in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, who founded their own town of Azad Nagar—Freedomville—after staging a rebellion against their slaveholders. But Laura T. Murphy, a leading scholar of contemporary global slaver...

David Bromwich (NHC Trustee), Sterling Professor of English, Yale University Since at least as far back as the expansion of the Vietnam War and the lies and coverups that brought down Richard Nixon, every presidency has further centralized and strengthened executive power, producing the political conditions for our present crisis. In “American Breakdown,” David Bromwich provides an essential analy...

Laura F. Edwards (NHC Fellow, 2007–08), Class of 1921 Bicentennial Professor in the History of American Law and Liberty, Princeton University Laura F. Edwards’s compelling book considers the sweeping transformation of American law produced in the wake of the Civil War. Through her analysis of constitutional amendments, Supreme Court decisions, and legal claims espoused by everyone from national po...

John McGowan (NHC Fellow, 2017–18), John W. and Anna H. Hanes Distinguished Professor Emeritus of English, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill In “Pragmatist Politics,” John McGowan suggests that perhaps the best response to the cynicism and despair that permeate contemporary American politics is a return to pragmatism. Offering an expansive vision of what the United States should be, McGo...

Catherine M. Cole (NHC Fellow, 2006–07), Divisional Dean of the Arts and Professor of Dance and English, University of Washington “Performance and the Afterlives of Injustice” reveals how the voices and visions of artists in South Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo can help us see what otherwise evades perception from the injustices produced by apartheid and colonialism. Examining works b...

Bart D. Ehrman (NHC Fellow, 2009–10; 2018–19), James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill In clear and compelling terms, Bart D. Ehrman recounts the long history of the afterlife, from the Epic of Gilgamesh to the writings of Augustine, focusing especially on the teachings of Jesus and his early followers. He discusses ancient guided tou...

Joseph Allen Boone (NHC Fellow, 2009–10), Gender Studies Professor in Media and Gender and Professor of English, Comparative Literature and Gender Studies, University of Southern California Taking its inspiration from “Great Expectations,” “Furnace Creek” teases us with the question of what Pip might have been like had he grown up in the American South of the 1960s and 1970s and faced the explosiv...

William D. Cohan (NHC Trustee) Written by their Andover classmate, journalist William D. Cohan, “Four Friends” tells the stories of Jack Berman, the child of impoverished Holocaust survivors, who used his unlikely Andover pedigree to achieve the American dream, only to be cut down in an unimaginable act of violence; Will Daniel, Harry Truman’s grandson and the son of the managing editor of The New...

Contemporary audiences may be familiar with the phenomenon of “breaking the fourth wall” in television, film, theater, and other forms of media. In these instances, creators and performers address the audience directly or draw attention to the conventions of a performance in a way that disrupts its immersive or continuous nature. In this podcast, Mark Evan Bonds (NHC Fellow, 1995–96; 2021–22), pro...

The emergence of commercial aviation in the early twentieth century redefined global commerce by facilitating the movement of people and goods at previously unimaginable speeds. In Hong Kong, however, this phenomenon was not an inevitable development, and the growth of its aviation industry reflected a complex interplay between political interests, geographical realities, and economic alliances. I...

In 70 CE, the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans led early Christians to claim that this event was an example of divine retribution for the death of Jesus. Narratives promoting this cause-and-effect story of vengeance circulated widely throughout Europe in the medieval period, with frequent alterations designed to appeal to local constituencies and to advance particular political and religious...

Prior to the modern era, autobiographical narratives were primarily authored by members of elite classes of society, giving modern-day historians relatively limited insight into the ways that lower-class individuals experienced political, cultural, and economic events of their time. However, the surviving documents that constitute an exception to this rule can give us unprecedented glimpses of eve...

For the past several decades, authorities have become increasingly concerned about the threat posed by emerging diseases—not only to public health, but also to political and economic stability at a global scale. Attention has been particularly focused on tropical hotspots such as west and central Africa, where human encroachment has increased the likelihood of encountering novel pathogens, with po...

Over the past several decades, neuroscientific studies have been invoked in order to justify policy decisions and associated legislation. Although such scientific findings are always subject to change or re-interpretation, increasingly, the logic of “brain science” is being equated with a kind of fundamental truth. Practically, this often leads to justifications for programs ranging from cursive w...