2108 G Street NW, Washington, DC 20052

Thursday, February 20, 2025

1872 - New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art opens

1944 - Batman and Robin comic strip premieres in newspapers. 

1959 - Jimi Hendrix plays his first gig in Seattle at 16 years old.

2024 - Beyoncé becomes the first Black female artist to top Billboard’s Hot Country Songs Chart with her single “Texas Hold ‘Em”.

Netherlands to Repatriate 119 Benin Bronzes to Nigeria. Hyperallergic.

A Long Journey Home: After 50 Years, Back on the Reservation. The New York Times.

Using Rising Rent Debts as Cover, Bowser Works to Rob Many Tenants of the Right to Buy Their Buildings. Washington City Paper.

Photo credit: Aydan Reimer

This newsletter edition we spotlight Aydan Reimer, an American Studies major and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies minor. Throughout her academic work, Aydan has explored the intersections of culture, politics, and social movements, with a particular focus on gender equity, trans health, and grassroots activism. 

This past semester, Aydan completed her senior thesis entitled Claiming the Capitol: The Mayday Protests and the Power of Occupied Space. She examines how participants in the 1971 Mayday protests against the Vietnam War built communities across ideological differences by occupying physical and mental space. Her research highlights how these spaces challenged dominant political narratives by fostering solidarity and enabling reflection. Aydan argues these acts of protests were more than just demonstrations, but intentional acts of reclaiming space to push for societal change.

Outside of the classroom, Aydan has interned at the U.S. House of Representatives, the National Education Association, and on Joe Cunningham’s gubernatorial campaign. She continues to gain more experience in public policy, advocacy, and communications through her current internship at Fulkerson, Kennedy, and Company, a boutique political fundraising firm in D.C., where she works closely with clients in progressive politics. Aydan also serves as the Vice President of GW’s chapter of Phi Alpha Delta Law Fraternity. Through these experiences, Aydan has learned first-hand the importance of grassroots organizing, legislative work, and strategic communication in shaping policy outcomes.

As she prepares for graduation in May, Aydan is exploring career paths that bridge her academic research with practical applications in public policy, advocacy, and education. She is particularly interested in working on initiatives related to gender equity, LGBTQ+ rights, and accessible education.

On The Promise of Beauty
2025 Mergen-Palmer Distinguised Lecture

The historical present is often perceived through the presence or absence of beauty, such that distinct personal, social, and political projects unfold through disputes about the beauty we deserve – which is to say, the life worth living. How might affective and aesthetic responses to scarcity, precarity, and uncertainty, drawn from the crises of war and colonial and capital dispossession, help us to understand the promise of beauty as a world-building engagement? This lecture considers how the promise of beauty is so usable across a spectrum of political claims, whether imperial or insurgent, and how these claims delineate what forms of life are valuable, and for whom. 

Mimi Thi Nguyen is Professor of Gender and Women's Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. She is the author The Gift of Freedom and The Promise of Beauty.

When: Tuesday, April 15, 2025; 4:00 PM EST
Where: Corcoran Hall, 725 21st NW, Room 204

Register here!

WRGW Alumni Broadcast Weekend:
Alumni Panel Conversation

WRGW alumni and their guests are invited to attend this year's Alumni Broadcast Weekend. The weekend will kick off with a panel discussion—featuring Marc Eisenberg, BA '94 and Michael Simon, BA '83—of the WRGW oral history project completed by graduate students in the American Studies Department. Alumni will also discuss their paths from college radio to careers in media.

When: Friday, February 21, 2025; 5:00 PM EST
Where: Science & Engineering Hall, Lehman Auditorium (B1220)

Register here!

What Heels Chicana/o/x/e Masculinity? 
A conversation with Dr. Francisco Galarte

Join Professor Francisco Galarte for a talk on Chicano fashion designer Willy Chavarria, whose Chicano-inspired clothing has garnered him the honor of CFDA Menswear Designer of the Year. Dr. Galarte engages in a case study of Chavarria’s first shoe design, the “Jalisco,” and argues that Chavarria’s Chicano-inspired designs challenge and redefine masculinity while exploring the intersections of race, sexuality, gender, and identity. He proposes that Chavarria's designs celebrate the heritage of Chicano fashion, promoting a radical politics of style that transcends conventional boundaries and encourages new expressions of cultural identity and Chicanx/o/a/e aesthetics.

This event is presented by Dr. Manuel Cuellar in collaboration with the GW Cisneros Hispanic Leadership Institute. It is part of the GW University Seminar Series Intersectional Masculinities: At the Junction of Multiculturalism and Patriarchy, curated by Dwayne Kwaysee Wright, Manuel Cuellar, James McMaster, and Desmond Goss.  

When: Thursday, February 27, 2025; 4:00 PM EST
Where: 1957 E Street, Room 212

Register here!

Capital Acts: Washington DC Performing Arts
Public Reading

Join The Arts Club of Washington as they host authors Stephen Moore (author and musician) and Johnny Holliday (author, sportscaster, and Helen Hayes Award nominee) for a presentation and discussion of their latest book Capital Acts: Washington DC Performing Arts.  Their book is an extensive history of the prominent and influential artists and media figures who shaped the DC-MD-VA area's cultural landscape. Richly illustrated with a wealth of insightful interviews, the book unveils remarkable narratives of resilience and innovation from the challenges faced by diverse and often unique artists.

Following the reading meet the artists at a reception with hors d'oeuvres, and open full bar. The book will be available for purchase and a book signing will follow the presentation.

When: Thursday, February 27, 2025; 6:30 PM EST
Where: Arts Club of Washington, 2017 I St NW

Register here!

Changing Views of Israel in the United States:
Revisiting Amy Kaplan’s Our American Israel
Institute for Middle East Studies

In this discussion, scholars who focus on the US relationship to Israel and Palestine will discuss the changing views of Israel in the US and globally. The conversation will explore both historical examples and contemporary politics, drawing in part of the contributions of Amy Kaplan‘s crucial study, Our American Israel: The Story of An Entangled Alliance (2018), now released in paperback. Kaplan (1953-2020) was an award-winning scholar of US imperialism and a human rights activist.

When: Thursday, March 6, 2025; 12:30 PM EST
Where: Zoom

Register here!

America’s Architecture of Freedom and Unfreedom
The 74th A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts

Cultural historian, architectural designer, and curator Mabel O. Wilson addresses the history of slavery and dispossession in US civic architecture in this four-part series. Over four lectures, Wilson presents key themes and examines buildings, works of art, and other historical documents through the interplay of race and the construction of national identity. She brings together historical research on the United States’ early civic architecture, including Richmond’s Virginia State Capitol, the White House, and the design of Washington, DC. Her talks explore the complex dichotomy between the founding ideals of these institutions and the reality of their construction.

When: March 9-30, 2025; 2:00 PM EST
Where: NGA East Building Auditorium & Zoom

Register here!

The Inner Life of Race
Book Talk with Professor Leerom Medovoi

Calling into question accounts of race as a politics of embodiment, this talk approaches race instead as a biopolitics of populational threat that relies on a longstanding dialectic of body and soul. While the body can be seen and marked, the soul signals potentially threatening interiorities: dangerous intentions, beliefs, or desires. This talk approaches race as the power-effect of reading and securing the body in order to police the political threat of inner life. In this talk Medovoi sketches a genealogy of racial securitization that begins with medieval deployments of inquisition and confession to wage war against heretics, infidels, and their threat to the salvation of souls. The talk will weave together the histories of color-line racism, nativism, Islamophobia, antisemitism, and anticommunism into a general account of populational racism that sheds light on the flexible targeting of populations we face in an era of strengthening far-right populism.

Sponsored by: GW American Studies and GW English

When: Thursday, March 20, 2025; 4:00 PM EST
Where: Hall of Government, 700 21st St NW, Room 104

Register here!

Writing Climate Symposium
Georgetown University

Hosted by the Lannan Center, the Earth Commons, Climate Rights International, and Georgetown Humanities Initiative, the symposium will explore the intersection of literature, science, and activism around climate change. Each of the three nights will center around a theme at the junction of climate and literature. The first night’s theme will be “Earth/Land,” the second “Climate Action,” and the third “The Future.”

When: March 25-27, 2025
Where: Georgetown University

Register here!

Juana María Rodríguez
“Seeing, Sensing, Feeling: Representing Puta Life”
GW English Department

Drawing on the publication of her recent book, Puta Life: Seeing Latinas, Working Sex (Duke UP, 2023), this talk explores how different genres of representation–from graphic narratives and oral histories to documentary films and social-media selfies–shape the life stories we consume. As a rumination on the limits and possibilities of representation, it probes the queer things that words do to images and that images do to words in order to confront the ethical quandaries posed by our role as authors and academics in representing the sexual lives of others.

When: Wednesday, March 26, 2025; 3:00 PM EST
Where: Myers Room, GW/Textile Museum, 701 21st NW

Alum Denise Meringolo (BA '90; PhD '05) began a two year term as President of the National Council on Public History in April 2024. She began a three year term as Chair of the Department of History at UMBC in August 2024.

Call for Posters/Papers: Gnovis, Georgetown University’s only student-run academic journal dedicated to graduate research on technology and society, welcomes poster submissions for their upcoming conference. Click here to learn more // Deadline: Feb. 21, 2025

Call for Proposals: The Department of Film, Television, and Theatre at the University of Notre Dame is accepting proposals for a symposium on Critical Screen Literacy and Youth Media Production. Click here to learn more // Deadline: Mar. 1, 2025

Call for Applications: The Johns Hopkins Chloe Center for the Critical Study of Racism, Immigration, and Colonialism is accepting applications for a postdoctoral fellowship. Click here to learn more // Deadline: Mar. 1, 2025

Call for Papers: The Bowdoin Journal of Cinema is currently accepting papers for their May Issue. Open to undergraduates only, it is one of the only undergraduate publications to feature work in cinema studies. Click here to learn more // Deadline: Mar. 10, 2025

Call for Applications: The American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) is now accepting fellowship applications. Click here to learn more // Deadline: Mar. 12, 2025

Call for Proposals: ASAP/16 is currently accepting proposals for their 2025 conference, which will be held in Houston, TX. Click here to learn more // Deadline: Mar. 28, 2025

Call for Submissions: GW's University Writing Program is currently accepting submissions for The Julian Clement Chase Prize for Research Writing on the District of Columbia. Click here to learn more// Deadline: May 15, 2025

Call for Participants: GW's Nashman Center invites individuals to attend their upcoming UpStart Workshop series. Click here to learn more // Deadline: Rolling

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