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Thursday, September 10, 2026

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1794 - America's first non-denominational college was chartered, Blount College, which later became the University of Tennessee.

1984 - The first episode of “Jeopardy!” airs with Alex Trebek as host.

1991 - Nirvana releases their single “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

2018 - John Legend becomes the first Black male artist to achieve EGOT status following his Emmy win for “Jesus Christ Superstar: Live in Concert”

Melanie C, Crankin! Power and Resilience in Washington, D.C.’s Go-Go Culture Book Launch, and Steph Phest: City Lights for Sept. 10–16.
Washington City Paper.

Supreme Court Again Blocks Republican-Backed Missouri Voting Map.
The New York Times.

Strategic framework working groups release recommendations, solicit community feedback.
GW Hatchet.

Image courtesy of Sara Abdelghany

This newsletter edition we to spotlight Sara Abdelghany, a second-year MA student in American Studies! Sara previously received a BS in Culture and Politics and minors in Arabic and History from Georgetown University in Qatar (GUQ). While at GQU Sara wrote an honors thesis examining Muslim American activism on the issue of women’s spaces in mosques after 9/11. In this work, she compared Progressive Muslim activism to reform women’s prayer spaces to the efforts of mainstream Muslim organizations to better women’s places in immigrant spaces.

At GW, Sara’s research is focused on the “representation” of Muslims in American popular culture, especially in works produced by American Muslims themselves. Her most recent project examined identity performance and racialization in Ramy Youssef’s #1 Happy Family USA (2025). Studying immigrant patriarch “Baba,” Sara demonstrated how the character navigated and negotiated Americanness, Muslimness, and Arabness as he attempted to portray himself as a “real” American in the aftermath of 9/11. As she continues to examine other iterations of Muslim representation in American media, Sara aims to understand how Muslim American artists understand “representation,” challenge mainstream “representations” of Islam and Muslimness, and question the concept of “representation” itself.

This fall, Sara will present research at two major conferences in her fields of study. At the 2026 American Studies Association (ASA) annual meeting in Chicago, she will continue her examination of American Muslim spaces through an ethnographic study of alternative Muslim spaces in the DMV. In Boston, Sara will participate in discussions of Arabness, racial code- switching, and immigrant Muslim family dynamics after 9/11 by sharing her paper on #1 Happy Family USA at the 2026 Middle East Studies Association (MESA) meeting.

Outside of pursuing research, Sara has supported her colleagues in American Studies by joining the leadership of (In)Dependence, a GW AMST student journal (in progress), and serving as the MA Representative to the GW AMST Graduate Student Association. She is also the 2026-27 Gamble University Professor Fellow, working as a graduate instructional assistant to Professor Gamble’s history courses on race and American public health. In her downtime, Sara is likely to be found consuming different forms of media, particularly reality television.

Twenty-Five Years After 9/11:
War, Memory, and the World It Created
Institute for Middle East Studies // ESIA

Twenty-five years after the attacks of September 11, 2001, their consequences continue to shape United States foreign policy, military institutions, and public memory, as well as life across the Middle East and Central Asia.

The George Washington University’s Institute for Middle East Studies and the Quincy Institute’s Veterans in Foreign Policy Initiative is pleased to host an interdisciplinary panel of scholars of the Middle East and military history to examine how the United States and the Middle East were transformed by 9/11 and the wars that followed. The discussion will consider the evolution of the U.S. military and the “Global War on Terror,” the consequences of prolonged counterinsurgency and nation-building campaigns, the changing politics of the Middle East, and how 9/11 affected the lives of the people who live there, with attention to both state politics and the experiences of ordinary people.

When: Thursday, September 10; 5:00–7:00 pm
Where: 1957 E St NW, Room 602 & Online

Register here.

DC History Book Launch: 
Palaces of the Public

Join the DC History Center and the DC Preservation League for a special book launch of John DeFerrari’s Palaces of the Public, a lively, richly illustrated history of Washington’s hotels past and present. This event offers friends, family, and fans of John DeFerrari a special opportunity to see him in conversation with Architectural Historian Kim Prothro Williams. 

Palaces of the Public traces the evolution of the city’s hostelries, from 18th-century taverns and pre–Civil War boarding houses to modern hotels, motels, and boutique properties. Along the way, DeFerrari highlights hotels for women, tourist hotels, and hotels run by and for African Americans during segregation, as well as the role of historic preservation in saving landmark hotel buildings.

When: Thursday, September 10; 6:00–8:00 pm
Where: DC History Center, 801 K St NW

Register here.

Your Chatbot Loves You! Companion AI,
Affective Extraction and the Attachment Economy
GW English, American Studies, & WGSS

When: Thursday, September 24; 5:00–6:30 pm
Where: Duques Hall, Room 151

Prof. Gayle Wald’s book This Is Rhythm: Ella Jenkins, Children's Music, and the Long Civil Rights Movement is a finalist for this year's Pattis Family Foundation Chicago Book Award from the Newberry Library. It is also currently long-listed for the Stone Book Award for writing on African American History and Culture.

Prof. Libby Anker will be keynoting the 2026 SANAS Conference in American Studies this fall in Zurich, Switzerland, and will serve as the short-term American Studies Chair at the University of Zurich.

Alum Amber Wiley’s (PhD ‘11) most recent book Model Schools in the Model City: Race, Planning, and Education in the Nation’s Capital was shortlisted for the MAAH Stone Book Award for writing on African American History and Culture.

Alum Pat Nugent (PhD ‘16) recently published their latest monograph, The Greenlining of Staten Island: Environmental Preservation and Racial Segregation, 1945–1995, with the University of Chicago Press!

Alum Kwabena Slaughter (PhD ‘25) was recently mentioned and thanked in an article published by The Marshall Project, entitled “In the Early ’90s, the Lifers Group Tried to Warn Kids About the Perils of Prison.”

Call for Applications: The American Association for State and Local History is offering several free courses to help disseminate the history of local communities to a global audience through Wikipedia and Wikidata. Click here to learn more // Deadline: Sept. 18, 2026.

Call for Papers: The editorial team for New Errands: An Undergraduate Journal of American Studies is seeking papers to publish in its next issue for Fall 2026. Click here to learn more // Deadline: rolling basis.

Call for Applications: The Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies is seeking a Publications Coordinator to serve primarily as the managing editor of the Jewish Quarterly Review. Click here to learn more // Deadline: until filled.

Call for Applications: The International Association for the Study of Popular Music is offering financial support of up to $2,500 for events that promote wider engagement with current research on popular music, broadly conceived. Click here to learn more // Deadline: Oct. 15, 2026.

Call for Applications: The Curran Fellowships are currently accepting applications. These are travel and research grants intended to aid scholars studying British magazines and newspapers. Click here to learn more // Deadline: Oct. 15, 2026.

Call for Applications: The Peter E. Palmquist Memorial Fund for Historical Photographic Research is open to those who study under-researched women photographers internationally, past and present, and under-researched Western American photographers through the Great Depression. Click here to learn more // Deadline: Nov. 15, 2026.

Need Support?

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