2108 G Street NW, Washington, DC 20052

Thursday, April 3, 2025

SUMMER 2025 COURSE REGISTRATION CONTINUES!
View our in-person and online courses here.

FALL 2025 COURSE REGISTRATION NOW OPEN!
View our undergraduate courses & graduate courses.

1860 - The Pony Express begins with horse and rider relay teams delivering mail between St. Joseph, Missouri and Sacramento, California.

1922 - Joseph Stalin is appointed General Secretary of the Russian Communist Party by Vladimir Lenin.

1930 - The 2nd Academy Awards are held with the show being broadcast on the radio for the first time.

2012 - Barack Obama officially secures the Democratic presidential nomination.

District Fringe To Pick Up Where Capital Fringe Festival Left Off.  Washington City Paper.

Number of tenured, tenure-track faculty falls to decade low. GW Hatchet.

A James Beard-Winning Indian Restaurant from Asheville is Coming to DC. Washingtonian.

Photo credit: Gabe Friedman

In this week’s newsletter edition we highlight Gabe Friedman, a senior pursuing a unique academic path that combines a joint BA/MA in American Studies with a STEM Teaching minor. A passion for cultural history, education, and social change shaped his educational journey. Gabe aspires to become a "cool" high school humanities educator after further studies in pedagogy, aiming to inspire his students with engaging narratives of American cultural history.

Gabe's teaching philosophy is deeply rooted in his personal experiences and beliefs. Born and raised in Tucson, Arizona, he witnessed the powerful intersection of historical reflection and present action during the "Red for Ed" movement in 2018. This experience, where his US History instructor went on strike while teaching about early twentieth-century labor organizing, initially inspired Gabe's desire to teach cultural history. He views the classroom as an experiential site for dialogue, community building, cultural production, and social change.

On weekends, Gabe teaches kindergartners at a religious school in Petworth, where his students connect stories of the Jewish past, present, and future through creative cultural projects. Situated in D.C.'s Jewish community, Gabe's working thesis explores the pedagogical underpinnings of the Jewish Renewal movement's enactment of ritual-as-protest through intersections and tensions between tradition, education, and change at the "Freedom Seders" of 1969-1971. This research illuminates D.C.'s radical Jewish archive, outlining historical endeavors that shape the contemporary flourishing of students performing Jewish rituals as a form of intra-communal dissent and social protest.

While pursuing his minor through the GWTeach Program, Gabe has fused his love for education and cultural studies while working in D.C. Public Schools as a student-teacher. Last spring, he co-taught a sixth-grade integrated Earth Science class at Oyster-Adams Bilingual School, focusing on human environmental impact. Using the 1972 version of "The Lorax" as a reference, his students designed storyboards connecting ecological issues to visual mediums as a form of activism and remediation. In the fall, Gabe taught a seventh-grade American History and Geography course at Stuart Hobson Middle School, where his students explored the American Revolution through colonial print culture by creating and disseminating their own "Revolutionary Zines." By studying American material culture both scientifically and historically, Gabe helps his students understand their human impact on shared physical and social environments.

Outside the classroom, Gabe enjoys a variety of activities that complement his academic pursuits. He plays bass with his band, Corduroy Conjunction, and often spends his free time reading and hammocking in Malcolm X Park or biking around the city. Gabe is overjoyed to continue living in D.C. and learning with the American Studies department next year, further developing his skills as an educator and researcher. His unique blend of historical knowledge, educational passion, and activism positions him as a promising future educator committed to fostering critical thinking and social awareness in the classroom.

On The Promise of Beauty
Prof. Mimi Thi Nguyen
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! *FEW TICKETS REMAIN!*

DC History Conference

The DC History Conference is an interdisciplinary, community conference considering the District’s past, present, and future. Since 1974, the conference organizers have provided a welcoming, educational, and stimulating forum for original research on and engagement with the history of the Washington, DC metropolitan area—prioritizing the local city but including nearby Maryland and Virginia, and the federal government.

When: April 3-6, 2025
Where: MLK Library

Register here!
View the conference program here!

Making Change: The US Army and the "Problem of Race"
GW History Department Annual Endowed Lecture

Professor Beth Bailey, University of Kansas

When: Wednesday, April 9, 2025; 10:00 AM EST
Where: GW/Textile Museum (701 21st St NW

Book Talk & Launch:
This Is Rhythm w/ Prof. Gayle Wald
Politics & Prose

Based on dozens of interviews and access to Ella Jenkins's personal archives, Gayle F. Wald's This Is Rhythm shares how Jenkins, a "rhythm specialist" with no formal musical training, became the most prolific and significant American children's musician of the twentieth century, creating a beloved catalog of songs grounded in values of community-building, antiracism, and cultural pluralism. Wald traces how the daughter of southern migrants translated the music of her own Black girlhood on the South Side of Chicago into a form of civil rights activism--a musical education that empowered children by introducing them to Black history, African diasporic rhythms, and a participatory, community-centered approach to music. Prof. Wald will be in conversation with NPR Morning Edition host Michel Martin at Politics and Prose.

When: Sunday, April 27, 2025; 5:00 PM EST
Where: 5015 Connecticut Avenue NW, DC 20008

Prof. Libby Anker recently gave a lecture on Tech Bro Fantasies for Conquering the World at University of Wisconsin-Madison and University of Copenhagen, and a lecture on the Cultural Politics of Gun Ownership at Johns Hopkins University and Duke University.

Prof. Vanessa Northington Gamble was quoted by Smithsonian Magazine in the article “The Nation’s First Black Female Doctor Blazed a Path for Women in Medicine. But She Was Left Out of the Story for Decades.”

Prof. Gayle Wald’s most recent monograph This Is Rhythm: Ella Jenkins, Children's Music, and the Long Civil Rights Movement (University of Chicago Press), is officially out on April 22. On April 27, Prof. Wald will present the book at Politics & Prose in conversation with NPR's Michel Martin. See event details in the “Events & Programs” section of the newsletter.

Current PhD student Matthew Marciello passed their comprehensive exams and is now working on their dissertation prospectus!

Call for Applications: The Death Penalty Information Center seeks candidates for a Racial Justice Storyteller position. Click here to learn more // Deadline: Rolling

Call for Applications: The DC History Center will offer two Totman Fellowships for summer 2025 through spring 2026: one focused on research on LGBTQ+ DC and one focused on research relating to Black Washington. Click here to learn more // Deadline: Apr. 11, 2025

Call for Papers: American Quarterly will publish a special issue on Indigenous Borderlands. It aims to bring together a range of interdisciplinary scholars who analyze borders and borderlands from the perspective of Indigenous peoples in the Americas. Click here to learn more // Deadline: Apr. 15, 2025

Call for Applications: The U.S. branch of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music is pleased to offer financial support of up to $2,500 for graduate student-led events that promote wider engagement with current research on popular music, broadly conceived. Click here to learn more // Deadline: Apr. 15, 2025

Call for Applications: Monument Lab is currently seeking applications for their Summer 2025 paid student internship program. Click here to learn more // Deadline: Apr. 21, 2025

Call for Applications: The Whiting Foundation is seeking applications to support writers working on a book-length work of deeply researched and imaginatively composed nonfiction for a general adult readership. Click here to learn more // Deadline: Apr. 23, 2025

Call for Applications: Democracy House is currently accepting applications for their Young Leaders Summer Institute (YLSI) scheduled for Summer 2025. Click here to learn more // Deadline: May 4, 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 Applications: The Foggy Bottom Association is seeking GW students for three research internship opportunities. Click here to learn more // Deadline: Rolling

Need Support?

What We're Listening To!
"Brighter Days Ahead" - Ariana Grande
"A Kind of Magic" - Queen

Like what you see? Have spotlights, kudos, events, or opportunities that you would like to share? We want to hear from you! Navigate to our feedback form using the link below, or more simply, forward your tip to amst@gwu.edu.