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Thursday, August 28, 2025

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1830 - “Tom Thumb”, the first American-built locomotive, races a horse-drawn car from Baltimore to Ellicott Mills. Due to mechanical problems, the horse wins!

1963 - Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his “I Have a Dream” speech during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom at the Lincoln Memorial.

1986 - Tina Turner receives a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame.

2023 - “Barbie” becomes Warner Bros’ highest-grossing global release earning $1.34 billion, overtaking “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2”.

Graduate student union optimistic on open bargaining ahead of Wednesday meeting. GW Hatchet.

Punk Rock Karaoke Raises Money for Food Not Bombs DC and Afro Plus Fest Heads to RFK: City Lights for Aug. 28–Sept. 3. Washington City Paper.

How A Man Not Named Dan Came to Own Dan’s Cafe for Six Decades. Washington City Paper.

Welcome back, everyone! I hope you all have had a good time this summer break and found time to recharge. I look forward to following in the footsteps of our excellent past department chair, Tom Guglielmo. Thank you, Tom! I’m also looking forward to seeing everyone, and hope you are as well.

Nerd from the Future Podcast!

Alum Ramzi Fawaz (PhD '12) is debuting a new podcast! 
Nerd from the Future is explicitly intended for both non-academic and scholarly audiences. It aims to make the university and its intellectual gifts available to everyone, hence the tagline: It's time the university came to you. New weekly episodes will be available for listeners starting Monday, September 8, with bitesize supplements on following Wednesdays. 

You can listen to a trailer for the podcast here!

Trouble in Paradise: Art historian Alan Wallach in conversation with Robin Veder

Visiting Artists & Scholars Committee
Corcoran Art History

In his new book, Trouble in Paradise, Alan Wallach brings together 24 essays on the social history of American art. Throughout the book, Wallach employs a materialist approach to argue against traditional scholarship that considered American art and art institutions in isolation from their social, historical, and ideological contexts.

Alan Wallach is the Ralph H. Wark Professor Emeritus and Professor of American Studies at the College of William and Mary. He is currently a Professorial Lecturer at GW. Robin Veder is the editor of the scholarly journal, American Art.

When: Thursday, September 18, 2025; 6:15 PM
Where: Smith Hall of Art, Room 114

Click here to RSVP.

Prof. Melani McAlister gave the presidential lecture at this year's conference of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations in Arlington, VA on June 28, 2025. The lecture will be published in the journal Diplomatic History, in Spring 2026.

Prof. Gayle Wald's new biography This Is Rhythm: Ella Jenkins, Children's Music, and the Long Civil Rights Movement (U. of Chicago Press, 2025) was dubbed "stellar" in a starred review from Booklist. Over the summer she presented at bookstores and festivals in DC, New Haven, Chicago, Los Angeles, Baltimore, and Woodstock, NY. 

Current PhD candidate Mora McLean presented a draft chapter of her dissertation-in-progress at the tremendous "Workshop on Decolonization and its Forms of Knowledge: Histories, Pedagogies, Methods, & Praxis,” hosted by the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. 

Alum Molly Henderson (PhD ‘25) will be a Visiting Assistant Professor of Gender & Women's Studies at UW-Madison for the 2025-2026 academic year.

Call for Papers: NeMLA is currently accepting individual papers for their upcoming 2026 annual conference in Pittsburgh, PA. Click here to learn more // Deadline: Sept. 30, 2025.

Call for Papers: Rutgers Art Review invites all current graduate students, as well as professionals who have completed their graduate degrees within the past year, to submit papers for its 43rd edition. Click here to learn more // Deadline Sept. 30, 2025.

Call for Applications: The American Council of Learned Societies invites applications for the 2025 competition of the ACLS Digital Justice Grants Program. Click here to learn more // Deadline: Nov. 20, 2025.

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