Speaker

Keisha Blain

Lecture date

February 17th, 2026

Time

7:00 pm - 8:30 pm

Title

Without Fear: Black Women and the Making of Human Rights

Keisha N. Blain is one of the most innovative and influential young historians of her generation. A professor of Africana Studies and history at Brown University, a columnist for MSNBC, and former president of the African American Intellectual History Society, Blain’s research and writing examine the dynamics of race, gender, and politics in both national and global perspectives. 

Even before they were recognized as citizens of the United States, Black women understood that the fights for civil and human rights were inseparable. Blain’s latest book, Without Fear: Black Women and the Making of Human Rights (September 2025), tells how, throughout two hundred years of American history, Black women were at the forefront of national and international movements for social change, weaving connections between their own and others’ freedom struggles around the world. Without Fear is an account of their aspirations, strategies, and struggles to pioneer a human rights approach to combating systems of injustice. 

Speaker

Michael Luo

Lecture date

March 10th, 2026

Time

7:00 pm - 8:30 pm

Title

Strangers in the Land: Exclusion, Belonging, and the Epic Story of the Chinese in America

Michael Luo is an executive editor at The New Yorker and writes regularly on politics, religion, and Asian American issues. Before joining The New Yorker in 2016, he spent 13 years at the New York Times as a metro reporter, national correspondent, and investigative reporter and editor. He is a recipient of a George Polk Award and a Livingston Award for Young Journalists.

Luo published his first book, Strangers in the Land: Exclusion, Belonging, and the Epic Story of the Chinese in America, in April 2025. It tells the story of a people who, beginning in the middle of the nineteenth century, migrated by the tens of thousands to a distant land they called Gum Shan — Gold Mountain. Americans initially welcomed these Chinese arrivals, but, as their numbers grew, horrific episodes of racial terror erupted on the Pacific coast. In a captivating debut, Luo follows the Chinese from these early years to modern times, as they persisted in the face of bigotry and persecution, revealing anew the complications of our multiracial democracy. Drawing on archives from across the country and written with a New Yorker writer’s style and sweep, Strangers in the Land is revelatory and unforgettable, an essential American story.

Speaker

Megan Kate Nelson

Lecture date

April 14th, 2026

Time

7:00 pm - 8:30 pm

Title

The Westerners: Myth-Making and Belonging on the American Frontier

Born and raised in Colorado, Megan Kate Nelson is a historian and writer based in Boston. She is the author of four books, including Saving Yellowstone: Exploration and Preservation in Reconstruction America and The Three-Cornered War: The Union, the Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West, which was a 2021 Pulitzer Prize finalist in History. 

Nelson’s forthcoming book, The Westerners: Myth-Making and Belonging on the American Frontier (April 2026), tells two richly detailed and interwoven stories. The first reveals the captivating lives of women and men moving through the American West — Indigenous peoples, Black Americans, Mexican Americans, and Canadian and Asian immigrants — during the nineteenth century. The second tracks the attempts of many Americans to erase these westerners from history, through a frontier myth that lionized individualism and conquest and celebrated white settlers traveling west in search of prosperity. Centering the book on seven extraordinary individuals, Nelson highlights the perseverance and ingenuity of the communities that have otherwise been forgotten or erased from history.

Speaker

Rick Atkinson

Lecture date

May 12th, 2026

Time

7:00 pm - 8:30 pm

Title

Fate of the Day: The War for America, Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston, 1777–1780 (Revolution Trilogy, 2)

Rick Atkinson is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of eight narrative histories about five American wars, including The Long Gray Line, the Liberation Trilogy (An Army at Dawn, The Day of Battle, and The Guns at Last Light), and The British Are Coming, the first volume of the Revolution Trilogy. He has won numerous awards, including Pulitzer Prizes for history and journalism. 

In the second volume of the Revolution trilogy, George Washington’s army fights on the knife edge between victory and defeat. Fate of the Day: The War for America, Fort Ticonderoga to Charleston, 1777–1780 provides a riveting narrative covering the middle years of the American Revolution. Timed to coincide with the 250th anniversary of the beginning of the revolution, Atkinson’s brilliant account of the lethal conflict between the Americans and the British offers not only deeply researched and spectacularly dramatic history, but also a fresh perspective on the demands that a democracy makes on each of its citizens.