Juliet Hooker

‘We don’t even know all of what we have.’ Howard fights to preserve Black newspapers. Across the United States, scholars are working to preserve the history of the Black press before the brittle pages are lost forever. In a basement at Howard University, uncovered treasures have includ...

‘We don’t even know all of what we have.’ Howard University fights to preserve Black newspapers. www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/... Last year, during a move, workers found two whole boxes of Frederick Douglass’s’ The North Star’s first year of publication.

1/ The US Government has quietly removed a memorial to Black soldiers who died in World War II from the Netherlands American Cemetery in Margraten, South Limburg. The move follows a complaint from the right-wing Heritage Foundation to the American Battle Monuments Commission. ⬇️

Unfortunately we have had to reschedule Sue Mobley's talk "The New Monuments," originally scheduled for November 18. We will share the new date once it is finalized. @juliethooker.bsky.social

Juliet Hooker introduces Mabel Wilson.

Mabel Wilson introduces her talk.

Mabel Wilson gives her talk.

Many thanks to Mabel O. Wilson for her talk "Hints on Public Whiteness: Building the Smithsonian Castle" Tuesday. This lecture is part of the programming for the annual Pembroke Seminar. This year's theme is "The Civic Work of Monuments," as set by @juliethooker.bsky.social

Pembroke Seminar The Civic Work of Monuments Lecture. “The New Monuments: Case Studies in Emerging Modes of Community-Driven Commemoration and Subaltern Public History in Public Space” Sue Mobley, director of research, Monument Lab Tuesday Nov. 18 2025 4:00 p.m. Pembroke Hall 305

Tues., 11/18, 4:00 p.m.
Pembroke Hall 305
Sue Mobley: “The New Monuments: Case Studies in Emerging Modes of Community-Driven Commemoration and Subaltern Public History in Public Space”
More information: buff.ly/eUQxTqb @juliethooker.bsky.social

TOMORROW! Tuesday, Oct. 28. 4:00 p.m. Mabel O. Wilson (Columbia): "Hints on Public Whiteness: Building the Smithsonian Castle." Pembroke Hall 305. A Pembroke Seminar “The Civic Work of Monuments” Lecture. Learn more: events.brown.edu/pembroke/eve...
@juliethooker.bsky.social

Tuesday, Oct. 28. 4:00 p.m. Mabel O. Wilson (Columbia): "Hints on Public Whiteness: Building the Smithsonian Castle." Pembroke Hall 305. A Pembroke Seminar “The Civic Work of Monuments” Lecture. Learn more: events.brown.edu/pembroke/eve...
@juliethooker.bsky.social

Tuesday, Oct. 28. 4:00 p.m. Mabel O. Wilson (Columbia): "Hints on Public Whiteness: Building the Smithsonian Castle." Pembroke Hall 305. A Pembroke Seminar “The Civic Work of Monuments” Lecture. Learn more: events.brown.edu/pembroke/eve...
@juliethooker.bsky.social

Tuesday, Oct. 28. 4:00 p.m. Mabel O. Wilson (Columbia): "Hints on Public Whiteness: Building the Smithsonian Castle" Pembroke Hall 305. A Pembroke Seminar “The Civic Work of Monuments” Lecture. Learn more: events.brown.edu/pembroke/eve...
@juliethooker.bsky.social

Kara Walker Deconstructs a Statue, and a Myth

New from me:

On Kara Walker's radical transformation of a toppled Confederate memorial — the Stonewall Jackson statue from Charlottesville, Va.

Her piece goes on view next month, part of the big MONUMENTS show at The Brick and MOCA in Los Angeles.

[Gift link]

www.nytimes.com/2025/09/08/a...

Native Peoples, American Colonialism, and the US Constitution Fall 2025 Session Presented in person at The New York Historical and via Zoom* Meeting Dates & Times: Fridays, November 7 and 21, December 5 and 12, 2025 | 11 am–2 pm ET Instructors: Maggie Blackhawk, Ned Blackhawk SEMINAR DESCRIPTION: As the United States marks the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, this seminar invites a critical examination of a central paradox in American constitutional history: how can a nation celebrate a founding document and constitutional tradition built, in part, on the dispossession of Indigenous homelands? From the Founders’ long-standing relationships with Native nations to the grievances lodged regarding ‘merciless Indian savages’ into the Declaration, Indian affairs and westward expansion were foundational to the creation and evolution of the US Constitution. The Northwest Ordinance laid the “blueprint for empire” for federal imperial expansion from thirteen states clinging to the Eastern seaboard to a nation that stretched “from sea to shining sea,” while the United States Constitution excluded “Indians not taxed” from American polity—in so doing, also codifying the specific subordination of a people by name within constitutional text. Despite this deep entanglement, Native history remains marginalized within the fields of constitutional history and mainstream constitutional scholarship. This seminar explores emerging historical and legal literature that re-centers Native peoples and American colonialism in the narrative of US constitutional development. Topics include the role of Native peoples and “Indian affairs” in the Constitution’s initial drafting and ratification and the legal architecture of colonial expansion. The seminar will also explore how centering Native peoples allows for a rethinking of United States constitutional history and American public law more broadly.

Junior faculty and grad students in political science, history, law, and Native American Studies, come take a class with us at the New York Historical Society (and via Zoom) on Native Peoples, American Colonialism, and the U.S. Constitution.

To apply, Institute for Constitutional History: 1/2

No Common Ground (full reading copy) : The University of North Carolina Press

Free to read now. www.book2look.com/book/SO9q2ZB...

The EO that included restoring monuments/memorials on federal property is a full-on embrace of Confederate ideology. Beginning Monday @uncpress.bsky.social will make my book No Common Ground available to read FOR FREE for the next two weeks. Educate yourself about what this embrace means. ✊

#WomensHistoryMonth: The City of Women Map is a fascinating visualization of women’s history and urban transportation. Created by Molly Roy, Rebecca Solnit, and Joshua Jelly-Schapiro, the map renames subway stops after notable women with links to that area, offering an entirely new way to view #NYC.

Thank you! I’m glad it was helpful. 😊

Well said! This was excellent @prorogers.bsky.social

papers being torn apart

📜 How we remember matters. What happens when records become harder to access? OAH has launched the Records at Risk Data Collection Initiative to track changes in the availability of historical sources & their impact on public history.

🔎 Read about it: ow.ly/c9A950VgxWt

My department at Smith College is hiring a one year VAP in Political Theory. Full time (2:3) and benefited position.

Specialization is open but particularly interested in candidates in either American Political Thought and/or Comparative Political Theory.

Apply here apply.interfolio.com/164854

Patriarchy Redux: Now What? A webinar. Monday, March 31, 2025. 6:30 - 7:30 p.m.
Registration required. buff.ly/k8zyYZh @kateshaw.bsky.social @devawo.bsky.social
@juliethooker.bsky.social

Dredging Up the Ghostly Secrets of Slave Ships — The New Yorker A global network of maritime archeologists is excavating slave shipwrecks—and reconnecting Black communities to the deep.

apple.news/AOfEDhm2hQgO...

In Black Grief/White Grievance, @juliethooker.bsky.social calls for an expansion of Black & white political imaginations, arguing that both must learn to sit with loss, for different reasons & to different ends.

🎧 Add this #audiobook to your #audio library today: press.princeton.edu/books/audio/...

It was a great conversation!

2025-26 Postdoctoral Research Fellowships at the Pembroke Center Applications Now Open. Applications due Monday Nov 25 2024. Complete applications must include CV, cover letter, and writing sample.

Scholars from any field whose work relates to the theme of the Pembroke Seminar, "The Civic Work of Monuments” are welcome to apply to our fellowship. Learn more: https://buff.ly/44G5BA6. Apps due 11/25. Led by Juliet Hooker, Political Science. @juliethooker.bsky.social @brownupolisci.bsky.social

Call for abstracts In On Revolution, Hannah Arendt celebrated what she called “the revolutionary spirit”: a set of political principles that combines a commitment to invent new institutions with a concern for those institutions’ durability. Arendt believed that all genuine revolutions in the modern world had been inspired by the revolutionary spirit, though “the failure of thought and remembrance” had, time and again, led to its disappearance. Indeed, a focus on the act of collective foundation—and a grave worry about the disappearance of the conditions under which such founding can take place—can be found across Arendt’s oeuvre, from Origins of Totalitarianism to her writings on American politics in the 1970s. Black revolutionaries working under conditions of extreme repression to transform the societies they inhabited also found they had to rework and reinvent revolutionary theory and praxis. Retelling the history of the Black liberation struggle and working alongside the decolonial movements of their day, thinkers like W.E.B. Du Bois, Frantz Fanon, and Kwame Ture—to name a few people whose work can be found in Arendt’s library—as well as C.L.R. James, Walter Rodney, Cedric Robinson, June Jordan, Angela Davis and many others—breathed new life into the concept of revolution. Like Arendt, these thinkers confronted a legacy of loss and disappointment. They also sought to reclaim from the history of revolutions past meaningful insights that might inspire and renew contemporary revolutionary movements.

Arendt was often harshly critical of such movements, particularly those claiming the mantle of Black power. Nevertheless, in a testament to the power of Arendt’s ideas, a number of political thinkers working in the revolutionary tradition of Black political thought have found her a valuable thinking partner. This conference aims to bring together scholars engaged with—and in the spirit of—Hannah Arendt’s work in theorizing Black revolutionary politics, to address such questions as: How has the concern for beginning and durability animated Black political thought? What encounters between Arendt and Black political thinkers have been hitherto overlooked or misunderstood? How might concepts from within Black political thought illuminate the phenomena, events, and texts central to the Arendtian “archive” (e.g. the council system, 1956 Hungarian Revolution, or the work of Franz Kafka), and how might Arendt’s concepts illuminate revolutionary phenomena and events in the “archive” of Black political thought? How have the critical interventions of Black political thinkers challenged or enhanced our understanding of Arendt’s theory of revolution and vice versa? Where, if anywhere, do we find the revolutionary spirit today? Please submit abstracts to this Google Form (bit.ly/HACSpring25) by December 1st, 2024. We encourage submissions from early-career scholars. Acceptances will be communicated by January 6th, 2025. Conference participants will be expected to pre-circulate papers by March 14th, 2025. We encourage prospective participants to seek external financial support for travel and lodging, as HAC has very limited funds to provide such support. Please reach out to jfeldman@bard.edu with any questions you may have.

Please share this call for abstracts!

The Revolutionary Spirit: Hannah Arendt & Black Political Thought

A conference at the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics & Humanities, Bard College – March 27-28, 2025

Feat. a keynote by Prof. Neil Roberts & a talk by Prof. Ainsley LeSure
bit.ly/HACSpring25

A reminder as people go vote: Millions of people are barred from voting due to convictions.

In some states, this accounts for up to 10% of voting-age population! Just a startling amount.

Harshest are states with lifetime bans — you can lose your right for life for any felony.

Alternate timeline where every U.S. media outlet spends a decade fixated on explaining to the public why it is that the economic anxiety of Black and Latinx women, who are consistently at the bottom of these things, has never led them away from a politics of solidarity or toward fascism

2025-26 Postdoctoral Research Fellowships at the Pembroke Center Applications Now Open. Applications due Monday Nov 25 2024. Complete applications must include CV, cover letter, and writing sample.

Welcoming postdoc applications from scholars from any field whose research relates to the theme of the Pembroke Seminar, "The Civic Work of Monuments.” Learn more: https://buff.ly/44G5BA6. Apps due 11/25. Led by Juliet Hooker, Political Science. @juliethooker.bsky.social @brownupolisci.bsky.social

Israel Deliberately Blocked Humanitarian Aid to Gaza, Two Government Bodies Concluded. Antony Blinken Rejected Them. Blinken told Congress, “We do not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting” aid, even though the U.S. Agency for International Development and others had de...

New: Israel Deliberately Blocked Humanitarian Aid to Gaza, Two Government Bodies Concluded.

Secretary of State Blinken Rejected Them.

www.propublica.org/article/gaza...

🤣