Upcoming Talks and Panels
Participant, roundtable on “Keywords for New Directions in Civil War and Reconstruction Studies,” Society of Civil War Historians Biennial Conference (Virtual), June 2021
Past Talks and Panels
Participant, “African American Responses to the Civil War: A Readings Roundtable,” Civil War Caucus, Midwest Modern Language Association, Chicago, IL, November 2019
Chair, “Teaching Tourgée Today” and “New Directions in Tourgée Studies,” Literary Tourgée Conference, Chautauqua Institution, Chautauqua, NY, September 2019
Participant, roundtable on “Recovering Sutton E. Griggs,” American Literature Association, Boston, MA, May 2019
“Frederick Douglass’s Peace Theory: Race, Revenge, and Justice after the Civil War,” Waller Lectureship, Andrews University, March 2019
“Imagining the Humanities Public: Literature, History, and the Trade Trade Gap,” Keynote Address, Humanities Beyond the Academy Symposium, University of Maryland, February 2019
“Samuel Hall’s 47 Years a Slave: The Most Important Slave Narrative We’re Not Reading,” Civil War Caucus, Midwest Modern Language Association, Kansas City, MO, November 2018
“Race and Revenge: Rethinking the Legacy of the Civil War,” University Forum Lecture, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, March 2018
“Reconstructing Revenge: Afterlives of Slavery in the Postbellum United States,” Humanities Center, University of Pittsburgh, February 2018
Participant, “The Temporal Turn in Black Studies: A Roundtable,” Modern Language Association, New York, NY, January 2018
Participant, “The Queer Nadir: A Roundtable,” Modern Language Association, New York, NY, January 2018
Untimely Democracy featured in the “New and Noteworthy” session, Civil War Caucus, Midwest Modern Language Association, Cincinnati, OH, November 2017
“Rediscovering Sutton Griggs,” Invited Lecture, Thirteenth: Literature and Legacy, Humanities and the Legacy of Race and Ethnicity Initiative, National Endowment for the Humanities/Indiana Humanities, Bind Café, Kokomo, IN, October 2017
“Slavery, Unavenged,” Modern Language Association, Philadelphia, PA, January 2017
Chair and respondent, “Archives of Blackness,” American Studies Association, Denver, CO, November 2016
“Django Unchained, the Archive, and the Unfinished Reconstruction (Race, Reunion, Revenge),” Midwest Modern Language Association, St. Louis, MO, November 2016
“Democracy’s Plunges,” Invited Lecture, Ralph Ellison Seminar, Library of Congress, Washington, DC, June 2016
Co-organizer and chair, “Post-Bellum, Pre-Harlem at 10: Unsettling Nineteenth-Century African American Studies,” a roundtable featuring papers by Caroline Gebhard, Eric Gardner, M. Giulia Fabi, Shirley Moody-Turner, and Andreá Williams, C19: The Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists, State College, PA, March 2016
“Reading Race in the Nadir: Charles W. Chesnutt, Sutton E. Griggs, and the Times of Optimism and Pessimism,” C19: The Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists, State College, PA, March 2016
“Zig, Zag, Plunge, Fall: or, Ralph Ellison, Spike Lee, and the ‘Futuristic Drama of American Democracy,’” Midwest Modern Language Association, Columbus, OH, November 2015
“Charles W. Chesnutt’s Failed Futures: On Prophecy and Pessimism,” Charles W. Chesnutt Society, American Literature Association, Boston, MA, May 2015
Co-organizer and chair, “Democracy in American Literary and Cultural Studies: Past, Present, and Future,” a roundtable featuring papers by Dana Nelson, Russ Castronovo, Jennifer Greiman, D. Berton Emerson, Derrick Spires, Koritha Mitchell, and Christopher Castiglia, Modern Language Association, Vancouver, BC, January 2015
“Watching 12 Years a Slave; or, How to Count the Legacy of Racial Bondage,” Midwest Modern Language Association, Detroit, MI, November 2014
“Du Bois’s Declaration: Race, Time, and the Prospect of Democracy in The Souls of Black Folk,” American Literature Association, Washington, DC, May 2014
“Democracy’s Progress,” C19: The Society of Nineteenth-Century Americanists, Chapel Hill, NC, March 2014
“W. E. B. Du Bois’s ‘Present-Past’: Reimagining the Times of Slavery and Freedom in The Souls of Black Folk,” Modern Language Association, Chicago, IL, January 2014
Organizer and chair, “Representing Slavery in the Twenty-First-Century American Cultural Imagination,” Modern Language Association, Chicago, IL, January 2014
“Untimely Democracy,” Futures of American Studies Institute, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, June 2013
Participant, “New Directions in Hopkins Scholarship: A Roundtable Discussion,” the Pauline E. Hopkins Society, American Literature Association, Boston, MA, May 2013
Organizer and co-chair, “Assessing What Was African American Literature?; or, The State of the Field in the New Millennium,” a roundtable on Kenneth W. Warren’s recent book, featuring papers by Russ Castronovo, John Ernest, Sharon P. Holland, Soyica Diggs Colbert, and Adam Bradley, along with a response by Warren, Modern Language Association, Seattle, WA, January 2012
“The Present-Past: Thomas Jefferson, W. E. B. Du Bois, and the Times of Slavery and Democracy,” Newberry Library Seminar in Early American History and Culture, Chicago, IL, October 2011
Organizer and chair, “Frederick Douglass after Emancipation,” Midwest Modern Language Association, Chicago, IL, November 2010
Organizer and chair, “African American Literature and the ‘Postracial,’” Midwest Modern Language Association, Chicago, IL, November 2010
“Making Amends, Then and Now: Frederick Douglass, Barack Obama, and the Politics of Racial Reconciliation,” Critical Whiteness Studies Symposium, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, September 2010
“‘No Reparation’: Frederick Douglass, Stephen Crane, and Slavery’s Endurance,” Futures of American Studies Institute, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, June 2010
“Slavery’s Recurring Story Lines,” Midwest Modern Language Association, St. Louis, MO, November 2009
“A New Millennium? Thinking about Race in the Twenty-First Century with Spike Lee’s Bamboozled,” Minority Graduate Student Association Conference, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, May 2009
“Falling Back into History: The Uncanny Trauma of Blackface Minstrelsy in Spike Lee’s Bamboozled,” Midwest Modern Language Association, Minneapolis, MN, November 2008
Co-organizer and respondent, “Return of the Repressed? The Place of Psychoanalysis in Contemporary American Studies,” Midwest Modern Language Association, Minneapolis, MN, November 2008
“Traumas of the Sentimental Eye: Witnessing Slavery, Revolution, and the Limits of Sympathy in Crèvecoeur’s Letters from an American Farmer,” Midwest Modern Language Association, Cleveland, OH, November 2007
Gregory Laski 