MacArthur Fellow P. Gabrielle Foreman will give the annual Krieger Lecture in American Political Culture. Her talk, “Why Didn’t We Know?!: The Forgotten History of the Colored Conventions and 19th-Century Black Political Organizing,” will focus on the history of 19th century Black activism.

The lecture is scheduled to take place in-person on May 2 at 5 p.m. in Kaufmann Auditorium (G64) in Goldwin Smith Hall. It is free and open to the public.

“We are so thrilled to be able to engage with this generous and creative intellectual at Cornell,” said Shirley Samuels, director of American Studies and Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences. “We anticipate that students will also be inspired by her presence.”

Foreman is a professor of English, African American Studies, and History at Penn State University. Her MacArthur, also known as the “Genius Grant,” was awarded based upon the  breadth of her portfolio as a literary historian and digital humanist. Widely known as the founder of the Colored Conventions Project (CCP), Foreman worked with a diverse group of faculty and students to build a digital repository for nineteenth-century Convention records. According to the MacArthur Foundation, “CCP enacts Foreman’s vision of collaboration and recreates the collectivism that characterized the conventions themselves.”

Melissa Totman is program manager for the American Studies Program.

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