The 2026 Spector Lecture will be given by Harvard Professor Robin Bernstein
"Fugitive Sentimentalism: The Forgotten Genius of H. E. Lewis, Negro Mesmerist"
29 January 2026, 6 pm
Redpath Museum Auditorium
859 Rue Sherbrooke Ouest
Montréal, QC H3A 2K6
Robin Bernstein is a cultural historian who focuses on race and performance, mainly in the US, from the nineteenth century to the present. She is the author of Freeman’s Challenge: The Murder That Shook America’s Original Prison for Profit, which she wrote with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Freeman’s Challenge won the Montaigne Medal and the PROSE Award for North American/US History; it also received the Nonfiction Honor for the Massachusetts Book Award. Bernstein’s previous book, Racial Innocence: Performing American Childhood from Slavery to Civil Rights, won five awards and was runner-up for two more. In 2021, she co-won the William Riley Parker Prize, given for the year’s outstanding article in PMLA. Her public-facing work has appeared in the New York Times, the Zinn Education Project, the Chronicle of Higher Education, Inquest, and Teen Vogue. Bernstein teaches at Harvard University, where she is the Dillon Professor of American History and Professor of African and African American Studies and Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality. ;
Bernstein's talk will be followed by a Q&A. This event is free and in person. Everyone is welcome.
Room capacity is limited. Please reserve your seat to ensure a spot!
This event is curated by Professor Camille Owens and co-sponsored by the Department of English and the Â鶹´«Ã½ÍøÕ¾ Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies.
   
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