The Harris Seminar & Dialogues

Whiteness as Property: Reflections and Retrospectives

October 19th–21st, 2026 | Amherst College, MA

The Race and Regency Lab announces The Harris Seminar and Dialogues, a series of global scholarly conversations centered on Cheryl I. Harris’s landmark essay Whiteness as Property. Co-convened by Professors Kim Hall (Barnard College), Patricia Matthew (Montclair State University), and Amelia Worsley (Amherst College), the seminar brings together an international collective of community organizers, museum professionals, and scholars of pre-1900 cultural studies. Participants come from North America, the UK, New Zealand, and beyond.

These events follow a year of seminar discussions hosted by Amherst College’s English Department, including a session with Harris featuring a wide-ranging discussion of literature, history, and the current U.S. constitutional crisis.

Our aim is to reflect on and amplify the importance of Whiteness as Property as a foundational text for the study of pre-1900 transatlantic literatures and cultures, while also highlighting the intersections of Indigenous cultures and Critical Race Theory. We seek to connect the essay’s core tenets to the urgent questions of our current political moment and to build a new collective that unsettles the foundations of our disciplines. This group works to discourage incentives to assimilate or “pass” and notions of “trespassing,” and instead cultivate spaces for scholarly, intellectual, and artistic “loitering.”

Presenters include Brandi Adams, Bakary Diaby, Angelica Diggs, Tapiwa Gambura, Nikki Hessell, Arthur Little, Mathelinda Nabugodi, Meleisa Ono-George, Kate Singer, Janett Walker, Anika Lopes, Angelica Diggs, Kimberly Latortue, and Karen Sánchez-Eppler.

Vera P. Hall, Harriet Tubman, 2008, Cotton, machine applique and machine quilted, (W) 21.5 x (L) 33 in.

PROGRAM

Monday, October 19

3:00 pm – 5:00 pm | Roundtable I: Global Critical Race Theory 

The Center for Humanistic Inquiry, Aliki Perroti & Seth Frank Lyceum Building, 197 South Pleasant Street, Amherst, MA 01002

• Nikki Hessel, Victoria University of Wellington, “Treaties, Literature, and Property” (attending virtually)

• Janett Walker, CEO & Co-founder, Anti Racist Cumbria, “Anti-Racist Cumbria: Community Activism and Leisure Culture” (attending virtually)

• Meleisa Ono-George, Associate Professor, Oxford, “‘Or from black parents, how could I exist?’: White-skinned Africans and the Refinement of Race in 18th century Britain” (attending virtually)

Tuesday, October 20  

1:00 pm – 3:00 pm | Roundtable II: Works in Progress
The Center for Humanistic Inquiry, Aliki Perroti & Seth Frank Lyceum Building, 197 South Pleasant Street, Amherst, MA

• Mathelinda Nabugodi, University College London, "Chain’d by rhyme: freedom and bondage in the sonnet tradition"

• Tapiwa Gambura, Yale University, “Ambivalent Ecologies: John Tyley and the Breadfruit Tree”

4:30 pm  | Keynote Conversation: Cheryl Harris (UCLA) and Kim F. Hall (Barnard College). Moderated by Nicole Aljoe (Northeastern University).
Cole Assembly Room, Converse Hall, 100 Boltwood Avenue, Amherst College

6:00 pm – 7:30 pm | Reception
Converse Hall Lobby 

Wednesday, October 21

10:00 am – 12:00 pm | Roundtable III: Literature and Culture
The Center for Humanistic Inquiry, Aliki Perroti & Seth Frank Lyceum Building, 197 South Pleasant Street, Amherst, MA

• Kate Singer, Mount Holyoke College, “Equiano’s Allegorical, Dispossessing Humor”

• Brandi Adams, Arizona State University, “Becky Sharp and the Contours of White Property in Vanity Fair.”

• Arthur L. Little, Jr., UCLA, “Jonson’s Masque of Blackness and the Embattled Aesthetics of White-History-Making”

Lunch at the CHI (Catered)

4:30 pm – 6:30 pm | Roundtable IV:  Public Histories/Public Spaces
The Center for Humanistic Inquiry, Aliki Perroti & Seth Frank Lyceum Building, 197 South Pleasant Street, Amherst, MA

• Anika Lopes, Founder & Executive Director, Ancestral Bridges Foundation

• Angelica Diggs, Executive Director, Montclair Historic Center

• Kimberly Latortue, President, Friends of the Howe House (attending virtually)

• Karen Sánchez-Eppler, Board President, Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum