The Harris Seminar & Dialogues

Whiteness as Property: Reflections and Retrospectives

October 14th–16th, 2025 | Amherst College, MA

Due to unforeseen circumstances The Harris Seminar & Dialogues have been postponed until 2026.

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. In 2026, a special issue of Studies in English Literature will feature essays, reflections, and articles generated by participants of the seminar and invited guests.

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.”

Seminar Members include Brandi Adams, Donna Chambers, Bakary Diaby, Angelica Diggs, Tapiwa Gambura, Nikki Hessell, Arthur Little, Mathelinda Nabugodi, Kate Singer, and Janett Walker.

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

Register HERE (Registration is encouraged but not required).

Program

Tuesday, October 14 

3:00 pm - 5:00 pm ET | Virtual

Roundtable I: Global Critical Race Theory 

• Donna Chambers, Northumbria University 

• Nikki Hessel, Victoria University of Wellington 

• Janett Walker, Anti Racist Cumbria

Wednesday, October 15 

10:00 am – 12:00 pm ET | Center for Humanistic Inquiry, Aliki Perroti & Seth Frank Lyceum building, 197 S Pleasant St, Amherst, MA.

Roundtable II: Literature and Culture

• Kate Singer, Mount Holyoke College

• Brandi Adams, Arizona State University

• Arthur Little, UCLA

4:30 pm – 6:30 pm ET | Center for Humanistic Inquiry, Aliki Perroti & Seth Frank Lyceum building.

Roundtable III:  Public Histories/Public Spaces

• Anika Lopes, Ancestral Bridges

• Angelica Diggs, Montclair Historic Center

• Kimberly Latortue, Friends of the Howe House

Thursday October 16 

2:00 pm – 3:00 pm ET | Center for Humanistic Inquiry, Aliki Perroti & Seth Frank Lyceum building.

Book Launch: Kim F. Hall’s The Sweet Taste of Empire.

4:30 pm ET | Converse Hall, 100 Boltwood Ave, Amherst, MA.

Keynote Conversation: Cheryl Harris (UCLA) and Kim F. Hall (Barnard College).

Moderated by Nicole Aljoe (Northeastern University).

6:00 pm – 7:30 pm ET | Converse Hall Lobby.

Reception