Futures LogoTHE FUTURES OF AMERICAN STUDIES INSTITUTE 

FOUNDING DIRECTOR: Professor Donald E. Pease (Dartmouth College)

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR: James E. Dobson (Dartmouth College)

CO-DIRECTORS: Professor Colleen Boggs (Dartmouth College), Professor Soyica Diggs Colbert (Georgetown University), Professor Elizabeth Maddock Dillon  (Northeastern University), Professor Winfried Fluck (Freie Universität, Berlin), Professor Donatella Izzo (Università degli studi di Napoli "L'Orientale"), Professor Cindi Katz (CUNY Graduate Center), Professor Eng-Beng Lim (Dartmouth College), Professor Eric W. Lott (CUNY Graduate Center), Professor Israel Reyes (Dartmouth College)

Announcing the 25th Annniversary of Dartmouth's futures of American studies Institute

This will be the 25th anniversary of the Institute, which is scheduled to be held at Dartmouth Monday, June 17 - Sunday, June 23, 2024. Since its founding in 1999, the Institute has been successful in attracting leading scholars of the field from universities across the world, while at the same time also adding new voices, and serving continuously as a forum for key debates in the field. The Institute was specifically designed to provide a shared space of critical inquiry that brings doctoral students’ work-in-progress to the attention of a network of influential scholars. Each day of the Institute begins with a morning session (9:00 am - 12:00 pm) and concludes with an evening session (7:00 - 10:00 pm) at which plenary speakers deliver presentations of no more than thirty-minutes that contribute to our convoking topic. These presentations are followed by questions from the participants. After a lunch break, the Institute’s participants meet in intensive workshop groups from 1:30-  5:00 pm (consisting of no more than 10 participants), each of which is led a Seminar Director of the Institute. These workshops offer those enrolled in the Institute—scholars from a variety of disciplines and institutions—the opportunity for critical conversations about the central intellectual issues and impasses in their research. The cost of tuition, housing, midweek picnic, and final banquet remains $695.00 for the week.

Plenary Sessions

  • “What Does American Studies Want from AI?”
  • “Queer(ing) Solidarities”
  • “Crisis of US Democratic Cultures”
  • “Environmental Humanisms”
  • “Dismantling the Settler Colonialist Logics of Dispossession” 
  • “Transformative Black Dramaturgies”
  • “Rethinking Critical Ethnic Studies at this Historical Conjuncture”
  • “Latinx Necropolitics at the Borders" 
  • “Reimagining Indigenous Sovereignty: Refusal, Reconfiguration, Resurgence”
  • “Racial Capitalism and Questions of Social Reproduction” 
  • “The Politics of African American Melancholia”
  • “North Atlantic Universals/Transnational Asian American Analytics”
  • Brown Bag Discussions with Journal Editors and Book Publishers

Plenary Speakers

  • Sandy Alexandre, Associate Professor of Literature (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)
  • Rebecca Biron, Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature; Director, Leslie Center of Humanities (Dartmouth College)
  • Tony Bogues, Asa Messer Professor of Humanities and Critical Theory, Director of the Center of the Study of Slavery and Justice (Brown University)
  • Kimberly Juanita Brown, Associate Professor of English and Director of the Institute for Black Intellectual and Cultural Life (Dartmouth)
  • Jodi Byrd, Associate Professor of Literatures in English (Cornell University)
  • Russ Castronovo, Tom Paine Professor of English and Dorothy Draheim Professor of American Studies (University of Wisconsin–Madison)
  • Iyko Day, Elizabeth C. Small Professor of English, Chair of English (Mount Holyoke College)
  • Tim Dean, James M. Benson Professor of English (University of Illinois Champaign-Urban)
  • Elizabeth Maddock Dillon, Distinguished Professor of English (Northeastern University)
  • James E. Dobson, Assistant Professor of English & Creative Writing and Director of Institute of Writing and Rhetoric, Dartmouth College, Executive Director of the Futures of American Studies Institute.
  • Michele Elam, William Robertson Coe Professor in Humanities (Stanford University)
  • Duncan Faherty, Associate Professor of English at Queens College and The Graduate Center (CUNY Graduate Center)
  • Winfried Fluck, Professor Emeritus of American Culture at John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies (Freie Universität Berlin)
  • Sheldon George, Professor and Chair of Literature & Writing and Director of General Education (Simmons College)
  • Lauren M.E. Goodlad, Distinguished Professor of English (Rutgers University)
  • Donatella Izzo, Professor of American Literature (“L'Orientale” University of Naples) and Co-Director with Giorgio Mariani of the OASIS-Orientale American Studies International School.
  • R.A. Judy, Professor of Critical and Cultural Studies (University of Pittsburgh)
  • Manu Karuka, Assistant Professor of American Studies (Barnard College)
  • Cindi Katz, Professor in Environmental Psychology, Earth and Environmental Sciences, American Studies, and Women's Studies (CUNY Graduate Center)
  • Jodi Kim, Professor of English & Creative Writing (Dartmouth College)
  • Liam Kennedy, Professor of American Studies and Director of the Clinton Institute (University College Dublin)
  • Eng-Beng Lim, Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (Dartmouth College)
  • Eric Lott, Distinguished Professor of English (CUNY Graduate Center)
  • Alan Nadel, William T. Bryan Professor of English, American Studies, and Film Studies (University of Kentucky)
  • Heike Paul, Professor and Chair of American Studies (Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg) and Director of the Bavarian American Academy.
  • Donald E. Pease, Ted & Helen Geisel Professor in the Humanities and Founding Director of the Futures of American Studies Institute (Dartmouth College)
  • Israel Reyes, Professor of Spanish and Portuguese, Chair, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Director of Fellowships (Dartmouth College)
  • Dylan Rodriguez, Professor and Co-Director of Center for Ideas and Society (University of California, Riverside)
  • María Josefina Saldaña-Portillo, Professor in Social & Cultural Analysis Department & the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (New York University)
  • Hortense J. Spillers, Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor Emerita of English (Vanderbilt University)
  • Patricia Stuelke, Associate Professor of English & Creative Writing (Dartmouth College)
  • Shane Vogel, Professor of English and African American Studies and Chair of Theater and Performance Studies (Yale University)
  • Robyn Wiegman, Professor of Literature (Duke University)