Photo credit: John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

Cristina Jiménez—immigration reform advocate, MacArthur Foundation “genius award” Fellow, and founder and CEO of the nation’s largest immigrant youth-led organization—will speak at Washington College on Tuesday, April 16. She will share the powerful story of her own journey, from arriving in the US at age 13 as an undocumented immigrant from Ecuador, to her current role in the forefront of the global conversation on immigration. In 2018, Time magazine named Jiménez one of the “100 most influential people” in the world.

The program begins at 5:30 p.m. in Hynson Lounge, Hodson Hall.  Hosted by the Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, the event is free and open to the public. This event is the inaugural program in the Starr Center’s series “Crossing Cultures,” an initiative that seeks to foster informed dialogue on immigration, migration, intercultural exchange, and their impact on American life.

“At a moment when discussions of immigration and migration are dominated by soundbites, half-truths, and social-media hits, it’s more essential than ever to seek informed perspectives and engage in thoughtful civic conversation,” said Adam Goodheart, the Starr Center’s Hodson Trust-Griswold Director. “We’re excited to welcome Cristina Jiménez as the first of a diverse array of guests in the timely new Crossing Cultures series.”

Cristina Jiménez is the co-founder and executive director of the United We Dream (UWD). She has organized immigrant youth and workers for the passage of pro-immigrant policies at the local and national levels for over a decade. As undocumented immigrants, she and her family experienced poverty, abuse by police, wage theft from employers, and fear of deportation.

Her story is similar to those of United We Dream members across the country who struggle every day to overcome the forces of racism, xenophobia, and misogyny, and who ultimately learn to thrive. Jiménez will discuss how those closest to the pain are closest to the solution and how immigrant youth have transformed politics to create an empowered generation.

From a young age, Jiménez made a decision to fight back against unjust practices that plagued people of color and the immigrant community. As an adult, she was instrumental in organizing the successful national campaign that led to the creation and implementation of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival Program (DACA). Under Jiménez’s leadership, United We Dream has grown to a powerful network of 48 affiliates in 26 states and over 400,000 members.

Jiménez has received several high-profile awards and honors, including Forbes’s “30 under 30 in Law and Policy;” and “40 under 40 Young Leaders Who are Solving Problems of Today and Tomorrow” by the Chronicle of Philanthropy. Prior to her work at UWD, Jiménez co-founded the New York State Youth Leadership Council, and the Dream Mentorship Program at Queens College. She holds a master’s degree in Public Administration and Public Policy from the School of Public of Affairs at Baruch College, CUNY.

Established in 2000, Washington College’s Starr Center explores the American experience in all its diversity and complexity, seeks creative approaches to illuminating the past, and inspires thoughtful conversation informed by history. Jiménez’s talk is cosponsored by the Department of History, Program in American Studies, Department of Modern Languages, Hispanic Studies, Black Studies, Department of Education, Cleopatra’s Sisters, Día de Futbol, the Department of Political Science, Department of Sociology, and the Office of Intercultural Affairs.

About Washington College
Founded in 1782, Washington College is the tenth oldest college in the nation and the first chartered under the new Republic. It enrolls approximately 1,450 undergraduates from more than 39 states and territories and 25 nations. With an emphasis on hands-on, experiential learning in the arts and sciences, and more than 40 multidisciplinary areas of study, the College is home to nationally recognized academic centers in the environment, history, and writing. Learn more at washcoll.edu.

American journalist and blogger Gene Demby will speak on Wednesday, April 17, at the Rose O’Neill Literary House. The event, which is part of the annual Sophie Kerr Lecture Series, will start at 4:30 p.m., and is free and open to the public.

Demby is the lead blogger for NPR’s Code Switch team where he covers issues on race, ethnicity, and culture. He is also cohost of the weekly Code Switch podcast. Before coming to NPR, he served as the managing editor for Huffington Post’s BlackVoices following its launch. He later covered politics.

Prior to that role he spent six years in various positions at The New York Times. While working for the Times in 2007, he started a blog about race, culture, politics, and media called “PostBourgie,” which won the 2009 Black Weblog Award for Best News/Politics Site.

For more information on this and other English Department and Sophie Kerr events, visit the website at www.washcoll.edu/departments/english/events.php, or view our annual Literary Events Calendar brochure here: www.washcoll.edu/live/files/8293-2018-19-literary-events-brochure.

About Washington College
Founded in 1782, Washington College is the tenth oldest college in the nation and the first chartered under the new Republic. It enrolls approximately 1,450 undergraduates from more than 39 states and territories and 25 nations. With an emphasis on hands-on, experiential learning in the arts and sciences, and more than 40 multidisciplinary areas of study, the College is home to nationally recognized academic centers in the environment, history, and writing. Learn more at washcoll.edu.

Historian Patrick Spero, whose study of the 18th-century frontier is bringing a new perspective to the roots of the American Revolution, will give a talk on April 4 about the forgotten story of a band of rebels, known as the Black Boys, whose protests helped ignite the battle for American independence.

Spero, librarian and director of the American Philosophical Society Library in Philadelphia, will discuss his new book, Frontier Rebels: The Fight for Independence in the American West, 1765 -1776, at the Toll Science Center’s Litrenta Hall. The program begins at 5:30 p.m. and will be followed by a book signing. Sponsored by the Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, the event is free and open to the public.

A Publishers’ Weekly starred review praises Frontier Rebels: “[Spero delves] deeply into previously underutilized sources. .  . Spero’s thoughtful work is an important contribution to ongoing reassessments of the nature and meaning of the American founding.”

While the familiar narrative of the origins of the American Revolution focuses on taxation and the colonies along the eastern seaboard, in the west frontiersmen clashed with the British Empire over Indian relations. When Britain launched an expedition into the American interior to open trade with the Indian warrior Pontiac, the Black Boys led an uprising to stop it. Spero asserts that suspicion and distrust of both Natives and imperial aims fueled the flames of rebellion on the frontier years before the Declaration of Independence.

As a scholar of early American history, Spero has published books, essays and reviews on the American Revolution, including Frontier Country: The Politics of War in Early Pennsylvania (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), and the edited anthology The American Revolution Reborn: New Perspectives for the Twenty-First Century (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016). Prior to his appointment at the American Philosophical Society, Spero served on the faculty at Williams College.

Spero has been involved in a number of public history initiatives throughout his career, including serving as historian at the David Library of the American Revolution, leading teacher workshops for the Gilder-Lehrman Institute and National Endowment for the Humanities, lecturing about political leadership to business professionals and special groups, consulting on exhibits and other projects, and serving on various boards.

About Washington College

Founded in 1782, Washington College is the tenth oldest college in the nation and the first chartered under the new Republic. It enrolls approximately 1,450 undergraduates from more than 39 states and territories and 25 nations. With an emphasis on hands-on, experiential learning in the arts and sciences, and more than 40 multidisciplinary areas of study, the College is home to nationally recognized academic centers in the environment, history, and writing. Learn more at washcoll.edu.

Washington College welcomes Katherine Grandjean, associate professor of history at Wellesley College, for the 2018-2019 Guy F. Goodfellow Memorial Lecture, “In the Kingdom of Devils: The Harpe Murders and the Legacies of the American Revolution.”

Sponsored by the Department of History, the March 21 talk begins at 5 p.m. in Hynson Lounge and is free and open to the public.

Grandjean, who holds a B.A. in history from Yale University and a Ph.D. in history from Harvard University, researches early English colonization and the encounter with Native peoples, as well as the origins of American violence. In this talk, she discusses how on paper, the American Revolution ended in 1783, but for some, it continued. She investigates the violent legacies of the revolution, especially in the southern borderlands of the early republic. Following the lives of two brothers from North Carolina, who experienced some of the worst violence of the war as boys and, later in life, became killers, Grandjean will explore how the United States’s founding moment left behind so many violent, alienated men.

Grandjean’s work has been supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, the Massachusetts Historical Society, the American Historical Association, and the Charles Warren Center for American History, and has appeared in such journals as the William and Mary Quarterly, American Quarterly, and Early American Studies. A recent essay, “New World Tempests: Environment, Scarcity, and the Coming of the Pequot War,” won the American Society for Environmental History’s 2012 Alice Hamilton Prize for Best Article and the William and Mary Quarterly’s 2014 Douglass Adair Memorial Award.

She recently published her first book, American Passage: The Communications Frontier in Early New England. 

About Washington College

Founded in 1782, Washington College is the tenth oldest college in the nation and the first chartered under the new Republic. It enrolls approximately 1,450 undergraduates from more than 39 states and territories and 25 nations.With an emphasis on hands-on, experiential learning in the arts and sciences, and more than 40 multidisciplinary areas of study, the College is home to nationally recognized academic centers in the environment, history, and writing. Learn more at washcoll.edu.

Jane Coaston, a senior politics reporter for Vox and a journalist and writer based in Washington, D.C., will give a talk on contemporary American politics and culture on Thursday, March 7. Sponsored by Washington College’s Richard Holstein Program in Ethics, which promotes ethics education in the classroom, across campus, and in the community,the event begins with a reception at 4:15 p.m. at Hynson Lounge, followed by the talk starting at 5 p.m. Both are free and open to the public.

Coaston has written for publications including The New York Times, The Washington Post, ESPN, and The Ringer. She grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, and attended the University of Michigan before moving to St. Louis to work for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. She covered the 2016 election for MTV News by examining the Republican party and the American right wing in depth. She has also written about college football for Every Day Should Be Saturday and covered the NFL for SBNation. You can follow her on Twitter @cjane87.

Coaston’s visit includes a discussion with journalism students at Kent County High School, led by teacher Sarah McCown.

For more information, contact Michael Harvey, curator of the Richard Holstein Program in Ethics, mharvey2@washcoll.edu, 410-778-7889.

About Washington College

Founded in 1782, Washington College is the tenth oldest college in the nation and the first chartered under the new Republic. It enrolls approximately 1,450 undergraduates from more than 39 states and territories and 25 nations.With an emphasis on hands-on, experiential learning in the arts and sciences, and more than 40 multidisciplinary areas of study, the College is home to nationally recognized academic centers in the environment, history, and writing. Learn more at washcoll.edu.