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The Department of English is thrilled to welcome Harvard Professor Robin Bernstein for the 2026 Spector Lecture "Fugitive Sentimentalism: The Forgotten Genius of H. E. Lewis, Negro Mesmerist".

The annual Spector Lecture is the most prestigious scholarly lecture hosted by the Department of English.

29 January 2026, 6 p.m.
Redpath Museum Auditorim
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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鈥檚 Challenge: The Murder That Shook America鈥檚 Original Prison for Profit, which she wrote with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Freeman鈥檚 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鈥檚 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鈥檚 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.聽;

Bernstein's talk will be followed by a Q&A. This event is free and in person. Everyone is welcome.

The room has limited capacity. Please reserve your seat.

For questions, please contact Camille Owens at camille.owens [at] mcgill.ca.