Robert S. Levine — After Uncle Tom's Cabin: Harriet Beecher Stowe and the Quest for Interracial Democracy - with Marianne Noble — at Conn Ave
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After Uncle Tom's Cabin: Harriet Beecher Stowe and the Quest for Interracial Democracy
The extraordinary activism of towering literary figure and great American writer Harriet Beecher Stowe, after publishing the novel that changed American history.
Alone among American novels, Uncle Tom’s Cabin forever changed the social fabric of the United States. It sold millions of copies, energized abolitionism, and arguably helped spark the Civil War―but the book also remade its author. Nearly overnight, Harriet Beecher Stowe transformed from an obscure writer to a national celebrity and leading antislavery reformer.
After Uncle Tom’s Cabin follows Stowe’s life after her monumental first novel, highlighting how the Black Americans she met influenced her writing and emboldened her activism. As Stowe learned from her everyday interactions with Black Americans and her relationships with leading figures like Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth, Robert S. Levine reveals how her quest for an interracial democracy grew and evolved.
Levine brings to life the more radical Stowe long overlooked by history: the woman who offered her home to enslaved people traveling on the Underground Railroad; who vehemently opposed and defied the Fugitive Slave Act; who made the case for equal rights for Black people; who championed the Civil War as a crusade for human rights; and who attempted to create work with fair pay for Black Floridians. Levine traces how Stowe’s writing deepened to depict Black agency, community, and resistance in her second novel, Dred, and how her personal writings and published essays and fiction displayed her growing commitment to racial equality.
Despite ongoing social antagonism and legal obstacles, Stowe acted on her beliefs, from promoting Black employment to founding a school she sought to integrate during her years in post–Civil War Florida. After Uncle Tom’s Cabin takes Stowe’s most famous novel as the starting point, not the zenith, of a fascinating career, and sheds new light on one of the great writers and social reformers of the nineteenth century. 34 illustrations
About This Event
The extraordinary activism of towering literary figure and great American writer Harriet Beecher Stowe, after publishing the novel that changed American history.Alone among American novels, Uncle Tom's Cabin forever changed the social fabric of the United States. It sold millions of copies, energized abolitionism, and arguably helped spark the Civil War-but the book also remade its author. Nearly overnight, Harriet Beecher Stowe transformed from an obscure writer to a national celebrity and leading antislavery reformer.After Uncle Tom's Cabin follows Stowe's life after her monumental first novel, highlighting how the Black Americans she met influenced her writing and emboldened her activism. As Stowe learned from her everyday interactions with Black Americans and her relationships with leading figures like Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth, Robert S. Levine reveals how her quest for an interracial democracy grew and evolved.Levine brings to life the more radical Stowe long overlooked by history: the woman who offered her home to enslaved people traveling on the Underground Railroad; who vehemently opposed and defied the Fugitive Slave Act; who made the case for equal rights for Black people; who championed the Civil War as a crusade for human rights; and who attempted to create work with fair pay for Black Floridians. Levine traces how Stowe's writing deepened to depict Black agency, community, and resistance in her second novel, Dred, and how her personal writings and published essays and fiction displayed her growing commitment to racial equality.Despite ongoing social antagonism and legal obstacles, Stowe acted on her beliefs, from promoting Black employment to founding a school she sought to integrate during her years in post-Civil War Florida. After Uncle Tom's Cabin takes Stowe's most famous novel as the starting point, not the zenith, of a fascinating career, and sheds new light on one of the great writers and social reformers of the nineteenth century.Robert S. Levine is Distinguished University Professor of English at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is the general editor of The Norton Anthology of American Literature and author, most recently, of The Failed Promise: Reconstruction, Frederick Douglass, and the Impeachment of Andrew Johnson. He lives in Ellicott City, Maryland.Levine will be in conversation with Marianne Noble, a Professor of Literature at American University. She is the author of The Masochistic Pleasures of Sentimental Literature (Princeton 2000) and Rethinking Sympathy and Human Contact in 19th Century American Literature: Hawthorne, Douglass, Stowe, Dickinson. She also co-edited Emily Dickinson and Philosophy. She has been curious all her life about human contact: what is it, when does it happen? Her recent courses include 19th Century Literature and Philosophy, Literature and the Ethical Life, The Beautiful and Its Politics, Memoir, Intimacy, and Environmental Literature. This event is free with first come, first serve seating.To request accommodations for this event or to inquire about accessibility please email events@politics-prose.com ideally one week in advance of the event date. We will make an effort to accommodate all requests up until the time of the event.
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Saira Mohamed — What a Country Owes Its Soldiers - with Darin Johnson — at Conn Ave
A clarion call to recognize soldiers' rights, arguing that volunteering to fight and die for one's country does not mean consenting to exploitation in the process.American leaders endlessly profess their admiration for military service members. But these effusive declarations hardly comport with reality. Soldiers receive shoddy equipment and inadequate medical care; they are ordered to commit crimes and deployed to illegal wars. Such treatment is rarely recognized for what it is: a violation of the duty owed to soldiers by their government. When American service members are injured or killed during training, for example, they and their families are barred from suing the military for negligence or malfeasance. And when the torture of detainees at Abu Ghraib came to light, the subsequent proceedings focused just on low-ranking perpetrators. The psychological harm done to the soldiers themselves by commanders who ordered them to commit torture in the first place went unacknowledged.Examining statutes, treaties, court cases, and congressional hearings, Saira Mohamed shows how the law encourages the treatment of soldiers as mere instruments, to be used and abused however the government wishes. She also unearths overlooked laws that point in the other direction, suggesting the possibility of robust protections for service members. Paradoxically, these get ignored in part because of the popular adulation of the military--the vision of service members as heroes who selflessly endure unlimited sacrifice. The all-volunteer nature of the force also promotes the misguided notion that soldiers have willingly accepted whatever mistreatment they might endure.What a Country Owes Its Soldiers shows how laws and mindsets can change, enabling genuine respect for soldiers' humanity. Acknowledging their rights can transform our understanding of those who fight America's wars, and of American warmaking itself.Saira Mohamed is Agnes Roddy Robb Chair in Jurisprudence, Ethics, and Social Responsibility and Professor of Law at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law.Mohamed will be joined in conversation with Darin Johnson, who has served in the Pentagon, State Department, and White House. He is a graduate of Yale College and Harvard Law School. A professor of law at Howard University, he is a scholar and commentator on international law, national security, foreign affairs, and human rights. He is the author of Digital Coup: The Conspiracy to Thwart Global Democracy (Broadleaf Books 2026). He lives in Washington, DC.This event is free with first come, first serve seating.To request accommodations for this event or to inquire about accessibility please email events@politics-prose.com ideally one week in advance of the event date. We will make an effort to accommodate all requests up until the time of the event.
D.C. Frost — A Shadow of Jaguars (Detective DJ Arias Mystery #2) / Melanie S. Hatter — All the Pain We Endure - with Saul Gonzalez — at Conn Ave
A Shadow of JaguarsA Shadow of Jaguars by D.C. Frost is a gripping cross-border noir thriller that follows Detective DJ Arias as he navigates murder, Hollywood intrigue, and immigrant struggles across Mexico City and Los Angeles, blending fast-paced suspense and richly drawn characters.In Mexico City for a family funeral, Detective DJ Arias encounters a group of Robin Hood-style thieves who call themselves the Jaguars. Their activities reach across the border into Los Angeles with a Hollywood murder that entangles LA's elite and the nannies, housekeepers, and gardeners who serve them, and threatens DJ's own loved ones. A sequel to the mystery A Punishing Breed, A Shadow of Jaguars finds DJ and partner Bobby Talbot struggling to untangle a murder where Hollywood, wealthy powerbrokers, and an immigrant population struggle to coexist and survive. Throughout it all, his faithful dog Evidence is by his side.-All the Pain We EndureSet in Washington, D.C., All the Pain We Endure follows Raebelle “Rae” Johnson, a biracial massage therapist with an extraordinary ability to glimpse the pain carried by others—but who struggles to confront her own. Haunted by a volatile relationship with her father, Rae finds herself drawn to Kai, a martial artist with his own troubled past. As family tensions and buried wounds resurface, Rae must confront the ways trauma travels across generations and decide whether the pain she has inherited will define her future. Blending psychological realism with an imaginative exploration of empathy, Hatter's novel asks how we break cycles of suffering without losing our capacity for love and connection.-D.C. Frost is a second-generation Angeleno whose debut novel, A Punishing Breed (2024), was reviewed by The New York Times. She has also published several literary short stories in journals including Westwind, UCLA's literary magazine. Before turning to writing full-time, DC had a long career in nonprofit fundraising. She draws inspiration from Southern California's rich blend of class, culture, and natural beauty. Frost lives in Los Angeles with her husband and a pack of rescue dogs.Melanie S. Hatter is the author of Malawi’s Sisters, which was selected by Edwidge Danticat as the winner of the inaugural Kimbilio National Fiction Prize and published by Four Way Books in 2019. Her debut novel, The Color of My Soul, won the 2011 Washington Writers’ Publishing House Fiction Prize, and Let No One Weep for Me, Stories of Love and Loss was released in 2015. Melanie was a licensed massage therapist for fourteen years and currently serves on the Development team at My Sister’s Place, the first domestic violence shelter in Washington, D.C. She is a member of the writing faculty of New Directions in Writing training program and serves on the board of the Washington Writers’ Publishing House. When she’s not working, she enjoys spending time in nature with her dog, Roo.Frost and Hatter will be in conversation with Saul Gonzalez, a veteran television, radio, podcast host, reporter and producer covering local, national and international topics. Winner of multiple Emmy awards, RTNA Golden Mikes, and other journalism honors. Saul was the Los Angeles Radio Reporter of the Year two years in a row by the Los Angeles Press Club.This event is free with first come, first serve seating.To request accommodations for this event or to inquire about accessibility please email events@politics-prose.com ideally one week in advance of the event date. We will make an effort to accommodate all requests up until the time of the event.
Judith Bowles — They Spoke of the River - with David Keplinger — at Conn Ave
Drawing from narrative traditions and influences such as Mary Oliver and James Wright—two beloved poets of Ohio—as well as the ghazals of Rumi and the plain-spoken wisdom of Robert Frost and William Stafford, poet Judith Bowles traces back the voices and oral histories of her Ohio roots, following the river of their words. Her third collection of poetry, They Spoke of the River is less memoir-in-verse than reliquary of the American experience, one which uses history, childhood, marriage, and elegy as rite and container. In the manner of Thornton Wilder’s stage manager in Our Town, here the past, present, and future fold over each other, as Bowles offers tough attention, all culminating in a volume that feels a bit like myth, a bit like news, and a bit like the dream of a life, experienced by one Ohioan, whose whole vocation has been this act of listening.Judith Bowles is the author of two earlier collections of poetry, The Gatherer (2014) and Unlocatable Source (2019). She has been a resident at Bloedel Reserve, Breadloaf, and the Kenyon Summer Writers Retreat, and she earned her MFA in Creative Writing from American University in 1986, studying under poet Myra Sklarew and novelist Kermit Moyer, later teaching creative writing in the department of English. From 1978 until 1985 Bowles was the poetry program director of the then Iona House, producing three anthologies featuring the work of participants. Her poetry has appeared in Gargoyle, Innisfree Journal of Poetry, Ekphrastic Review, Delmarva Review, and other journals.Bowles will be in conversation with David Keplinger, poet, translator, professor, and certified teacher of mindfulness.David is the author of Ice (Milkweed Editions, 2023) and seven other collections of poetry, including The World to Come (Conduit Books, 2021), winner of the 2020 Minds on Fire Prize and Another City (Milkweed Editions, 2018), which was awarded the 2019 UNT Rilke Prize. He has taught at American University in Washington, D.C. since 2007.This event is free with first come, first serve seating.To request accommodations for this event or to inquire about accessibility please email events@politics-prose.com ideally one week in advance of the event date. We will make an effort to accommodate all requests up until the time of the event.