The Maryland Humanities Summer Institute 2026: Dissent!
The Maryland Humanities Summer Institute 2026: Dissent!
You are invited to attend the 4th annual Maryland Humanities Summer Institute hosted by the Frederick Douglass Center for Leadership through the Humanities and specifically targeted towards secondary classroom and community-based educators. There is no cost to attend.
Event Details
Friday, June 26, 2026
9:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m.
Tawes Hall
University of Maryland, College Park
ASL Interpretation + Breakfast and Lunch + Giveaways
Registration
There is no cost to attend. Please register by June 19, 2026, using this Google Form.
Summer Institute Theme
Haunted by the ruptures of the world around us, the theme for this year’s Summer Institute is “Dissent!” Drawing on local and global histories and contemporary political movements, this institute will contend with questions such as, how do we empower people to speak in opposition? How do we understand dissent as both patriotic and insurgent, as lessons in respectful debate in civil society and unmanaged resistance?
Opening Keynote Speaker
Dr. Nancy Raquel Mirabal is associate professor of American studies at the University of Maryland. Additionally, she serves on the advisory boards for the Douglass Center and the Center for Global Migration Studies and is an affiliate faculty member with the Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies; Consortium on Race, Gender, and Ethnicity; and the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Center. A trained oral historian, Mirabal is currently conducting research and writing on the politics of dissonant visibilities, uneasy archives and Latina/o spatial temporalities. She currently serves on the board for Teaching for Change in Washington, D.C.
Closing Keynote Speaker
Dr. Bayley Marquez is associate professor of American studies at the University of Maryland, an affiliate faculty member with both the Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and the Consortium on Race, Gender, and Ethnicity, and an Indigenous scholar from the Santa Ynez Band of Chumash Indians. As an Indigenous scholar and former K-12 educator, her research interests include settler colonial theory, Indigenous education, Black education, the history of education, abolitionist university studies and critical ethnic studies. Her academic work is positioned at the intersection of settlement, antiblackness, imperialism and other instantiations of racialized and colonial power.
Sessions
- Organizing Voter Suppression - Amber Bennett Foote, High School Educator
- Resisting the Erasure of Federal Data - Lindsay Carpenter, University of Maryland
- Black Marylander's Activism in the Civil War - Dr. William Horne, University of Maryland
- BLM in Schools and the History of Black Schools in DC - Vanessa Williams, DC History Center
- Reparative Archiving - Evie Giaconia and Manuel Mendez, University of Maryland
- Lessons on Youth Activism - Amber Myren, High School Educator
Requesting Accessibility Accommodations
We strive to make this event accessible to everyone. There is a section on the registration form for requesting accessibility accommodations. Alternatively, you may also send an email to the Douglass Center team at douglass-center@umd.edu. In all situations, a good faith effort (up until the time of the event) will be made to provide accommodations.
Email List
Interested in receiving communications from the Douglass Center about this and other programming? Join the Douglass Center email list and stay in the know.