Professor Sinha will give a talk on the exhibit and her work as a Reconstruction Historian on June 4th at a special preview of “The Second American Revolution”. The exhibit will be open from June 5 through January 17 and explores the Reconstruction era’s early efforts to give newly freed and free Black Americans full citizenship and rights, and the ways in which this mission was largely eroded leaving America with consequences that have followed the nation into the 21st century. 

You can read more about this exhibit on the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum website here:

New exhibit on Civil War’s aftermath coming to ALPLM

The article is entitled “The Civil Rights Era is Collapsing Before Our Eyes,” By Nikole Hannah-Jones, and appeared in both the print and online versions of The New York Times May 22, 2026.

You can read the full article here.

The article, written by Ananya Roy for Jewish Currents, contextualizes the current immigration “enforcement” crisis among historical moments that shaped laws now serving as the backdrop for the criminalization of racialized migrant communities. One of the key moments which demonstrates the article’s emphasis on communities creating their own networks and momentum towards freedom rather than states or cities fostering and protecting this freedom as its own mission, is of course that of the Abolition Movement and the Underground Railroad. Sinha’s article “The Abolitionist Underground” is cited amongst other scholarly work evidencing how governments respond to freedom movements rather than being the agents enabling and protecting residents as many are taught to understand historical narratives around individual freedoms being codified.

Read Fugitive Sanctuaries by Ananya Roy

Read The Abolitionist Underground by Manisha Sinha

On November 5, 2025, Professor Brendan Kane presented a research seminar titled “Teaching, learning and researching Early Modern Gaelic in a digital age: Léamh.org and the practice of collaborative digital humanities.” The event was hosted at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, a college in the west of Scotland. The talk discussed ongoing efforts to teach people Early Modern Irish and Classical Gaelic, using the innovative Léamh.org, a web tool that uses games and other methods to assist users in learning grammar and reading digitized manuscripts. 

You can watch a recording of the talk here

As the Smithsonian and other museums face challenges from the Trump administration about the content of exhibits that examine racial history in US history, Professor Deirdre Cooper-Owens is collaborating on educational efforts with activist and artist Michelle Browder to remember and honor the victims of medical abuse at the hands of James Marion Sims and other doctors since. Sims is broadly called the “father of modern gynecology”, but his victims- enslaved black women who historians had to work to recover the identities of, are now known only thanks to artists like Browder and dedicated research efforts by historians.

Dr. Cooper-Owens work on this front includes the 2017 book Medical Bondage, which delves into the long history of extensive exploitation and harm of black people and bodies in efforts to further medicine in US history. Browder’s artwork challenges the common narrative of a medical legacy built on unwilling procedures on enslaved women carried out by Sims through the construction and placement of pieces like “The Mothers of Gynecology” which represents Anarcha Westcott, Betsey, and Lucy, who Sims experimented on. The article emphasizes the importance of preserving and sharing these histories, and provides links to further reading about more incidents of experimentation and theft of bodily autonomy as well, noting infamous cases such as the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, and the story of Henrietta Lacks.

Full article here:

The Trump Administration Wants To Whitewash History. These Black Historians and Activists are Memorializing the Sins of an Infamous Gynecologist