This seminar series explores the multidisciplinary history of the book. It is designed for, and frequently features, NIU faculty and students.

American Foundations, Foundational Documents 

Laws are among the most powerful texts in shaping how a nation remembers, as well as forgets, its past. This joint presentation brings together perspectives from archaeology and history to examine how legislation and political activism have defined, constrained, challenged, and increasingly reimagined the nation's colonial foundations.  

Reading these critiques alongside modern legal reforms reveals the enduring struggle to reconcile the nation’s founding principles with its histories of exclusion, dispossession, and erasure, as scholars, activists, and policymakers work toward a more just and inclusive future. 

Presenters:

• "Acts of Law Acts of Justice: Repatriation and Rewriting of American Foundations" — Dana Bardolph-Carlsen, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, NIU
• "A 'Land-Stealing' Nation: Abolitionists, the Constitution, and U.S. Indian Policy" — Natalie Joy, Associate Professor of History, NIU

For further event details visit RBSC's History of Book Seminar website.