Inspired by the United States’ 250th anniversary, this collaborative panel reexamines literary histories of 1776 over the past two centuries. “1776 & 2026” asks how we might continue to revise dominant critical and popular narratives of the nation’s founding by bringing marginalized subjects of history to the fore. Together, the four participants will take an interdisciplinary approach to 1776 and the power of dates. By critically examining the nation’s founding and competing versions of its remembrance, this panel invites inquiry on the differences between official history and public memory and the sweep of meanings embedded in July 4^th, 1776—an occasion marked by celebration for some, mourning for others, and an array of stances in between.

The panel’s aims follow the trend in literary and historical scholarship over the past two decades to expand the study of the Revolution’s actors beyond white male founders and patriots, and it could not be timelier for conversations taking place both in the field and in national politics. Early American Literature, the flagship journal of early American literary studies, is organizing a year of conversations both to “mark the milestone” and to encourage early Americanists “to reflect upon and reassess the role of 1776” in the field. The express goal of this initiative is to “interrogate and complicate” the significance of this potent date by accommodating a range of perspectives. Concurrently, the White House Task Force 250 is planning extensive programming for the 250th, including a comprehensive oral history, a fifty-state and five-territory time capsule, and coordinated flag waving ceremonies. Established by an Executive Order, the Task Force is charged with creating a “grand celebration worthy of the momentous occasion of the 250th anniversary of American Independence on July 4, 2026.” While the EO does not specify how it plans to narrate this history, it appoints the President as Chair and empowers him to determine the agenda and direct the work. Based on the Trump Administration’s convening of the 1776 Commission to promote “patriotic education" and extinguish a "radicalized view of American history” and the recent Executive Order “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” we can reasonably expect the centering of a celebratory white supremacist consensus history. It is therefore imperative to spotlight the prohibited perspectives of 1776 as the nation commemorates—and reckons with—its quarter millennial in 2026.

The first two papers uncover alternative histories of the Revolution, foregrounding little-known texts by Native and Black writers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Timothy Sweet’s “‘Our Lost Treasure’” draws on Hannah Arendt’s distinction between two revolutionary phases—the liberation from oppression and the production of positive freedom—the latter of which has been excluded from canonical memories of the revolution. Turning to Mohawk leaders Joseph Brant’s and Hendrick Aupaumut’s late eighteenth-century diplomatic work addressing the revolution’s impact in Indian Country, Sweet explores positive freedom at the canon’s margins. Lindsay DiCuirci’s “Remembering Crispus Attucks” examines Willam C. Nell’s pamphlet Services of Colored Americans in the Wars of 1776 and 1812 (1853), later expanded to Colored Patriots of the American Revolution, the first Black history of the American Revolution. This talk will discuss Nell’s efforts to center Crispus Attucks as the “first martyr” of the American Revolution at the Boston Massacre. Through written history, visual art, and public events, Nell and his collaborators sought to supplant the importance of 1776 in public memory and recover the figure of a Black rebel at a time when the 1850 Compromise and the Dred Scott decision eroded Black freedom and civic belonging.

The last two papers feature twenty-first century representations that reimagine the Revolution from the perspective of disenfranchised populations. Emma McNamara’s “Depictions of Girlhood in 1776” investigates Laurie Halse Anderson’s Seeds of America trilogy—Chains (2008), Forge (2010), and Ashes (2016)—which portrays a young Black enslaved girl as she navigates the American Revolution. The trilogy attempts to create a more inclusive historical record and demonstrate that patriotism and loyalism impacted the lives of women and girls in gender-, race-, and age-specific ways. Duncan Faherty’s “The Declaration House: Then&Now” takes up Sonya Clark’s 2024 public artwork at Philadelphia’s Declaration House, where Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence in 1776. In documenting the gaze of the enslaved people at Monticello in this space, Clark’s exhibit offers viewers the opportunity to reconsider questions of memorialization and hagiography as the nation moves closer to the 250th anniversary of the Declaration in 2026.

Panelists will speak for 13-14 minutes to guarantee, with introductions, 15 minutes of unstructured discussion.