America250: Worlds of Revolution – Prof. Mia Bay (January 14, 2026)

“Talking Back to Thomas Jefferson: African Americans discuss the Founding Father, 1776-1877”

A lecture by Dr. Mia Bay (University of Cambridge)

This event occurred on January 14, 2026 at 5:00 PM in the Mortara Center for International Studies, 3600 N St NW, DC 20057.

Worlds of Revolution: America250 as a Global Historical Event

Supported by the Georgetown University Office of the Vice President for Global Engagement, and coordinated between the GU Global Irish Studies Initiative and the GU Institute for Global History, “Worlds of Revolution” is one of Georgetown University’s signature contributions to the semiquincentennial of the American Revolution.

Reflecting on the American Revolution and its international legacies, the series will invite audiences to consider the concept of an “age of revolutions”, from the eighteenth century to the twentieth century. In this long era of revolts against monarchies and empires, rebellions against rulers and dynasties, rejections of longstanding ideas, and competing attempts to build new orders on the site of the old, some revolutions achieved their stated aims. Others did not. Yet all produced a much different world, one that “Worlds of Revolution” will seek to better understand with close looks at commonalities, differences, and connections between revolutionary experiences across Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Asia, in addition to North America.

Mia Bay is the newly appointed Paul Mellon Professor of American History at the University of Cambridge. Prior to arriving at Cambridge, she taught at the University of Pennsylvania, where she was the Roy F. and Jeanette P. Nichols Professor of American History, and at Rutgers University, where she also directed the Rutgers Center for Race and Ethnicity. Her research interests include the history of ideas about race, the intellectual work of black women, the study of African American approaches to citizenship, and the history of race and transportation.