Mathelinda Nabugodi, The Trembling Hand: Reflections of a Black Woman in the Romantic Archive

Whiting Award-winning scholar Mathelinda Nabugodi examines Wordsworth's teacup, Percy Shelley's golden baby rattle, Keats's death mask, Byron's orthopedic boot, and other archival objects to reveal how the beloved Romantic poets—titans of English literature celebrated for sublime passions and the search for inner truth—were deeply entangled with the transatlantic slave economy. As a biracial Black woman and UCL lecturer in comparative literature, Nabugodi blends memoir with archival scholarship, tracing the lives of Black figures whose paths crossed with the great Romantics while confronting how "freedom, liberty, autonomy"—the period's favorite words—coexisted with relentless commitment to displacement and stolen labor. This urgent work mines the archives not to rehearse Black pain, but to uncover instances of resistance, beauty, and joy, offering a dazzling new way of reading both the past and the canon.

in-person ($15) and livestream ($10) | registration required