Brown 2026 — a multi-year series of research and teaching-based events aimed at creating a deeper understanding of American history and democracy — was launched last month to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States.
The project’s events, conducted in-person and through Zoom, will and have spanned a spectrum of topics, ranging from Grammy-award-winning artist Jon Batiste’s performance last week to upcoming book panels about leaders who threatened democracy.
Brown 2026 aims to analyze American history with the help of historians and other academics within the Brown community, said Karin Wulf, the director of the John Carter Brown Library and professor of history. Wulf also serves as co-chair of the initiative.
As students are “the political future,” Wulf said student involvement is vital in making Brown 2026 successful.
The initiative also features opportunities for students to gain hands-on experience through projects such as the digitization of the Hall-Hoag Collection — an over 168,000-item archive of post-World War II history in the United States that is housed in the John Hay Library.
The digitization, led by the Hay’s Divided America Project, is “a nice opportunity to give predominantly undergraduate students a chance to work with archival materials for the first time,” said Ariel Flowers, the Divided America Project archivist who has worked with the Hall-Hoag collection for the past two and a half years.
The project, Flowers said, has allowed her to connect past issues in the United States to current events.
But the archival efforts have not always been easy, Flowers noted. Challenges included considering efficient ways to organize the archival material and dealing with the content of the archives.
“On a deeper level, some of the material in Hall-Hoag is extremely upsetting,” she said. When planning the digitization project, Flowers said she ensured that those working on the project felt comfortable taking a step back when the material was challenging.
