The insistence that U.S. colleges and universities sign the “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education” or risk losing federal funding; the ongoing push to dismantle DEI programs and initiatives; wide-reaching attacks on GLBTQ+ programs, critical race studies, and climate studies and initiatives; and the increasing scrutiny of course syllabi and secret recordings of classroom discussions for public dissemination: these and many other issues raise critical questions about the proper—and improper—relationship between academic and university freedom on the one hand, and government oversight of colleges and universities on the other hand. Can works of American literature and culture help us understand, and respond to, these overwhelming challenges we face as university and college administrators, scholars, teachers, and students in ways that enable, rather than undermine, democracy and academic freedom?

Panelists:

Christopher Vials, Professor of English, University of Connecticut, Storrs

Christopher Vials is co-editor with Bill V. Mullen of The U.S. Antifascism Reader (Verso Books, 2020) and author of Haunted by Hitler: Liberals, the Left, and the Fight against Fascism in the United States (University of Massachusetts Press, 2014). A scholar of twentieth- and twenty-first century American literature, his research and teaching focus on social movements of the left and right and on fascism and antifascism in the United States.

Annette Wannamaker, Professor of English, Eastern Michigan University

Annette Wannamaker is the author of How to Read Like an Anti-Fascist: Storytelling and Narrative Literacy for Young People (Fordham University Press 2025) and Boys in Children’s Literature and Culture: Masculinity, Abjection, and the Fictional Child (Routledge 2007). She is coordinator of the Children’s Literature Program at Eastern Michigan University and has served as president of the Children’s Literature Association.

Oliver Baker, Assistant Professor of English and African American Studies, Penn State

Oliver Baker is the author of No More Peace: Abolition War and Counterrevolution (University of California Press 2025). His areas of research and teaching include critical ethnic studies and nineteenth-century American studies with a focus on the relationship between literature and the histories of slavery, settler colonialism, and capitalism.

Moderator: Phoebe Coogle, Graduate Student, Department of English, Penn State

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