I have had a paper accepted for presentation at the NCSU Graduate History Conference in mid-February. The paper argues that the African American exhibit at the 1900 Paris world's fair was intended to serve the same purpose as the European colonial exhibits. So, if any of you want to hear me present a spin-off paper from my Master's thesis, the conference is free and open to the public. Let me know and I'll give you the deets.

In other academic news, I have also been invited to give a presentation at the Army Research Office (where I work) for black history month. When I get invited to speak to crowds of non-academic-history folks--or in this case, non-history academic folks--I always feel pressure to challenge what people thought they knew about history. The problem is boiling all of black history into one discussion, which is even more daunting than boiling it down into one month, which is dumb in the first place (and admittedly not the purpose of black history month, despite that widely held misconception).

I think at the end of the ARO presentation I'm going to give people a black history suggested reading list. And since I have been thinking about reading lists alot lately, here's the first few that will be on my ARO list: