Hosted by: University of South Carolina Humanities Collaborative
Dates: April 13-14, 2026
Location: Karen J. Williams Courtroom, Joseph F. Rice School of Law, 1525 Senate Street, Columbia, SC 29208
Overview: This conference is the capstone of a three-year Mellon-funded project examining “Civic Engagement, Voting Rights, and the Founding Documents at the University of South Carolina.” It will focus on the “civic engagement” element of this mandate, which is of special interest given the growth of civics education at USC and around the country.
Keynote speakers include Peter Levine (Tufts), Deva Woodly (Brown), Jed Purdy (Duke), Kate Andrias (Columbia), Jamila Michener (Cornell), Joan Blades (Living Room Conversations), and journalist / filmmaker Astra Taylor (Debt Collective). Their talks, and the surrounding discussions, will address the tensions and complementarities between two equally critical forms of civic engagement: building organized power among allies, and finding common ground across divides.
About the Speakers
· Peter Levine is the Lincoln Filene Professor of Citizenship & Public Affairs at the Jonathan Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts University. A political philosopher and political scientist specializing in civic life, he has been a leading figure in developing Civic Studies as an international intellectual movement. The author of eight books, most recently We Are the Ones We Have Been Waiting For: The Promise of Civic Renewal in America and What Should We Do? A Theory of Civic Life, Levine has also served on the boards and steering committees of numerous national civic organizations, and is the founder of CIRCLE (The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement).
· Deva Woodly is a Professor of Political Science at Brown University, where her research focuses on social movements, public discourse, democratic practice, race, media, and political communication. She is the author of The Politics of Common Sense: How Social Movements Use Public Discourse to Change Politics and Win Acceptance and Reckoning: Black Lives Matter and the Democratic Necessity of Social Movements. Woodly has held fellowships at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and at the Edmund J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard. Her work centers work centers the perspective of ordinary citizens and political challengers with an eye toward how the demos impacts political action and shapes political possibilities.
· Jed Purdy is Raphael Lemkin Distinguished Professor of Law at Duke University School of Law. A prolific scholar, Purdy teaches and writes about environmental, property, and constitutional law as well as legal and political theory. Purdy is the author of Two Cheers for Politics: Why Democracy Is Scary, Flawed, and Our Best Hope and This Land is Our Land: The Struggle for a New Commonwealth, which explores how the land has historically united and divided Americans.
· Kate Andrias is the Patricia D. and R. Paul Yetter Professor of Law at Columbia Law School, where she directs the Center for Constitutional Governance and the Columbia Labor Lab. An expert of constitutional law and labor law, Andrias has written extensively about the failure of U.S. labor law to protect workers’ rights; the relationship between constitutional governance, economic inequality, and democracy; and law and social movements. Before becoming a law professor, Andrias served as Associate Counsel to President Barack Obama and chief of staff in the White House Counsel’s Office and as a law clerk to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg ’59 on the U.S. Supreme Court and Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. She also worked as a union organizer with the Service Employees International Union.
· Jamila Michener is an Associate Professor of Government at Cornell University. Her research interests are American politics and policy, with a particular focus on the political causes and consequences of poverty and racial inequality. Her work explores the conditions under which economically and racially disadvantaged groups engage in the political process, the effects of that engagement, and the role of the state in shaping the political and economic trajectories of marginalized communities. Her recent book, Fragmented Democracy: Medicaid, Federalism and Unequal Politics, examines how Medicaid affects democratic citizenship.
· Joan Blades is a political activist, author, and co-founder of Living Room Conversations, which fosters respectful dialogue across political differences. She is also a co-founder of the grassroots organizations MoveOn and MomsRising. Blades co-authored The Motherhood Manifesto, which won the Ernesta Drinker Ballard Book Prize, and The Custom-Fit Workplace, a Nautilus award winner.
· Astra Taylor is a filmmaker, writer, and organizer whose work explores democracy, economic inequality, and collective action. Taylor has authored several books, including The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age, which won the American Book Award. She is the director of the documentaries including Examined Life, What Is Democracy?, and other films. Taylor is also a co-founder of Debt Collective, a debtor-led union that has organized campaigns for student debt cancellation and economic justice.
About the Mellon-funded “Civic Engagement, Voting Rights, and the Founding Documents”
Beginning in fall 2023, the Humanities Collaborative has enhanced its research and teaching of America’s founding documents through a $500,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation, the nation’s largest funder of the arts, culture, and humanities.
This grant supports scholarship that examines how anti-majoritarian institutions work in tandem with anti-democratic practices in American politics—and how ordinary citizens can come together to challenge and reshape those practices. Many anti-majoritarian institutions trace their origins to the founding era in U.S. history. Anti-majoritarianism also manifests through political projects that make democracy more difficult for others—including voting abuses during Jim Crow. Thus, the American project of achieving a just and equitable society—"a more perfect Union," as the Constitution aspires—must contend with these anti-majoritarian impulses and institutions.
Samuel Bagg (Political Science) coordinates research efforts that allow scholars, students, and the public to investigate the struggle for equal citizenship from the founding era through our present moment. This work culminates in a capstone conference in April 2026, focused on the meaning "civic engagement" and its role in realizing American democratic ideals.
About the Humanities Collaborative
The Humanities Collaborative, based in the University of South Carolina’s McCausland College of Arts and Sciences, takes a wide view of humanistic inquiry, including research and conversations that cross disciplines, schools, and the academic / public divide. Its programs include intellectual, creative, and investigative endeavors that span traditional humanities disciplines, the creative and performing arts, the social and natural sciences, as well as questions that arise from schools such as law, business, medicine, and public health. Its programs are part of a new vision of the humanities that includes public outreach and community collaboration with partners across our state, the US, and the world.
Founded in January 2021, the Humanities Collaborative sponsors grants, lectures, workshops, seminars, and working groups to bring humanities scholarship to broad and diverse audiences within and beyond the University of South Carolina.
About the 2021 South Carolina REACH Act
South Carolina Act 26 of 2021, hereinafter the “REACH Act” requires undergraduate students to complete a three-credit course that requires, at a minimum, the reading of the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, the Emancipation Proclamation, five Federalist Papers, and one document foundational to the African American Struggle; hereinafter collectively known as the “Founding Documents.”
Agenda:
Monday (April 13):
1:00-2:00pm: Welcome Lunch for Keynotes, Core Participants, and Local Hosts (w/ opening remarks from Sam Bagg)
2:00-2:10pm: Welcome from Dean Thomas Hodges, McCausland College of Arts and Sciences
2:10-3:30pm: Peter Levine (Tufts): “What was civic education, and what can it become?"
3:50-5:10pm: Jamila Michener (Cornell): Title TBD
5:30-6:50pm: Joan Blades (Living Room Conversations) “What can we learn by talking to people different from us?”
7:30-9:30pm: Dinner for Keynotes, Core Participants, and Local Hosts (City Grit)
Tuesday (April 14):
9:00-10:20am: Jed Purdy (Duke): “What must we have in common?”
10:40-12:00pm: Kate Andrias (Columbia): “Can the people still change the constitution?”
12:00-1:20pm: Lunch (available to anyone who registers in advance)
1:20-2:40pm: Deva Woodly (Brown): “What are third spaces, and why do they matter for democracy and social movements?”
3:00-4:20pm: Astra Taylor (Debt Collective) “Why has solidarity been overlooked and how do we build it?”
4:40-6:00pm: Breakout Sessions w/ Keynotes and Core Participants
6:00-7:30pm: Closing Reception for Keynotes, Core Participants, and Local Hosts
