Recent & Upcoming Events

October 23, 2026

Hidden Histories: Exploring Black Women’s Lives through Nellie B. Nicholson’s 1911 Scrapbook

Pembroke Center for Teaching & Research on Women, Brown University

October 19, 2026

Home to Harlem: Celebrating Black Bibliography at the Schomburg Center

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, co-sponsored by the Bibliographical Society of America

May 7, 2026

Exhibition opening for “To Uncover and Reveal to the World”

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

April 6, 2026

“Mobilizing Manuscripts: L. D. Reddick and Black Archival Politics”

Spring Lecture, Society of American Archivists, Archival History Section (virtual)

White cover of book with black text: Scattered and Fugitive Things: How Black Collectors Created Archives and Remade History, Laura E. Helton. In center of book is a yellow square background and in the foreground a black-and-white reproduction of a painting of a woman in an elegant jacket and hat, holding a book, by Winold Reiss.

February 12, 2026

LHRT Reads: Book discussion and Author Q&A for Scattered and Fugitive Things

Library History Roundtable (virtual)

Image of Helton sitting at seminar table in front of slideshow.

November 12, 2025

“Scattered and Fugitive Things: Queer Readings on Black Archives”

Women and Gender Studies Institute, University of Toronto

October 17, 2025

“Scattered and Fugitive Things: On the History and Future of Black Collections”

Research@Winterthur Series, Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library

September 3, 2025

Book talk and signing for Scattered and Fugitive Things

Library of Virginia

May 1, 2025

A Century of Preserving Black Freedom: Libraries and Archives in the Tradition of Arturo Schomburg

Conversations in Black Freedom Studies

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (virtual)

March 15, 2025

Africana Arts & Humanities Festival

African American Research Library and Cultural Center

Ft. Lauderdale, FL

February 21, 2025

Author Conversation for “The Bookworm”

William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan (virtual)

January 24, 2025

“Remaking the World of Arturo Schomburg,” Arturo Schomburg Annual Lecture

Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture

December 3, 2024

Book talk for Scattered and Fugitive Things

Lehman Center for American History, Columbia University

October 17, 2024

Black Metropolis Research Consortium

Public Lecture on Scattered and Fugitive Things: How Black Collectors Created Archives and Remade History

Vivian G. Harsh Collection, Woodson Regional Library, Chicago Public Library

Check out card from Roanoke Public Library, Gainsboro branch, 1930s, from Gainsboro Library Archives

June 25, 2024, 6:30 pm

Public Lecture, “Defiant Libraries: Virginia Lee and the Secrets Kept by Good Bookladies”

Roanoke Public Library

Dumas Center