Fall 2025 Offerings
Once again, we will offer the “Just Write” Coffeehouse in which participants join each other online once a week to… just write. Hosted by OI staff and friends, the table is a chance to share your writing goals, however small, and work alongside other writers. Table size is limited to 15 so that everyone has a chance to share their goals each session. This semester’s session day and time is WEDNESDAYS 3:00-5:00 PM ET.
Interested? Email us at oieahc@wm.edu with a two-page c.v. and a one-paragraph description of your project in process.
We also will offer a new year of the popular OI Digital Projects Coffeehouse. We hope you join us!
In addition, we are excited to announce two new OI Coffeehouse tables for the 2025-2026 academic year and the two inaugural OI Coffeehouse Fellows who will host them. Read more below and apply before midnight, October 12!
QUESTIONS? Email us directly at oieahc@wm.edu.
2025-2026 OI Coffeehouse Fellowship Tables
Please send your application to be part of either of the tables described below by MIDNIGHT on SUNDAY, October 12. Tables will commence the following week. Application materials are described below for each table.
“Oceanic Perspectives on Vast Early America” with Sarah Finley will meet on Wednesdays, from 4:00-5:30 pm EST (specific dates TBD). Table size is limited to 12 participants.
Table Description
In conversations about vast early America, the sea has become an essential lens for examining diverse human and more-than-human perspectives while challenging ethnic, geographic and subject boundaries. This work converges in the interdisciplinary field of the Blue Humanities, which explores how interactions with watery environments shape knowledge, culture, movement and ways of being. While deeply relevant to contemporary debates about conservation and interconnectedness, the Blue Humanities also offers unique insights into our shared past, particularly from a global perspective. With this context in mind, “Oceanic Perspectives on Vast Early America” unites allied university scholars and public humanities professionals to explore the ocean as a site of inquiry and forge ties with like-minded colleagues. Above all, this OI Coffeehouse aims to establish lasting connections among participants who wish to develop large-scale projects in conversation. It takes the format of a study group, where participants can strengthen theoretical knowledge of the ocean to support progress on individual endeavors. “Oceanic Perspectives on Vast Early America” invites participants at all career stages—including ABD graduate students, faculty, curators and public humanities professionals—who are engaged with oceanic early America across the Atlantic and Pacific. Applicants developing substantial initiatives related to the topic are especially welcome.
An introduction to Sarah Finley
Sarah Finley is Associate Professor of Spanish at Christopher Newport University, with expertise on sound, music and writing in colonial Mexico. Broadly, her research seeks to draw marginalized voices into musical and historical canons, particularly from perspectives of race and gender. She is the author of two books: Hearing Voices: Aurality and New Spanish Sound Culture in Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz (University of Nebraska Press, 2019) and Amplifications of Black Sound from Colonial Mexico: Vocality and Beyond (Vanderbilt University Press, 2024). In addition to these studies, Finley has published articles and book chapters in Mexico, the United Kingdom and the United States, including an award-winning biography of Sor Juana’s musical patron the Countess of Villaumbrosa. Her current projects include: a co-edited special issue of Atlantic Studies dedicated to sound in the 17th– and 18th-century North Atlantic, a book-length translation and commentary of Sor Juana’s musico-poetic works and an exploration how oceanic flows and the natural world shaped early Mexican music. She currently serves as President of the Grupo de Estudios sobre la Mujer en España y las Américas (pre-1800) and holds a seat on the Modern Language Association Delegate Assembly.
To apply for Oceanic Perspectives, please email the following to oieahc@wm.edu:
- An abbreviated c.v.
- The working title of your large-scale project related to the Blue Humanities along with a 3-5-sentence description of that project
- Any broadly relevant readings you would like to discuss (optional)
“Whose History, Whose Voice? The Future of Interpreting Enslavement at Historic Sites” with Kristin Gallas will meet on alternate Tuesdays, from 9:00-11:00 am EST. Table size is limited to 8 participants.
Table Description
This Coffeehouse Table will bring together practitioners and researchers who tell stories of enslavement. This group will focus on the theoretical and practical aspects of interpretating enslavement, which will yield rich and actionable insights. Participants will discuss theory and methodology based on short readings, reviews of writings in progress, and discussions with other leading practitioners in the field.
The participants for this table will be both leading and emerging historians, public historians, curators, and museum educators, including descendants of enslaved people and enslavers. These auteurs will bring unique perspectives and experiences to the conversation, which will help illuminate the knowledge and skills the field needs to make forward movements in how we tell the stories of enslavement and enslaved people. In addition to representatives from early American northern and southern plantation sites, the table will also welcome participants from small farms and industrial sites across the North and Midwest where enslaved people were forced to labor, maritime ports of the eastern seaboard, and houses of worship where enslaved people’s lives and labor paid for sumptuous architecture.
The proceedings from the Coffeehouse will help shape the direction for and writing of chapters in the forthcoming book, Interpreting Enslavement at Museums and Historic Sites (Bloomsbury Publishing). The book will bring together the latest practices of interpreting the history and legacies of African chattel slavery – the system and individual lived experiences – and share them with the field.
An introduction to Kristin Gallas
Kristin Gallas, principal of MUSE Consulting, is an award-winning museum educator with nearly 30 years of experience in the public history field. She is the author of Interpreting Slavery with Children and Teens at Museums and Historic Sites (Rowman and Littlefield, October 2021), which serves as a vital resource for engaging young audiences with the history and legacies of slavery. She is the co-editor of Interpreting Slavery at Museums and Historic Sites (Rowman & Littlefield, January 2015) and has contributed to numerous publications on best practices in museum education, including as primary author of the American Association for State and Local History’s 250th Anniversary Program Handbook. Kristin earned a bachelor’s in education from University of Vermont and a master’s in museum education from George Washington University. Her work spans the country, from Washington, D.C., Virginia, Louisiana, Kentucky, and Montana, to all six New England states, where she has collaborated with museums and historic sites to enhance their educational programs and interpretive strategies.
To apply for Whose History, Whose Voice?, please email the following to oieahc@wm.edu:
- An abbreviated c.v.
- A description of your experience working in public history at sites/museums that interpret the history African chattel slavery in the English-American colonies and the United States as well as notes on any lived or professional experiences that you feel would be relevant to the discussion. Descendants of enslaved people and enslavers are encouraged to apply.
About the OI Coffeehouse
Begun in winter 2021 as a way of bringing people together virtually while the pandemic kept us apart physically, the OI Coffeehouse has proven a valuable online gathering place for many in the early Americanist community. The OI provides a Zoom room as well as staff help in opening that room and managing the group. Tables meet online weekly or bi-weekly for one-two hours during regular business hours (ET).