The 2026 Stowe Symposium: Stowe in Context & Conversation

The Stowe Center for Literary Activism gathers scholars, students, and readers for the Stowe Symposium — a day of inquiry and shared conversation centered on Harriet Beecher Stowe. This year’s theme, “Stowe in Context & Conversation,” invites us to situate Stowe within the moral, political, and literary currents of the 19th century — and to ask how her work continues to shape public life today. Across panels, roundtables, and keynote address, the symposium explores: * Stowe in her historical moment * The domestic, theological, and intellectual worlds she inhabited * Her anti-slavery literary imagination * The ongoing legacy of her work beyond Uncle Tom’s Cabin The Stowe Symposium is both scholarly and public — a space where research meets reflection and history meets the present.