QUESTIONS OF POWER AT “AMERICA 250”

The 2026 Theme

Throughout 2026, the media, entertainment, and attention landscape in the United States has revolved around questions of the country’s history, values, and impact. Major events like the country’s “250th birthday” and the FIFA World Cup offered opportunities to both reflect on and tell particular stories about who and what the U.S. is. These opportunities have been seized by government bodies at national, state, and local levels, corporations, universities, sports teams, and more. Through their events, marketing, and statements, such entities bolster a dominant “common sense” of how to understand the U.S. – its past, present, and future. These framings ultimately paint a picture of national triumph and exceptionalism, one defined by unity, justice, equity, progress, and arrival to its ultimate purpose. 

Yet despite these claims, a “more perfect union” has never been a reality. For this year’s Public Anthropology Conference, we’re taking the buzz of this moment as a starting point to interrogate this celebratory picture and offer different, more grounded understandings of the nation. This includes asking questions such as:

• What stories, evidence, and experience push back on the celebratory picture of the nation — both historically and today? 

• For whom has equality been a promise, and for whom has it been out of reach or actively denied? 

• How does inequality get created, and why does it persist?

• How are people resisting, organizing, and fighting for change?

• How does history get remembered — or left out — in service of these narratives?

• How and why are such questions relevant not only within formal national borders but crucially in a broader geopolitical landscape?

Possible session themes