Tuesday, November 1
3:30-5:00 p.m.
McKenzie 375

Royal Purple and Indigo: the Hidden Labor Behind Luxurious Dyes 

Perhaps no other color in history has been so celebrated and so reviled as the color purple. Although it has come to be known as the shade of royalty, the workers who labored to make the mucus-based dye in the Roman Mediterranean were often viewed as lowly and as smelly as the mollusks the harvested. During the later Roman empire, these workers were even subject to state control within a caste-like system that made their jobs hereditary. If we look to the history of another purplish hue, indigo, we see a similar regulation of the labor force — and the very bodies — of those enslaved workers used to produce it in the Antebellum South. From diamonds to coal to Tyrian purple to indigo, the workers who create luxury goods often do not enjoy the same status as their products. This lecture looks at the archaeological and literary evidence for these often-invisible workers in order to reconstruct the lives of ancient dye workers, while also reminding us of the enslaved labor that continues to create the products we use or the buildings we admire even today. 

Sarah E. Bond is Associate Professor of History and the Director of Undergraduate Studies in the History Department at the University of Iowa. She is the author of Trade and Taboo: Disreputable Professions in the Roman Mediterranean (University of Michigan Press, 2016) and numerous articles on Roman labor unions, late antique law, and ancient artisans. She was a columnist for Forbes and is now a regular contributor at Hyperallergic, with articles in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and many other public history publications.

In a dynamic, lightning-round discussion, a lineup of historians and philosophers will each introduce a “little tool of knowledge”: those basic building blocks and forgotten infrastructures that do so much to direct inquiry.

Friday, May 27, 2022
3:00–5:00 p.m.
McKenzie Hall 375 (view on map)

Each speaker will focus on one of the often forgotten yet extremely powerful, mundane ways in which academic professionals organize and access knowledge. Individual presentations will be followed by general Q & A. All are welcome to attend.

Schedule

3:00–3:05  Welcome

3:05–3:15  Ramón Alvarado, the Perceptron

3:15–3:25  Christoph Rass, the Index Card

3:25–3:35  Colin Koopman, the Form

3:45–3:55  Ian McNeely, the CV

3:55–4:05  Lindsay Frederick Braun, the Noting Plan

4:05–4:15  Vera Keller, the List

4:15–5:00  Q and A with the Rountable

The Department of History is pleased to welcome Amrita Chakrabarti Myers, professor of history at Indiana University, as the 2022 Pierson Lecture speaker.

“When the Archives Don’t Easily Speak: The Life and Times of Julia Chinn”

Tuesday, May 17, 2022
3:30–5:00 p.m.
Gerlinger Alumni Lounge, Gerlinger Hall

Talk begins at 3:30 p.m, immediately followed by reception. Free and open to the public.

History and Social Justice

Amrita Chakrabarti Myers earned her doctorate in U.S. History from Rutgers University, specializing in African American History and Women’s History. A historian of Black Women, her research focuses on race, gender, power, and freedom in the Old South.

Dr. Myers has been the recipient of several awards for her scholarship, including a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies; the 2012 Julia Cherry Spruill Book Prize from the Southern Association of Women Historians; and the 2011 Anna Julia Cooper-C.L.R. James Book Prize from the National Council for Black Studies.

Professor Myers’ social justice work was recognized with the Martin Luther King, Jr. “Building Bridges Award” from Indiana University in 2017. That work has taken many forms, on and off campus. In 2015 she was the lead organizer of “It’s Not So Black and White: Talking Race, From Ferguson to Bloomington,” a Black Lives Matter teach-in, and in 2017 she organized a Town Hall titled, “Violent Intersections: Women of Color in the Age of Trump.” This led to the creation of IU’s “Social Justice in America Series,” events designed to bring town and gown together each year to have “tough talks on tough topics.” In 2020, the SJAS theme was “Defending Democracy: Confronting Voter Suppression and White Supremacy in the New Millennium.”

Myers is regularly interviewed by the media about racial justice matters. In 2018 she appeared on PBS NewsHour with Judy Woodruff to talk about unconscious bias, and in 2020 she was invited to discuss Juneteenth and equity issues on “Fox and Friends.” She has been one of the co-anchors of Indiana’s award-winning WFHB African American radio show, “Bring It On!” since 2015 and has published op-eds and been cited in various publications including the Louisville Courier-Journal, Washington Post, Indianapolis Star, and the Bloomington Herald-Times.

Her first book, Forging Freedom: Black Women and the Pursuit of Liberty in Antebellum Charleston, was published by UNC Press in 2011. Her second monograph, The Vice President’s Black Wife: The Untold Life of Julia Chinn, will be released by Ferris & Ferris Books in 2023. Myers is an Associate Editor at the Journal of American History and is the Ruth N. Halls Associate Professor of History and Gender Studies at Indiana University in Bloomington.

Pierson Lecture Tradition

The Annual Pierson Lecture is a Department of History tradition that spans back to 1993, when it was founded to honor Stan and Joan Pierson. The Piersons were both exemplary citizens of the community, dedicated to history and education as proven by their distinguished records of intellectual accomplishment and community involvement. This lecture series brings distinguished scholars to the University of Oregon, so that they may share their work in alignment with the Piersons’ interests in cultural, intellectual, and political life.

Learn more about past lectures and speakers.

The Eugene History Pub Talks presents:

“Displacing Black Portland: A History of Housing Discrimination”
Featuring Zachary Stocks, Oregon Black Pioneers

Monday, May 9
7:00–8:30 p.m. PDT
Live via Zoom (RSVP below)

This event is cosponsored by the University of Oregon’s Department of History, Lane County History Museum, and Viking Braggot Co. Open to the public and free to attend.

Register for Event

Please sign up by 5:00 p.m., May 9, to receive Zoom event link.

This event has passed.

For any questions, please email felaw@uoregon.edu.

The History Guild presents

“The Nuclear Exceptionalists: Planning for a Post-Carbon Age in France, 1955–1974”
with professor Joseph Bohling, Department of History, Portland State University

Monday, May 16, 2022
5:00–6:30 p.m. Pacific time
Live via Zoom

About the Speaker

Joseph Bohling of Portland State University is a , professor of the history of modern France and Europe, the history of capitalism, international political economy, food and energy regimes. His current research project, Power to the Republic: The Oil Crisis and France’s Search for Energy Independence, 1969–1992, examines how France’s oil dependency has affected the economy and state authority in the country.

The Guild

Comprised of all interested history graduate students enrolled at the University of Oregon, the History Guild fulfills the role as the program’s graduate student organization. For the thirty or so graduate students in the history program, the History Guild a useful vehicle to get acquainted, stay informed, share resources, and gain insight from seasoned veterans of the many challenges in graduate school.

Leather-bound manuscripts with centuries worth of reports, speculation, and hearsay about Ore Mountain mines. Photo Credit: Sebastian Felten

The Department of History presents guest speaker, Sebastian Felten:

“History as Resource: Mining Metals and Collecting Data in Central Europe”

Monday, May 2, 2022
3:30–5:00 p.m.
Erb Memorial Union, Diamond Lake Room
(EMU 119 — see on map)

Open to the public, free to attend. For questions, email Fela McWhorter at felaw@uoregon.edu.

The origin of modern sustainability is often presented as a story of ecological rationalization: Managers in early modern Europe became aware of limited carrying capacities of farms and forests, embraced holistic thinking, and developed techniques to make soils yield grain and wood for years on end. This talk presents an alternative genealogy of modern sustainability by highlighting mining in the Ore Mountains (stretching between today’s Czech Republic and Germany). As elsewhere in Central Europe, miners developed a form of restrained extraction that mirrored scientific forestry and agronomy in being slow-paced, oriented towards a remote future, and aiming for total use of available deposits.

To explain this mode of extraction, this talk examines why actors— from Renaissance scholars to technical experts in the Enlightenment—collected data about past mining activities. How did the material needs of mining infrastructure turn history into a resource? And conversely, how did historical thinking shape the allocation of material resources? While Ore Mountain mining declined in the 19th century, the Mining Academy in Freiberg attracted engineers and managers from Europe, its empires, liberated South America, Japan, and the USA. Through this conduit, history continued to be a resource for geopolitics and resource economics at the heyday of Euro-American imperialism.

About the Speaker

Sebastian Felten (PhD, King’s College London) is Universitätsassistent at the Department of History at the University of Vienna and the author of Money in the Dutch Republic: Everyday Practice and Circuits of Exchange (Cambridge, 2022). He is a Visiting Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford’s Europe Center and was a fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science Berlin (MPIWG) between 2015 and 2018. A collective volume on Histories of Bureaucratic Knowledge, which is the result of a working group at the MPIWG (co-convened with Christine von Oertzen), was published in December 2020. Recent publications include papers on Enlightenment ergonomics, distributed cognition in early modern mines, the revival of early modern mining culture during the Nazis’ war effort, and bureaucratic rationality. Twitter: @fesastian

The Eugene History Pub Talks presents:

“Russia’s War in Ukraine” with Julie Hessler, associate professor of history, University of Oregon.

Monday, April 11
7:00–8:30 p.m. PDT
Live via Zoom (RSVP below)

Julie Hessler is historian of the Soviet Union with interests spanning social, economic, cultural, and political history. Her first book, A Social History of Soviet Trade: Trade Policy, Retail Practices, and Consumption, 1917–1953 (Princeton University Press, 2004), explored the social consequences of socialism in the retail sector, including the changing contours of black market activity and shifts in consumption, over three and a half decades of Soviet rule. 

Hessler’s current research concerns Soviet cultural relations with Africa and Asia, such as Soviet universities’ accommodation of international students from the Third World, and she is working on her latest book, about anti-imperial solidarity in Soviet culture.

This event is cosponsored by the University of Oregon’s Department of History, Lane County History Museum, and Viking Braggot Co. Open to the public and free to attend.

Register for Event

Please sign up by 5:00 p.m., April 11, to receive Zoom event link.

This event has passed.

For any questions, please email felaw@uoregon.edu.

The Department of History proudly presents the 2022 Carroll Lecture:

“Two Tales of a German City: Big Data and Urban History from the Nazis to the ‘Economic Miracle'”
featuring Christoph Rass, Spring 2022 Carroll Visiting Professor

Tuesday, April 12, 2022
3:30–5:00 p.m.
Gerlinger Alumni Lounge, Gerlinger Hall (view on map)
refreshments served

Osnabrück

Osnabrück is an average German city in Northwestern Germany and may be known best for hosting the peace agreement of 1648 that ended the Thirty Years War. Lauded at the “City of Peace,” it is also the hometown of pacifist writer Erich Maria Remarque, author of the famous World War I novel All Quiet on the Western Front.

In current times, however, Osnabrück is the first city in Germany whose 20th century social history is being told using large datasets gathered from historical sources. In a series of research projects, Christoph Rass and his team have digitized mass data on all soldiers from the town killed during the First World War. Rass has also researched regional Gestapo records during the Nazi period and registration files for foreigners moving to Osnabrück from 1930 to 1980. This data, analyzed and visualized with geographical information systems (GIS), opens new perspectives on urban history, social change, and key events in modern German history—events like World War I, Nazi rule, and the production of “Volksgemeinschaft,” or the path towards migration-induced diversity on unprecedented scales during the recruitment of “guestworkers” from the 1950s to the 1970s.

This map shows a time-cube visualization of Gestapo actions in Osnabrück 1933 to 1945. Red indicates areas of intense surveillance and repression.

This map shows a time-cube visualization of settlement patterns for non-German migrants moving to Osnabrück from 1930 to 1980, representing the city’s path to a diverse society.

This lecture introduces the audience to the methods of data-driven research and provides insights into some of the stunning findings yielded by the groundbreaking possibilities opened up by digital history. The event is open to the public and free to attend. For questions, contact Fela McWhorter at felaw@uoregon.edu.

Christoph Rass

Dr. Christoph Rass is Professor for Modern History and Historical Migration Studies at Osnabrück University and board member of the Institute for Migration Research and Intercultural Studies. In his research on migration, social change, organized violence and war he has pioneered digital methods and interdisciplinary work through many of his projects. His current work on the Gestapo card file index is funded by the German Research Foundation, funding for project on the Osnabrück foreigners register is provided by the Volkswagen Foundation.

Carroll Professorship

The Benjamin H. and Louise L. Carroll Visiting Professor in Urbanization was established by Louise Carroll Wade (1928–2016), the third-ever woman to become a professor in the University of Oregon’s Department of History. In 2000, Wade created the Carroll visiting professorship in honor of her late parents, Benjamin and Louise Carroll.

The position has previously been held by Carl Abbott, professor of urban history, and Wei Li, professor of Asian Pacific American studies. Christoph Rass joins the UO as a lecturer and instructor during the spring 2022 term, teaching a course on Europe and Migration and collaborating on research with associate professor Julie Weise, historian of migrations.

Please join us for the next Eugene History Pub talk!

“Imagined San Francisco: Digital Mapping and Public History”
featuring Ocean Howell, associate professor of history

Monday, March 14, 2022
7:00–8:30 p.m. PST
Virtual via Zoom

Ocean Howell specializes in architectural and urban history, focusing on how the built environment both reflected and shaped social experience in the twentieth-century United States. He is the author of Making the Mission: Planning and Ethnicity in San Francisco (University of Chicago Press, 2015) as well as articles on the spatial politics of youth culture.

Imagined San Francisco is a web-based project that visually recounts the history of urban planning in San Francisco. Through tools like digital mapping, this project illustrates not just the results urban planning but also the processes and series of changes that lead to the city’s development.

This event is cosponsored by the University of Oregon’s Department of History, Lane County History Museum, and Viking Braggot Co. Open to the public and free to attend.

Register for Event

Please sign up by 5:00 p.m., March 13 to receive Zoom event link.

This event has passed.

For any questions, please email felaw@uoregon.edu.

A panel on the Russia/Ukraine crisis, sponsored by the European Studies Program.

Monday, March 7, 2022
4:00–5:15 p.m.
LLC Performance Hall South (view on map)

With brief remarks from panelists followed by Q&A with the audience. For more information, email Nathalie Hester at nhester@uoregon.edu.

Julie Hessler
Historian of the Soviet Union and associate professor in the Department of History

Alec Murphy
Political-cultural geographer, with regional specialties in Europe and the Middle East, and professor emeritus in the Department of Geography

Keith Eddins
Former American diplomat and pro tem instructor at the School of Law in Conflict and Dispute Resolution (CRES) and Planning, Public Policy, and Management (PPPM)

Craig Parsons
Professor of comparative politics in the Department of Political Science

Wednesday, March 2, 2022
12:20 p.m.–1:20 p.m.
Knight Library, DREAM Lab (1st floor)

William D. Fenton (1853-1925), general counsel for the Southern Pacific Railroad in Oregon, was an avid book collector and one of the founders of the Oregon Historical Society, whose publications of primary sources in Oregon history (“Sources of the History of Oregon”) were once produced out of UO’s Department of Economics and History and printed in Eugene. Fenton’s library is currently part of UO’s Special Collections, and UO’s Fenton Hall is named after him. However, the ways in which this cultural activity in textual editing and book collecting intermeshed with social injustice have been largely forgotten. The many historical works of exploration in Fenton’s collection were not primarily practical guides to settlement. Rather, they served to buttress a cultural view of the white pioneer which in turn justified claims to territory. The editors of “Sources of the History of Oregon” explicitly framed the accounts of settlement they published as documents of the “’war of the races’ in the Pacific Northwest.”

Through student presentations on individual books in the Fenton collection, Vera Keller‘s seminar in the History of the Book will take a collective, critical look at the role that editing and collecting historical sources served in Oregon settler society.

This course is supported with a Coleman-Guitteau Teaching Professorship from the Oregon Humanities Center.

Eugene History Pub Talks presents

“Eminent Oregonians: Three Who Matter”
Monday, December 13, 2021
7:00–8:30 p.m. PST
Live via Zoom (registration required, see below)

Authors and historians Jane Kirkpatrick, Steve Forrester, and R. Gregory Nokes discuss the lives of three prominent figures in Oregon’s history: Abigail Scott Duniway, suffragette and women’s rights activist; US Senator Richard Neuberger; and 19th century settler Jesse Applegate.

This event is cosponsored by the University of Oregon’s Department of History, Lane County History Museum, Oregon State Capitol Foundation, and Viking Braggot Co. Open to the public and free to attend. For any questions, please email felaw@uoregon.edu.

Register for Event

Registration deadline—5:00 p.m. PST, December 13. Zoom information will be emailed to attendees.

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Eugene History Pub Talks presents

“Black Exclusion and the 1858 Exodus to British Columbia: African Americans’ Search for Civil Rights in Oregon, California and the British Empire” with Stacey Smith, associate professor of history, Oregon State University

Monday, November 8
7:00–8:30 p.m. PDT
Live via Zoom (RSVP below)

This event is cosponsored by the University of Oregon Department of History, Lane County History Museum, and Viking Braggot Company. Free to attend and open to the public.

RSVP for Event

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About the Speaker

Stacey Smith specializes in the history of the North American West, with a particular emphasis on race relations, labor, and politics during the Civil War and Reconstruction eras. She teaches courses on the American West and the Civil War and Reconstruction as well as the US history survey.

Smith’s book, Freedom’s Frontier: California and the Struggle over Unfree Labor, Emancipation, and Reconstruction (University of North Carolina Press, 2013), won the inaugural David Montgomery award in US labor and working-class history from the Organization of American Historians and the Labor and Working-Class History Association. She has also published her work in the Pacific Historical Review, the Oregon Historical Quarterly, and the Journal of the Civil War Era and has written for the New York Times and the Black Past.org.

Her newest book project, An Empire for Freedom, explores African Americans’ migrations to the Pacific Coast in the middle of the nineteenth century and their struggle for equality in the US’s expanding continental empire.

Eugene History Pub talks presents “The True History of Oregon’s Bottle Bill” with Brent Walth, UO School of Journalism

Monday, October 11
7:00–8:30 p.m. PDT
live via Zoom (sign up below)

This event is cosponsored by the University of Oregon Department of History, Lane County History Museum, Oregon State Capitol Foundation, and Viking Braggot Company. Free to attend and open to the public.

RSVP for Event

Please sign up by 5:00 p.m. of the event date to receive the Zoom event link. Contact information submitted will only be used by event organizers for the purpose of the October 11 event.

This event has passed.

About the Speaker

Brent Walth is an assistant professor in the UO School of Journalism, where he teaches courses on writing and reporting. He has also worked as an editor, author, investigator reporter and correspondent. He is the co-founder of the Catalyst Journalism Project, which brings together investigative reporting and solutions journalism to spark action and response to Oregon’s most perplexing issues, and co-director of the Charles Snowden Program for Excellence in Journalism.

This year’s Eugene History Pub Talks kick off with “The War of the Worlds”

In 1938, Orson Welles’ radio production of the science fiction novel The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells caused panic in America’s newsrooms as listeners mistook fiction for fact. Learn about that day with this talk presented by Patrick Lucanio, PhD.

Monday, September 20
7:00 p.m., live via Zoom

To attend this event please RSVP below by 5:00 p.m. of the event day. Zoom link and details will be sent to the email address provided. All information collected in the RSVP will only be used by event organizers for the purpose of the September 20 talk.

The Eugene History Pub series is cosponsored by the University of Oregon Department of History, Lane County History Museum, and Viking Braggot Co.

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About the Speaker

Patrick Lucanio, Radio Redux’s esteemed historian/lecturer, holds a doctorate in telecommunications and film from the University of Oregon where he once served as a visiting professor of film studies teaching film history and science fiction and horror films. He has taught at the university level for 20 years including 17 years at Western Oregon University where in addition to teaching writing and literature he served for two years as director of student media. He has also been an adjunct instructor in film studies at Lane Community College in Eugene, Oregon.

Dr. Lucanio has authored numerous articles on film and broadcasting history and genre studies including “Shooting for the Stars: Captain Video, the Rocket Rangers, and America’s Conquest of Space” in 1950s Rocketman TV Series and Their Fans (2012) edited by Cynthia J. Miller and A. Bowdoin Van Riper. He is the author of Them or Us, a scholarly analysis of 1950s monster movies, and With Fire and Sword, the first historical treatise of “peplum” films, i.e., foreign-made films featuring American body-builders. He authored a history of the Frederic Ziv radio and television syndication company for Science Fiction Theatre: A History of the Television Program 1955–1957 (2011), by Martin Grams, and co-authored with Gary Coville three works on genre history: American Science Fiction Television Series of the 1950s; Jack the Ripper: His Life and Crimes in Popular Entertainment; and Smokin’ Rockets: The Romance of Technology in Film, Radio and Television in the 1950s. The latter, along with Them or Us, was the inspiration for the 2008 documentary Monsters from the Id, for which he was an on-screen contributor.

Currently, Dr. Lucanio edits Radiogram, a 16-page monthly newsletter of the Society to Preserve and Encourage Radio Drama, Variety and Comedy (SPERDVAC) based in Los Angeles.

“The Mind and Memory of Mary McLeod Bethune”

Presented by Kim Warren, Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, School of Social Welfare and Associate Professor of History at the University of Kansas.

Tuesday, May 25, 2021
3:30–5:00 p.m. PDT
Zoom

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This event is cosponsored by University of Oregon Department of History and the Department of Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies.

Kim Warren has traced the political evolution of the most influential African American woman in the 1930s, Mary McLeod Bethune. By the end of her life, Bethune had advised four presidents, convened the largest coalition of black women in the United States, and was often referred to as the “First Lady of the Struggle.” However, she has lived in the scholarly and popular memory simply as a celebrated teacher and a maternal advocate for civil rights. Warren takes Bethune’s story deeper by examining Bethune’s radical thoughts about voting, racial integration, and black feminism before a larger civil rights movement overshadowed her memory. Recently, Mary McLeod Bethune—or at least her memorial statue that will replace a Confederate soldier in the US Capitol Building—has reentered the public imagination as symbol of reconciliation for America’s past with racial and gender inequity.

The Department of History is proud to present the Annual Stan and Joan Pierson Lecture.

“History and Modern Conscience: Evidence from the British Empire”
Priya Satia, author and professor of history, Stanford University

Tuesday, May 18, 2021
3:30–5:00 p.m. PDT
live via Zoom

This event is free and open to all. Consponsored by Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies.

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About the Speaker

Priya Satia is the Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History and Professor of History at Stanford University. She is the award-winning author of Time’s Monster: How History Makes History (Belknap Press/Penguin Allen Lane, 2020). Professor Satia specializes in modern British and British empire history, especially in the Middle East and South Asia.

Pierson Lecture Tradition

The Annual Pierson Lecture is a Department of History tradition that spans back to 1993, when it was founded to honor Stan and Joan Pierson. The Piersons were both exemplary citizens of the community, dedicated to history and education as proven by their distinguished records of intellectual accomplishment and community involvement. This lecture series brings distinguished scholars to the University of Oregon, so that they may share their work in alignment with the Piersons’ interests in cultural, intellectual, and political life.

Click for more information about past lectures and speakers.

The Eugene History Pub talks presents “Oregon and the American West: The Age of Megafires.” Presented by William Robbins, emeritus professor of history, Oregon State University.

Monday, May 10, 2021
7:00–9:00 p.m. PDT
Live via Zoom (RSVP required)

This event is cosponsored by the University of Oregon’s Department of History, Lane County History Museum, and Viking Braggot Co.

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About the Speaker

William G. Robbins is an emeritus professor of history at Oregon State University, where he taught courses on the American West, history of the American Indian, and environmental history. He has authored several books about the history of Oregon and the Pacific Northwest, including Oregon: This Storied Land and Nature’s Northwest: The North Pacific Slope in the Twentieth Century.

Guest speaker Holly Guise, assistant professor in history at the university of New Mexico, presents “Survivance Alliance: Alaska Native Mutual Aid and Sovereignty 1942–1945.”

Tuesday, April 13, 2021
3:30 p.m. PDT
Live via Zoom:
https://uoregon.zoom.us/j/98399678101?pwd=NU9ycHp4QmwvQlR3UWRPMGlYODdPdz09

This is event is cosponsored by the University of Oregon’s Department of History; Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies; and Native American Studies.

About the Speaker

Holly Miowak Guise (Iñupiaq) is an Assistant Professor in History at the University of New Mexico. Her manuscript in progress, “World War II and the First Peoples of the Last Frontier: Alaska Native Voices and Wartime Alaska” focuses on gender, Unangax̂ (Aleut) relocation and internment camps, Native activism/resistance, and Indigenous military service during the war.

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This presentation is free and open to all. Use the Zoom information listed below to join.

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Eugene History Pub presents Jeff Sanders at this upcoming talk “Bulldozer in the Playground.”

Monday, April 12, 2021
7:00–8:30 p.m. PDT
live via Zoom (RSVP required)

This event is cosponsored by the University of Oregon’s Department of History, Lane County History Museum, and Viking Braggot Co.

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About the Speaker

Jeffrey C. Sanders is an associate professor of history at Washington State University and the author of Razing Kids: Youth, Environment, and the Postwar American West (Cambridge University Press, 2020).

The Eugene History Pub talks presents “Jesse Applegate and the Modoc Wars” with R. Gregory Nokes, author and historian:

Monday, March 8, 2021 (rescheduled from February 8)
7:00–9:00 p.m. PST
Live via Zoom (RSVP required)

Spaces to view this event are limited. Please use the form below to RSVP by March 8, 5:00 PM, and we’ll contact you with event details including information on how to join us via Zoom. (Information submitted in the form below will only be used by event organizers for the purpose of the March 8 event.) This event is cosponsored by the University of Oregon Department of History, Lane County History Museum, and Viking Braggot Company.

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About the Speaker

R. Gregory Nokes is the author of Massacred for Gold: The Chinese in Hells Canyon; Breaking Chains: Slavery on Trial in the Oregon Territory; and his latest work: The Troubled Life of Peter Burnett. He travelled the world as a reporter and editor for The Associated Press and The Oregonian. He is a graduate of Willamette University and attended Harvard University as a Nieman Fellow. He and his wife, Candise, live in West Linn, Oregon.

The Department of History hosts guest speaker William Bauer, presenting “We Are the Land: New Perspectives on the History of California’s Native Peoples.”

Tuesday, February 23, 2021
12:15–1:15 p.m. PST
Virtual event

About the Speaker

William J. Bauer, Jr. is an enrolled citizen of the Round Valley Indian Tribes and Professor of History at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Bauer, along with Damon B. Akins, coauthored the upcoming book We Are the Land: A History of Native California (University of California Press, 2021).

The Eugene History Pub talks presents “Jewish Women, A Chinese Game, and the Paradoxes of Postwar Domesticity” with Annelise Heinz, assistant professor of history

Monday, January 11, 2021
7:00–9:00 p.m. PST
Live via Zoom (RSVP required)

Spaces to view this event are limited. Please use the form below to RSVP by January 11, 5:00 PM, and we’ll contact you with event details including information on how to join us via Zoom. (Information submitted in the form below will only be used by event organizers for the purpose of the January 11 event.) This event is cosponsored by the University of Oregon Department of History, Lane County History Museum, and Viking Braggot Company.

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About the Speaker

Assistant Professor Annelise Heinz

Annelise Heinz teaches at the University of Oregon’s Department of History, specializing on modern American history and the intersections of gender, race/ethnicity, and sexuality. Heinz is also the author of the upcoming book, Mahjong: A Chinese Game and the Making of Modern American Culture (Oxford University Press, 2021). Learn more about Professor Heinz’s work: Department of History Faculty

Mahjong: A Chinese Game and the Making of Modern American Culture (Oxford University Press, 2021)

View recording of this event on YouTube: Lane County History Museum

History Pub presents “Woman Suffrage, Racism, and Civil Rights: An Oregon Overview”

With Eliza Canty-Jones, Editor of the Oregon Historical Quarterly and Director of Community Engagement at the Oregon Historical Society

Monday, December 14, 2020
7:00–9:00 p.m.
Live via Zoom (RSVP required)

This program will address Oregon woman-suffrage activism, including national context and with specific information about Black women’s activism, the significance of Native sovereignty, and the impact of xenophobia and citizenship on women’s voting rights.

Hattie Redmond, Oregon Suffragist (OHS Research Library)

Spaces to view this event are limited. Please use the form below to RSVP by December 14, 5:00 PM, and we’ll contact you with event details including information on how to join us via Zoom. (Information submitted in the form below will only be used by event organizers for the purpose of the December 14 event.) This event is cosponsored by the University of Oregon Department of History, Lane County History Museum, and Viking Braggot Company.

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About the Speaker

Eliza E. Canty-Jones is Editor of the Oregon Historical Quarterly and Director of Community Engagement at the Oregon Historical Society. She produces scholarship, public programs, and organizational partnerships that advance complex perspectives on Oregon’s past. Learn more at ohs.org.

View recording of this event on YouTube: Lane County History Museum

History Pub presents “I, Too, Am Eugene” featuring Mark Harris:

Monday, November 9
7:00–9:00 PM
Live via Zoom (RSVP Only)

Spaces to view this event are limited. Please use the form below to RSVP by November 9, 5:00 PM, and we’ll contact you with event details including information on how to join us via Zoom. (Information submitted in the form below will only be used by event organizers for the purpose of the November 9 event.) This event is cosponsored by the University of Oregon Department of History, Lane County History Museum, and Viking Braggot Company.

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I Too, Am Eugene

In 1997 Cheri Turpin created I Too, Am Eugene, a local multicultural history project. She meant multicultural in the sense that multicultural means non-white multiracial. In Mark’s professional career of mental health promotion and substance use disorder prevention, treatment, and recovery, multicultural is defined to be inclusive of race, multiple genders, class, drugs of choice, cultural recovery modality, health disparities, etc.

We acknowledge that most often multicultural is a code word for Black/African-American. The histories of this state, county, and city make them perfect learning laboratories to study systemic racism from the inside, and create innovations.

About the Speaker

Mark Harris, is a maroon griot, an African-American/Indigenous, healer, historian, storyteller, diplomat, musician, and poet. Maroon is a pre-Contact indigenous term in the Taino language, applied to the free African presence on this continent dating back nearly 3 millennia. Simply put: pyramid builders, “kick it” with other pyramid builders. The tradition of creating free complex urban, multiracial and multicultural societies, predates, discovery, colonization and the creation of the American “experiment”.

Cheri Turpin and Mark Harris, at Wiley Griffon Historical Monument, Eugene Masonic Cemetary

I Too, Am Eugene, in taking its name from a poem, from two-spirited Black Indigenous poet Langston Hughes, is simply following a tradition of attempting to tell all our stories, that may have been hidden, to enable greater freedom.

Mark Harris has taken the I Too, Am Eugene sections relevant to Black History, and applied them op-eds in the Eugene Weekly, Register Guard, award-winning KLCC 89.7 FM commentary, in Lane Community College’s Rites of Passage, LCC’s Ethnic Studies, LCC’s Black Student Union, University of Oregon’s Ethnic Studies, and various other projects underway.

View recording of this event on YouTube: Lane County History Museum

History Pub presents “Bohemians West: Free Love, Family and Radicals in Twentieth Century America” featuring Sherry Smith:

Monday, October 12
7:00–9:00 PM
Live via Zoom (RSVP Only)

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Free Love

About the Speaker

View recording of this talk on YouTube: Lane County History Museum

History Pub returns this month with a panel discussion event, cosponsored by Lane County History Museum, University of Oregon’s Department of History, and Viking Braggot Company. Recent months have seen the growing debate about whether or not Lane County should be renamed in response to concerns about racist history. In this event, six guest speakers bring multiple perspectives to the question.

Monday, September 14, 2020
7:00–9:00 p.m.
Live via Zoom (RSVP only)

Spaces to view this event are limited. Please use the form below to RSVP and we’ll contact with you event details. (Information provided will only be used by event organizers for the purpose of the September 14 event.)

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Guest Panel

Pete Sorenson, an attorney, has been a Lane County Commissioner since 1997. Prior to that, he represented the 20th District in the Oregon Legislature, 1993-1997.

Marc Carpenter is a Ph.D. candidate in the UO Department of History. studying indigenous and U.S. history. His dissertation explores how the violence of the American conquest of the Northwest was fought over and forgotten in later decades. He has also written about Harry Lane, Joseph Lane’s son.

Eric Richardson is the Executive Director and former President of the Eugene Springfield NAACP. He is also a jazz musician, who plays bass, and a board member of the Jazz Station.

R. Gregory Nokes is an Oregon historian and the author of The Troubled Life of Peter Burnett: Oregon Pioneer and First Governor of California; Breaking Chains: Slavery on Trial in the Oregon Territory; and Massacred for Gold: The Chinese in Hell’s Canyon.

Esther Stutzman is a Kalapuya and Coos elder and citizen of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz. She is a traditional storyteller and history keeper and chair of the Komemma Cultural Protection Association.

Shannon Applegate is an Oregon historian and descendant of Charles Applegate, who helped blaze the Oregon Trail. She is the author of Skookum: An Oregon Pioneer Family’s History and Lore, among other books.

“The Immigrant Goddess: Worshipping Isis in Roman Greece”

presented by Lindsey A. Mazurek, assistant professor of History and 2019-2020 Oregon Humanities Research Fellow

Monday, March 9, 2020
7:00–8:30 p.m. (doors open at 6:00)
Viking Braggot Southtowne Pub
2490 Willamette Street
food and drinks available

This event is sponsored by the Lane County History Museum, University of Oregon Department of History, Oregon Humanities Center, and Viking Braggot Company.

Lindsey Mazurek is a specialist in ancient history with a focus on the eastern Mediterranean under the Roman Empire. Her research focuses on questions of ethnicity, migration, materiality, and identification in antiquity. Learn more at history.uoregon.edu/profile/lmazurek

Event Poster

This interdisciplinary speakers series celebrates Oregon’s Year of Water, a statewide theme of events hosted by various University of Oregon programs.

Co-organized by the Department of Earth Sciences and the Department of History, the Humans and the Coast talks focus on the interactions between humans and coastal regions. These talks are free and open to the public, sponsored by the UO College of Arts and Sciences, the Departments of Biology, Anthropology, and the Environmental Studies Program.

The Year of Water

Humans and the Coast is part of the Oregon Year of Water. This statewide effort—coordinated by University of Oregon, Oregon State University and Portland State University—highlights the role that Oregon’s research universities play as community and industry leaders and partners seeking to address water-related challenges in Oregon, regionally and worldwide. The Year of Water runs from March 2020 through February 2021 and is sponsored at UO by the Vice President for Research and Innovation (VPRI). Learn more about the Oregon Year of Water on Facebook.

Upcoming Events

Event Cancelled

Paul Holm, “From Hindsight to Foresight: How History May Help Understand Oceans Past and Future”

“Arctic Marine Mammals and Human Communities in Greenland”

Thursday, May 21, 2020
3:30–5:00 p.m.
Knight Library, room 101 (map link to Knight Library)

Kristin Laidre, assistant professor, School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, University of Washington

Past Events

“A Tribal Perspective on Protecting Marine Resources: Jordan Cove Energy, Traditional Cultural Properties, and Environmental Programming”

Thursday, February 27, 2020
Margaret Corvi, Cultural and Natural Resource Consultant, Hanis Coos enrolled with Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw

“The Evolution of Marine Protected Areas: Protecting Biodiversity AND Cultural and Indigenous Rights”

Friday, March 6, 2020
Patrick Christie, professor, School of Marine and Environmental Affairs, University of Washington

Organizers

David Sutherland is an associate professor with the UO Department of Earth Sciences. As an oceanographer, his research focuses on coastal and estuarine systems of the Pacific Northwest and how humans interact with these environments. Learn more about his work at oceanice.org.

Ryan Tucker Jones is an associate professor with the UO Department of History, specializing in the histories of Russia, the Pacific, and global environments. His book Empire of Extinction: Russians and the Strange Beasts of the Sea (Oxford University Press, 2017) describes how Russian naturalists heralded the onset of the Sixth Great Extinction.

The Department of History is pleased to present this book talk with author and historian, Richard Bell.

“Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped into Slavery and Their Astonishing Odyssey Home”

Monday, February 10, 2020
Noon–1:30 p.m.
Erb Memorial Union, Room 146
Crater Lake North Room
This event is free and open to the public

Guest speaker Richard Bell discusses his research and the story behind his new book, Stolen, which covers the grim history of human trafficking and slave traders who “stole away thousands of legally free African Americans from their families in order to fuel slavery’s rapid expansion in the decades before the Civil War.”

A gripping and true story about five boys who were kidnapped in the North and smuggled into slavery in the Deep South—and their daring attempt to escape and bring their captors to justice, reminiscent of Twelve Years a Slave and Never Caught.

Dr. Richard Bell is Associate Professor of History at the University of Maryland and author of the new book Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped into Slavery and Their Astonishing Odyssey Home (2019). He has won more than a dozen teaching awards, including the University System of Maryland Board of Regents Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching, the highest honor for teaching faculty in the Maryland state system. He has held major research fellowships at Yale, Cambridge, and the Library of Congress and is the recipient of the National Endowment of the Humanities Public Scholar award. He serves as a Trustee of the Maryland Historical Society, as an elected member of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and as a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

Learn more about Richard Bell and this book at richard-bell.com and simonandschuster.com

History Pub presents “The Secret Lives of Glaciers” with M Jackson, National Geographic Society Explorer.

Monday, January 13, 2020
7:15 to 8:45 p.m.
Viking Braggot Southtowne Pub
2490 Willamette Street

This event is cosponsored by the UO Department of History, Lane County History Museum, and the Center for Environmental Futures.

M Jackson is a geographer, glaciologist, TED Fellow, and National Geographic Society Explorer. She earned a doctorate from the University of Oregon where she examined how climate change transformed people and glacier communities in Iceland. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow with the UO Center for Environmental Futures. She also serves as an Arctic Expert for the National Geographic Society. She is the author of While Glaciers Slept: Being Human in a Time of Climate Change and The Secret Lives of Glaciers.

History Pub presents

“The Centralia Tragedy: 100-Years Later”

with Steven Beda, assistant professor of history at the University of Oregon Department of History

Monday, December 9, 2019
7:00–8:30 p.m.
Viking Braggot Southtowne Pub
2490 Willamette Street, Eugene

A xenophobic panic had gripped the nation. Fears of socialists and anarchists and other so-called “un-American” political ideologies were running high. In response to these tensions, vigilante groups insisted on arming themselves and policing their towns. All very difficult stuff to imagine today, 100 years later.

Open to the public. Doors open at 6:00 p.m. Food and drinks will be available. This event is cosponsored by the Lane County History Museum and the UO Department of History.

Poster image credit: “The Resurrection of Wesley Everest” by Mike Alewitz

History Workshop presents

“Hidden Fields: The Sphere of Commoner Economic Activity in Early Medieval Southern Kyushu”

Tuesday, November 26, 2019
3:30–5:00 p.m.
McKenzie Hall, room 375
UO Campus

The History Workshop series was created to provide faculty and graduate students opportunity to share their current research and seek feedback on works in progress. All are welcome to attend these events and participate in engaging, intellectual discussion.

This event is sponsored by the University of Oregon Department of History.

About the Speaker

Breann Goosmann is a graduate student in the UO Department of History. Her research focuses on medieval Japan.

Join us for a special guest speaker event:

‘It’s What He Intended’: Translation, Authorial Intent, and Racism in Classics

Presented by Dr. Shelley Haley, Edward North Chair of Classics and Professor of Africana Studies at Hamilton College

Thursday, November 14, 2019
3:30–5:00 p.m.
McKenzie Hall, room 375

This event is free and open to the public. Sponsored by the UO Department of History, Humanities Program, Department of Classics, and the Oregon Humanities Center.

About the Speaker

Shelley Haley is a distinguished professor of Africana Studies at Hamilton College and the Edward North Chair of Classics. She has published numerous articles on race and gender in the Classics, and has even given television interviews for BBC and The Learning Channel.

The Department of History welcomes Professor Christian Anderson, University of South Carolina

“The Reclamation of Memory: Richard T. Greener and the Reconstruction-era University of South Carolina”

Wednesday, November 13, 2019
1:00–2:00 p.m.
McKenzie Hall, room 375

In the fall of 1873 the University of South Carolina admitted its first black student, Henry E. Hayne, and hired its first black professor, Richard T. Greener. Soon thereafter, the majority of students in the Reconstruction-era campus were black, but by 1877 this experiment in desegregation was over, the campus closed as Reconstruction came to an end. It reopened for whites only 1880.

This history was largely unknown or ignored until recently, in no small part due to certain efforts to diminish or erase it. Christian Anderson will discuss the Reconstruction-era University, the only in the south to desegregate after the Civil War, the impact and successes of alumni from this period, and how its history is being reclaimed.

Christian Anderson is associate professor of higher education with the University of South Carolina’s Department of Educational Leadership and Policies. Learn more about his work at christiankanderson.weebly.com

History Pub talks presents “A Voyage to Mongolia’s Reindeer Herders: Conservation in a Changing Climate” featuring Nancy Langston, Mellon Visiting Scholar with the Center for Environmental Futures.

Monday, November 11, 2019
7:00–8:30 p.m. (doors open at 6:00)
Viking Braggot Southtowne Pub
2490 Willamette Street, Eugene

Food and drink will be available.

About the Speaker

Nancy Langston is an environmental historian and ecologist. She is the Mellon Visiting Scholar in Environmental Humanities at the Center for Environmental Futures in fall 2019, during which time she will be conducting scholarship on migratory species. She is a published author of several books, including two about the environmental history of Oregon. Where Land and Water Meet: A Western Landscape Transformed (University of Washington Press, 2003) examines land management conflicts of the Malheur Wildlife Refuge. Langston’s earlier book, Forest Dreams, Forest Nightmares: The Paradox of Old Growth in the Inland West (UWP, 1995), is an award-winning study on the forest health crisis on western national forests. Her current project, “New Mobilities of the Anthropocene: Climate Change, Toxics, and Animal Migrations,” is a study of woodland caribou and common loons.

Cosponsored by the University of Oregon Department of History, Lane County History Museum, and the Center for Environmental Futures.

History Workshop launches a new, once-quarterly format with next week’s event featuring Brett Rushforth, historian of early American history. Join us for an afternoon of friendly critique and intellectual discussion.

“She Said Her Answers Contained the Truth”: Listening to and with Enslaved Witnesses in Eighteenth-Century New France

Tuesday, October 29, 2019
3:30–5:00 p.m.
375 McKenzie Hall

Brett Rushforth is a scholar of the early modern Atlantic world whose research focuses on comparative slavery, Native North America, and French colonialism and empire. His first book, Colonial North America and the Atlantic World: A History in Documents (co-edited with Paul W. Mapp), uses primary documents to trace the history of North America in its Atlantic context from the fifteenth through eighteenth centuries. His second book, Bonds of Alliance: Indigenous and Atlantic Slaveries in New France, examined the enslavement of American Indians by French colonists and their Native allies, tracing the dynamic interplay between Native systems of captivity and slavery and French plantation-based racial slavery.

History Workshop is back for the new academic year, with Dr. Stephanie Jones-Rogers presenting:

“That ‘oman took delight in sellin’ slaves”: White Women and the Slave Marketplace

Tuesday, October 15, 2019
3:30–5:00 p.m.
375 McKenzie Hall

Open to the public

About the Speaker

Stephanie Jones-Rogers is an associate professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley. As a historian, she specializes in African-American history, the history of American slavery, and women’s and gender history. She is the author of They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South (Yale University Press, 2019)

History Pub presents “Lincoln and Oregon: A Cross-Continental Story” with Richard Etulain

Monday, October 14, 2019
7:00 p.m. (doors open at 6:00)
Viking Braggot Southtowne Pub
2490 Willamette Street

This talk is open to the public. Beer, wine and food will be available. Cosponsored by the UO Department of History and the Lane County History Musuem.

Lincoln and Oregon

This slide-illustrated presentation captures the connections between President Abraham Lincoln and the new state of Oregon. Those Lincoln links include several of his Illinois friends who had moved to Oregon. In addition, Lincoln’s strong support for homesteads, railroads, and education markedly influenced life in Oregon. The president’s political connections with Oregon also helped to shape the state’s politics, especially in the rise of the Republican Party and the elections of 1860 and 1864. Altogether, this is a cross-continental historical story that needs to be more widely known.

Meet the Speaker

Richard Etulain is professor emeritus of history (University of New Mexico) and the author of 50 books, including Lincoln and Oregon Country Politics in the Civil War Era (Oregon State University Press, 2013). Etulain, the son of a Basque immigrant livestockman and a sod house frontier mother, was raised on a sheep ranch in eastern Washington. He graduated from the University of Oregon with a his master’s in American literature degree and a Phd in American history and literature. Learn more about Richard Etulain at his website, richardetulain.com.

History Pub presents:

“Myth and Memory in Oregon’s Pioneer Monuments” with Cynthia Culver Prescott

Monday, July 15, 2019
7:30–9:00 p.m.
Viking Braggot Southtowne Pub
2490 Willamette Street

Beer, wine, and food will be available beginning at 5:30 p.m. Public talk followed by book signing, sponsored by Tsunami Books.

The History Pub speaker series is cosponsored by the University of Oregon Department of History and the Lane County History Musuem.

About the Speaker

Cynthia Culver Prescott is an associate professor of History at the University of North Dakota. She is also the author of Pioneer Mother Monuments: Constructing Cultural Memory (University of Oklahoma Press, 2019), a groundbreaking book that examines the racial and gendered biases projected by pioneer monuments.

The History Workshop series wraps up with “Vanishing and Visible Indians: Modernity, Indigeneity, and a 480-Mile Footrace” presented by Tara Keegan

Friday, May 24, 2019
3:30–5:00 p.m.
375 McKenzie Hall, UO Campus

Food, dessert, and drinks provided

In the summer of 1927, the Redwood Highway Association and other local boosters sponsored the first annual “Redwood Highway Indian Marathon,” a week-long footrace beginning in San Francisco and ending in Grants Pass, Oregon. Designed as a tourist gambit to attract motorists to the new highway, the race featured only “members of the Indian race.”

This event serves as the main case study in Tara Keegan’s larger project about Indian survival and modernity in California, and the place of Native people in the construction of regional identity in the Pacific Northwest as the region developed into an industrial tourist destination. Keegan talk will outline her dissertation project and illustrate the central theme of intersecting indigeneity and modernity within the contexts of class and gender.

The Department of History proudly presents the 24th Annual Stan and Joan Pierson Lecture:

“Race and Gender in the Digital Humanities: Ethics, Algorithms, and Archives” presented by Dr. Sharon Block, Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine

Tuesday, May 21, 2019
3:30–5:00 p.m.
Gerlinger Alumni Lounge (201 Gerlinger Hall)

This is a free, public talk with a reception to follow. Wine and beer served.

About the Speaker

Dr. Sharon Block is an internationally renowned historian of women, gender, sexuality, and race. She has published three books: Rape and Sexual Power in Early America (2006); Major Problems in American Women’s History (2013); and Colonial Complexions: Race and Bodies in Eighteenth-Century America (2018). Her articles have appeared in the Journal of Women’s History, the William and Mary Quarterly, the Journal of American History, and Radical History Review. Her current research centers on race and gender in the digital humanities.

The Pierson Tradition

The Pierson Lecture is a Department of History tradition that spans back to 1993, when it was founded to honor Stan and Joan Pierson. The Piersons were both exemplary citizens of the community, dedicated to history and education as proven by their distinguished records of intellectual accomplishment and community involvement. This lecture series brings distinguished scholars, such as Dr. Sharon Block, to the University of Oregon, so that they may share their work in alignment with the Piersons’ interests in cultural, intellectual, and political life.

Join the Lane County History Museum and the University of Oregon Department of History for the next History Pub talk:

“Pioneer Problems: The University of Oregon’s First Statue, 100 Years Later”
presented by Marc Carpenter, PhD Candidate, Department of History

Monday, May 13, 2019
7:00 p.m.
Hop Valley Brewing Co.
(990 W. 1st Avenue)

The Pioneer

This talk unpacks the actions and influences that led to the creation of the statue of “the Pioneer,” unveiled on the University of Oregon campus in May of 1919. Marc Carpenter will discuss history-making in Oregon and the statue’s place within it, the monument’s meanings then and now, and the implications of “the Pioneer” and similar memorials for our communities today.

About the Speaker

Marc Carpenter is a PhD candidate studying indigenous and United States history at the University of Oregon. His dissertation explores how the violence of the American conquest of the Northwest was fought over and forgotten in later decades. His first article, “ʻJustice and Fair Play for the American Indian’: Harry Lane, Robert Hamilton, and a Vision of Native American Modernity,” is available in the Spring 2018 issue of the Pacific Historical Review.

All are invited to the next History Workshop event, “Taking Control: Transatlantic Knowledge for Migration Policy in the Interwar Period” with Julie Weise, Associate Professor of History, UO, and Christoph Rass, Professor of Modern History and Historical Migration Studies, Universität Osnabrück, Germany.

Tuesday, April 23, 2019
3:30–5:00 p.m.
375 McKenzie Hall, UO Campus
Passover-friendly refreshments will be served

Today, nearly 20 million people worldwide are employed as state-sanctioned temporary labor migrants outside their home country. Weise, an historian of migration in the Americas, and Rass, an historian of migration in Europe, go back to the initial growth of this phenomenon in the early twentieth century. They ask: how did the idea of bilateral, state-managed “guest worker” contracts migrate between Europe and the United States in the interwar period? And, what contribution did this intellectual migration make to the shape of a significant human migration: the Mexico-U.S. bracero program, which brought more than 4 million Mexican men to work in the United States between 1942 and 1964?

Weise and Rass look forward to discussing their preliminary results at this History Workshop, to take place near the end of Rass’ three-week residency in Eugene.

Cosponsored by the History department and the Global Studies Institute Global Oregon Faculty Collaboration Fund

Please join the History community for this guest speaker event:

“Dionysius of Corinth’s Travels in Early Christian Communities of the Eastern Mediterranean”

presented by Professor Cavan Concannon, University of Southern California

Thursday, April 4
4:00–5:30 p.m.
375 McKenzie Hall, UO Campus

Cavan Concannon is the research partner of the Department of History’s own Lindsey Mazurek, assistant professor of ancient history, who has collaborated with Concannon on several projects about the history of the Eastern Mediterranean. Concannon is a leading scholar in the study of ethnicity, migration, and networks in early Christianity, and he is currently an associate professor with the USC School of Religion. Wednesday’s talk will be based on his recently published book, Assembling Early Christianity: Trade, Networks, and the Letters of Dionysius of Corinth.

This event is sponsored by the University of Oregon departments of Classics, History, and Religious Studies, as well as the Oregon Humanities Center.

Are you a history major, or considering becoming a history major? Do you have questions about your future and what your career opportunities are? Don’t miss this free workshop, open to all all prospective and current history majors. Work with the Career Center to explore your interests and passions, and identify how you can turn a history major into a successful career.

Tuesday, April 9, 2019
4:00 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Erb Memorial Union, Diamond Lake Room (EMU 119)
Refreshments will be served

And mark your calendars for the History Career Happy Hour, where you can meet History major alumni that have launched successful careers in a variety of fields: April 16, 4:00–5:30 p.m. at the Erb Memorial Union room 023.

We invite you to the first History Workshop of spring quarter, “The Autism History Project” presented by Ellen Herman, introducing a new website that provides an extensive exploration of autism and a multitude of information sources together within one archive.

Tuesday, April 9, 2019
3:30–5:00 p.m.
375 McKenzie Hall

The Autism History Project

Ellen Herman will provide a tour of her new website on the history of autism. The Autism History Project profiles people, topics, and ideas that shaped autism throughout the twentieth century in the United States. It also presents an archive of annotated sources and a timeline. The Autism History Project is a public digital history resource designed for everyone interested in autism as well as anyone interested in medicine and the human sciences, health and social welfare, development and disability, and the history of children and families in the modern United States.

About the Presenter

Ellen Herman is a professor of History at the University of Oregon. She is also a co-director of the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics and the vice provost for Academic Affairs.

In celebration of Earth Day, the Department of History and Lane County History Museum are teaming up with the Friends of Buford Park & Mt. Pisgah for a special History Pub/Pints for Pisgah collaboration:

“Speaking for the River: A History of Citizen Involvement in Willamette River Protection” featuring Willamette River historian James Hillegas-Elting

Monday, April 22, 2019
Viking Braggot, 2940 Willamette Street
6:00–7:00 p.m., social and music by Meadow Rue
7:00–8:30 p.m., talk and Q&A

This event is a Pints for Pisgah Fundraiser for the Friends of Buford Park and Mt. Pisgah, to support their ongoing habitat and restoration work along the Willamette River.

A History of Citizen Involvement

This talk connects nationally-recognized river cleanup work in Portland, Oregon to the habitat and restoration conservation efforts of organizations along the mainstream and tributaries in overall river health. James Hillegas-Elting will discuss the history of citizen involvement in conversation of the Willamette River, with opening remarks by the Lane County History Museum.

In addition, the Friends of Buford Park & Mt. Pisgah will briefly discuss their 30 years of work protecting and enhancing native ecosystems, river and water quality, and compatible recreation of the great Mount Pisgah. Their efforts include restoring former landfills and gravel mines, replacing invasive plants with native plants, enhancing habitat for native species like western pond turtles and waterfowl, and improving trails throughout the park.

About the Speaker

James V. Hillegas-Elting is an environmental historian from Portland with an extensive body of work on Willamette River conservation. His book, Speaking for the River: Confronting Pollution on the Willamette, 1920s–1970s, gives a historical analysis of the pollution of the Willamette River and contentions surrounding cleanup efforts.

This event is cosponsored by the UO Department of History, Lane County History Museum, and the Friends of Buford Park & Mount Pisgah.

History Pub presents:

“Desperate Mothers, Anxious Lawyers: Infanticide in Venezuela after Independence, 1810-1860”

featuring Reuben Zahler
Monday, March 11, 2019
7:00 p.m. at the Hop Valley Tasting Room (Barrel Room)
990 W. 1st Avenue

Food and beer will be available.

This event is cosponsored by the Department of History and the Lane County History Museum.

About the Speaker

Reuben Zahler is an associate professor of History and director of the General Social Sciences Program at the University of Oregon. His research focuses on the history of Latin American from colonial through modern periods. His book, Ambitious Rebels: Remaking Honor, Law, and Liberalism in Venezuela, 1780-1850 (University of Arizona Press, 2013), examines the changes in political culture as Venezuela developed from a Spanish colony into a modern republic with particular emphasis on gender and class.

Due to inclement weather, the UO campus is closed today, February 27. Unfortunately, this means the events we had scheduled today with Sophie White and Lidia Gómez García are cancelled. Our regrets to everyone that was looking forward to attending. We hope to see you at future History events—after the snow has cleared!

The Department of History invites you to this special film screening event with Mae Ngai:

Thursday, March 7, 2019
6:00–9:00 p.m.
Lillis Complex, Room 182

We will be screening the The Chinese Exclusion Act, an acclaimed documentary film by Ric Burns and Li-Shin Yu, followed by a Q&A session with Mae Ngai. Refreshments provided after.

About the Film

The Chinese Exclusion Act is a 2017 documentary about the history of the 1882 law that prohibited Chinese immigration into the United States and declared Chinese people as ineligible for naturalization. This film, directed by Ric Burns and Li-Shin Yu, is part of the PBS American Experience collection, an award-winning series that explores key elements of America’s history and present-day society.

Meet Mae Ngai

Mae Ngai is a professor of history at Columbia University and the 2019 Wayne Morse Chair of Law and Politics here at the University of Oregon. She is also the author of Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America, a book about the history of illegal migration to the United States and the effects of immigration policy on the development of American society.

Rejuvenating Nahuatl Scholarship in the 21st Century
presented by Lidia E. Gómez García

Wednesday, February 27, 2019
4:00–6:00 p.m.
375 McKenzie Hall

Mexican Ethnohistorian linguist Lidia E. Gómez García, who teaches at the Benem​érita Universidad de Puebla, will speak about colonial manuscript production (alphabetic and pictorial) by Nahuas—the ethnic group that included the Aztecs—mention how writing and reading in the Nahuatl language faded after Independence, and then pick up with the efforts of the Mexico-based Luis Reyes García seminar (Luis was one of the most important Nahuatl scholars of the later 20th and early 21st centuries) to revive interest in and the study of this important indigenous language, as well as her own contributions toward keeping the seminar going after his death.

This event is free and open to the public.

Sponsored by the Departments of History and Romance Languages, and the Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies.

The Department of History presents guest speaker Sophie White with her talk, “Voices of the Enslaved: Tales of Love and Longing”

Wednesday, February 27, 2019
Noon–1:30 p.m.
EMU 230 (Swindells Room)

Please join us for the next History Workshop featuring Marsha Weisiger:

“Danger River: Narrating Adventure Down the Great River of the Southwest”

Tuesday, February 12, 2019
3:30–5:00 p.m.
375 McKenzie Hall

Danger River explores the ways that men and women experienced adventure down the Green and Colorado Rivers, from John Wesley Powell’s pioneering trip through unmapped territory in through Edward Abbey’s trip in for Playboy magazine roughly a century later. Drawing on the journals and stories written by more than 150 men and women who boated these rivers between 1869 and 1977, this paper explores how adventure narratives shaped the ways in which subsequent adventurers experienced the river and imagined themselves as pioneers in a landscape they claimed as their own. These adventurers structured stories that pitted the landscape as a formidable opponent in a heroic struggle for survival. This study also examines these adventures through the lens of gender and tourism studies.

Marsha Weisiger is an associate professor with the University of Oregon Department of History and the Julie and Rocky Dixon Chair of Western History. Her work focuses on conservation policy and environmental and social justice in an effort to create usable histories that foster more sustainable places. Her most recent book, Dreaming of Sheep in Navajo Country (University of Washington Press) is now available in paperback.

All are welcome to attend this free public event featuring Sarah E. Igo:

February 27, 2019
6:30 p.m.–8:00 p.m.
175 Knight Law Center

This event is part of the Wayne Morse Center’s 2018-19 Public Affairs Speaker Series. This series brings prominent scholars and activists to the University of Oregon to discuss significant political and policy issues in the United States at the national, state, and local levels, as well as global affairs.

Sarah E. Igo teaches history and directs the Program in American Studies at Vanderbilt University. She researches modern American cultural and intellectual history, the history of the human sciences, the sociology of knowledge, and the history of the public sphere. Igo’s most recent book is The Known Citizen: A History of Privacy in Modern America (Harvard University Press, 2018).

Sponsored by the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics in partnership with the UO History Department and the UO New Media and Culture Certificate program.

The Known Citizen (printable poster)

Join us for the next History Pub talk, featuring Lindsey A. Mazurek with “Impermanent: Migrant Tales from the Ancient Mediterranean”

Monday, February 11, 2019
7:00 p.m. (doors open at 6:00)
WOW Hall, 291 W. 8th Avenue

Beer and wine will be available.

Lindsey A. Mazurek is a specialist in ancient history with a focus on the eastern Mediterranean under the Roman Empire. She previously held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Memorial University of Newfoundland and taught in the Department of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies at Bucknell University. Her research focuses on questions of ethnicity, migration, materiality, and identification in antiquity.

History Pub events are cosponsored by the UO Department of History and the Lane County History Museum.

Join the Department of History’s own Leslie Alexander for this OHC Work-in-Progress talk:

“The Cradle of Hope:” African Americans, Haitian Sovereignty, and the Birth of Black Internationalism

Friday, February 15, 2019
Noon–1:30 p.m.
OHC Conference Room (159 PLC)

The Works-in-Progress series features talks by humanities faculty and graduate students on their current research or recently published books. All talks take place on Fridays at noon in the OHC Conference Room, 159 PLC. These are free and open to the public. Brown-bag lunches are welcome. Seating is limited, so early arrival is recommended.

Leslie Alexander is a specialist in early African American and African Diaspora history. Her research focuses on late eighteenth and early nineteenth century Black culture, political consciousness, and resistance movements. A scholar of enslaved and free Black communities, her first monograph, entitled African or American?: Black Identity and Political Activism in New York City, 1784-1861, explores Black culture, identity, and political activism during the early national and antebellum eras.

Dr. Alexander’s current research project, “The Cradle of Hope: African American Internationalism in the Nineteenth Century,” is an exploration of early African American foreign policy. In particular, it examines how Black activists became involved in international movements for racial and social justice and lobbied the United States government for changes in its policies towards African and African diasporic nations. Using Haiti as an illustrative example of early African American internationalism, this project charts the changing views Black leaders held about Haiti over the course of the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth century. More specifically, it examines how and why the Haitian Revolution inspired Black activists, why Black leaders in the United States fought relentlessly to protect and defend Haitian independence, and how they pressured the U.S. government to grant Haiti diplomatic recognition.

Join us for the next History Workshop event:

Allies and Adversaries: Anglo-Portuguese Relations in the Nineteenth Century

presented by Gabe Paquette, Dean of the Robert D. Clark Honors College
Thursday, January 24, 2019
3:30–5:00 p.m., EMU 230

This paper examines Anglo-Portuguese relations in the middle of the nineteenth century, particularly conflicts over territorial claims outside of Europe. It examines how those conflicts were de-escalated and did not tear asunder the long-standing alliance between the two countries. After briefly surveying Anglo-Portuguese relations in the early modern period and first half of the nineteenth century, the paper concentrates on the way conflicts were resolved in the 1850s–1870s through third-party arbitration. Drawing on archival research in Portugal and Britain, the paper contributes to the rich historiographies on “informal empire”, the “partition” of Africa, and the emergence of codified international legal system.​

Gabe Paquette is a Professor of History, with a secondary appointment in International Studies. His research focuses on aspects of European, Latin American, and International History. He has co-edited a new special issue of the Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies (vol. 24, no. 2), entitled “New directions in the political history of the Spanish-Atlantic world, c. 1750–1850.”

The history community is invited to attend this free public talk presented by the 2018-19 Wayne Morse Chair, Mae Ngai:

“Nation of Immigrants: A Short History of An Idea”
6:30–8:00 p.m.
Wednesday, January 16, 2019
175 Knight Law Center, 1515 Agate St.
Free and open to the public

This event is part of the Theme of Inquiry program, sponsored by the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics, focused on a two-year theme of Borders, Migration, and Belonging. This program explores the human experience of migration in Oregon, the United States, and the wider world by featuring presentations by esteemed guest speakers and residents scholars.

Mae Ngai is a professor of Asian American Studies and history at Columbia University. Her research focuses on the history of immigration, citizenship, and nationalism.

Ngai is the author of Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (2004), which won six major book awards; and The Lucky Ones: One Family and the Extraordinary Invention of Chinese America (2010). Ngai has written on immigration history and policy for The Washington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Nation, and the Boston Review. Before becoming a historian, she was a labor-union organizer and educator in New York City, working for District 65-UAW and the Consortium for Worker Education. Her upcoming book is Yellow and Gold: The Chinese Mining Diaspora, 1848-1908, a study of Chinese gold miners and racial politics in nineteenth-century California, the Australian colony of Victoria, and the South African Transvaal.

For more information about Mae Ngai and the Wayne Morse Center, visit waynemorsecenter.uoregon.edu

The Department of History presents Jean O’Brien and “Monumental Mobility: The Memory Work of Massasoit”

Thursday, January 17, 2019
3:30–5:00 p.m., 375 McKenzie Hall

Jean O’Brien is a historian at the University of Minnesota, specializing in American Indian history, Indigenous Studies. Her book Monumental Mobility The Memory Work of Massasoit, coauthored with historian Lisa Blee, reveals the story of Indigenous history, art fraud, and memorial culture that surrounds a 1921 statue of a Pokanoket Massasoit (leader) who served as a welcoming diplomat to the Pilgrims and a participant in the mythical first Thanksgiving.

Join us on January 17 in exploring this unexpected chapter of Indigenous historical memory. This lecture event is free and open to the public.

What is New is Old Again!

History Pub presents Vera Keller and “The History of Innovation”:

Monday, January 14, 2019
7:00 p.m. (doors open at 6:00 p.m.)
WOW Hall, 291 W. 8th Avenue
Drinks by WOW Hall (no food truck for this event)

Co-sponsored by the UO Department of History and the Lane County History Museum.

Vera Keller is a historian of science of early modern Europe and a professor with the University of Oregon’s Department of History. Her book, Knowledge and the Public Interest, 1575-1725 (Cambridge, 2015), looks at the simultaneous rise of the reason of state – the precursor to ideas of private and public interest – and experimental reasoning, arguing that each shaped the other. Keller’s current book project looks at how late 17th-century German academics sought to reign in, winnow, connect and re-order three previous epistemic cultures: the court culture explored in my first book, mercantile and medical collecting networks, and pansophic erudition.

Miles Wilkinson, PhD candidate, History, and 2018-19 Oregon Humanities Center Dissertation Fellow will give a Work-in-Progress talk:

“Creating Confidentiality: Physician-Patient Privilege and Medical Confidentiality in the United States, 1776–1975”

Friday, November 30
Noon–1:30 p.m.
OHC Conference Room (159 PLC)

This presentation is open to the public. Early arrival suggested due to limited seating. Brown bag lunches welcome. Please direct disability accommodation requests to the Oregon Humanities Center at 541-346-3934. For more information, visit ohc.uoregon.edu

Monday, December 3, 2018
The talk starts at 7:00 p.m. with doors opening at 6:00 p.m.
Located at the WOW Hall (291 W. 8th Avenue)

The History Pub speaker series presents “Red Spouts: How the Soviet Union Nearly Destroyed the World’s Whales” featuring Ryan Tucker Jones, associate professor of the University of Oregon Department of History.

Food will be available from Vinnie’s Smokin’ BBQ in back of the venue; drinks by WOW Hall.

Co-sponsored by the University of Oregon Department of History and the Lane County History Museum.

Join us for a History Pub talk, December 3

This hard-hitting topic comes from Dr. Brett Rushforth, a scholar of the early modern Atlantic world whose research focuses on comparative slavery, Native North America, and French colonialism and empire. He has written Colonial North America and the Atlantic World: A History in Documents, and Bonds of Alliance: Indigenous and Atlantic Slaveries in New France.

Monday, November 12, 2018
The talk starts at 7:00 p.m. with doors opening at 6:00 p.m.
Located at the WOW Hall (291 W. 8th Avenue)

Co-sponsored by the University of Oregon Department of History and the Lane County History Museum.

Join us for the next History Workshop featuring Melissa Graboyes, Clark Honors College

Thursday, November 8, 3:30 p.m.
McKenzie Hall, Room 375

This paper chronicles the history of malaria elimination attempts in Zanzibar, taking a close look at the World Health Organization’s failed elimination attempt between 1958-1968, and the epidemic of rebound malaria that struck the island afterwards. The paper argues that the WHO scientists recognized from the very beginning that Zanzibar’s elimination attempt was unlikely to succeed but publicly blamed Zanzibari workers, institutions and community members for the many problems that arose. Drawing on internal and confidential WHO documents, the paper also shows that scientists recognized the risks of rebound malaria early on, yet did not responsible plan for measures to lessen the epidemiological burden to local people. A particular focus is on the ethical questions emerging around the loss of acquired immunity, how local communities understand the potential risks, and how international global health groups plan responsible exit strategies. The historical case study is framed in light of Zanzibar’s current malaria elimination activities, led by the Gates Foundation. The paper is based on extensive work in the Zanzibar National Archives and the WHO archives in addition to interviews and observations in Zanzibar.

Joe Wiegand,
Wednesday, October 17.
Doors at 6:00 pm, talk at 7:00 pm.
Ninkasi Administration Building, 155 Blair Blvd., Eugene, OR 97402.

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Dr. Marcela Echeverri,
Assistant Professor of History,
Yale University.
Thursday, September 27,
12:00-1:30 pm.
McKenzie Hall, Room 375.

Uwe Lübken, LMU Munich,
Friday, September 28, 4:00 pm,
McKenzie Hall, Room 375. (more…)

Dr. Dennis Jenkins,
Senior Research Archaeologist,
UO Museum of Natural and Cultural History.
Monday, September 24.
Doors at 6:00 pm, talk at 7:00 pm.
WOW Hall, 291 W 8th Ave, Eugene, OR 97401. (more…)

Marc Carpenter, UO History,
Thursday, June 7, 3:30 – 5:00 pm,
McKenzie Hall, Room 375.

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Jason Colby, University of Victoria,
Friday, June 8, 12:00 pm,
McKenzie Hall, Room 375. (more…)

Dr. Lindsay Frederick Braun, UO History,
Friday, May 25, 10:00-11:30 am,
McKenzie Hall, Room 375. (more…)

Dr. Geoff Eley,
Professor of History, University of Michigan.
Thursday, May 10.
3:30-5:00 pm, Gerlinger Lounge.

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Dr. Wayne P. Te Brake,
Professor Emeritus of History, SUNY Purchase College.
Wednesday, May 2.
3:30-5:00 pm, EMU 230, Swindells Room. (more…)

Nichelle Frank, UO History,
Friday, April 27, 10:00-12:00 pm,
McKenzie Hall, Room 375. (more…)

Dr. Curtis Austin,
Associate Professor, UO Department of History.
Tuesday, February 27.
Doors at 6:00 pm, talk at 7:00 pm.
Sprout Regional Food Hub,
418 A Street, Springfield, Oregon 97477.
(more…)

Dr. Tom Connolly,
Director of Archaeological Research, UO Museum of Natural and Cultural History.
Tuesday, January 30, 6:00 pm,
Ninkasi Administration Building, 155 Blair Blvd., Eugene, OR 97402. (more…)

Dr. Steve Beda,
Associate Professor of History, University of Oregon,
Tuesday, December 5, 6:00 pm,
Noble Estate Urban Tasting Room,
560 Commercial Street, Eugene, OR 97402.

(more…)

Dr. Joshua Piker,
Editor, William and Mary Quarterly,
Monday, November 27, 12:00-1:30 pm,
McKenzie 375 (more…)

Dr. Jeff Ostler,
Beekman Professor of Northwest and Pacific History,
Tuesday, November 7, 6:00 pm,
Hop Valley Brewing,
990 W. 1^st Avenue, Eugene, OR 97401
(more…)

Dr. Reuben Zahler, UO History,
Friday, October 27, 10:00-11:30 am,
McKenzie Hall 375 (more…)

In connection with the new program in Black Studies, the Departments of Ethnic Studies, History, Political Science, and Women’s and Gender Studies are collaborating with the College of Arts and Sciences and the Division of Equity and Inclusion to host a “mini-conference” focused on Black intellectual history, to be held on October 21, 2017. (more…)

Dr. Peter A. Kopp,
University of New Mexico,
Tuesday, October 24, 6:00 pm,
Ninkasi Administration Building,
155 Blair Blvd., Eugene, OR 97402 (more…)

Dr. Joshua Reid,
University of Washington,
Monday, October 16,
1:30-3:00 pm,
McKenzie Hall 375

(more…)

Artist Hung Liu from Oakland, CA,
Saturday, October 7, 2:00 pm,
Ford Lecture Hall,
Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art

(more…)

Dr. Stefan Kirmse,
Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO),
Humboldt University of Berlin,

Tuesday, October 3, 4:00 pm,
Erb Memorial Union, Room 023 (more…)

Dr. Kevin Marsh,
Professor of History at Idaho State University,
Thursday, October 5, 3:30 pm,
McKenzie Hall 375 (more…)

Dr. Jeffrey Ostler, UO History,
Friday, October 6, 10:00-11:30 am,
McKenzie Hall 375

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Josh Fitzgerald, History
Friday, May 19, 10:00-11:30 am,
McKenzie 375
Light refreshments will be served.

Abstract:
What can a barebones list of the dead from the sixteenth century tell us about colonial education and the practice of indigenous Christianity under Spain? Surprisingly, a lot, especially when we study the dead within their local and regional context. For his work-in-progress talk, PhD candidate Josh Fitzgerald presents his research on the Difuntos (death records) of Huejotzingo, early-colonial Nahuatl documents from New Spain. Registries of the dead are often culled for statistical data, but Fitzgerald’s investigation of a simple naming convention, the use of the Spanish-Nahuatl combined term Castillanxochitl (“Spanish Flower,” commonly “Rose”) uncovers the cultural significance of roses, death, local religiosity, and the astonishing link between Huejotzingo’s dead and the Virgin of Guadalupe, Mexico’s patron saint. The talk will cover portions of his dissertation “Unholy Pedagogy: Local Knowledge, Indigenous Intermediaries, and the Lessons from the Colonial Learningcscape,” but the core evidence will be part of a standalone article planned to be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal.

Carmel Finley,
Historian of Science at Oregon State University,
Wednesday, February 22, 12:00-1:20 pm,
Willamette 112

Lissa Wadewitz,
Professor of History and Environmental Studies, Linfield College,
Monday, February 13, 1:30-2:30 pm,
McKenzie Hall 375

African Studies Lecture Series

James McCann
History, Boston University

Tuesday, January 17, 12:00 pm
Redwood Auditorium, 214 EMU

Please note new location!

Lecture by Dorothy Ko, Colombia University

While we celebrate the sumptuous material culture of Chinese empires–the terra cotta soldiers, the silk brocades, or the blue-and-white porcelains–we know almost nothing about the artisans who made them. In this talk, we present a new view of Chinese history and society by retrieving the career of Gu Erniang (fl. 1700- 1722), an extraordinary woman who was one of the most famous and innovative inkstone carvers of her time.

Thursday, November 10, 2016
3:00 pm
Ford Lecture Hall, Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art

Dorothy Ko is a native of Hong Kong. Her latest book, The Social Life of Inkstones: Artisans and Scholars in Early Qing China, will be published in Dec. 2016.

Presented by the UO Confucius Institute for Global China Studies and cosponsored by the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, the Asian Studies Program, and the Department of Art History.

Lecture by Dongsheng Zang, University of Washington

The official narrative in China about modern mediation is that it originated in Mao’s revolutionary base in Shan-gan-ning Border Regions by a judge named Ma Xiwu in the early 1940s. Today, this is celebrated as the “Ma Xiwu trial method,” which again became popular in the last ten years. This presentation claims that Ma Xiwu inheirited, rather than invented, the modern civil mediation. Zang locates the origin for modern mediation in Republican China during the 1930s and in prewar Japan of the same period.

Monday, November 14, 2016
4:00pm
Knight Library Browsing Room

Dongsheng Zang is an associate professor of law and the director of the Asian Law Center and Chinese Legal Studes at the University of Washington.

Presented by the UO Confucius Institute for Global China Studies and cosponsored by the Center for Asian and Pacific Studies, the Asian Studies Program, and the History Department.

All talks will be held in the Knight Library Browsing Room at 12:00

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A Talk by Mario Sifuentez, UC-Merced

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 28, 12 P.M. — KNIGHT BROWSING ROOM 

Mario Sifuentez is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of California, Merced. The son of immigrant farm workers from Mexico, Dr. Sifuentez grew up in rural Oregon, and earned both a BA and MA from UO. One of the first graduates with an Ethnic Studies major at the UO, he was also a longtime student activist. This lecture, based off Sifentez’s new book of the same title, shows how ethnic Mexican workers responded to white communities that only welcomed them when they were economically useful, then quickly shunned them.

Sponsored by the Department of Ethnic Studies, the Center for Latino/a and Latin American Studies, Labor Education Research Center (LERC), Environmental Studies Program, Beekman Fund, Department of History, and the Department of Political Science.