Please join the History Department for the 2024 Anita S. Goodstein Lecture in Women's History on Thursday, March 21 at 6 p.m. in Convocation Hall:

Ayohka: Bridging Cherokee Educational Pasts, Presents, and Futures

by Julie L. Reed

Associate Professor of History at Penn State University

Julie L. Reed, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, received her Ph.D. in History from the University of North Carolina. She is the author of Serving the Nation: Cherokee Sovereignty and Social Welfare, 1800-1907. Her current book project is a history of Cherokee education, and she is also co-authoring a new history of the Cherokee Nation, supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. She is a co-host of the blog Think Tsalagi and is a featured scholar in the new season of Native America by PBS.

Sponsored by the Goodstein Lecture Fund

Bearing Witness

A two-year odyssey takes a Sewanee history and German major from Tennessee to Berlin to navigate a web of archives and emotional revelations as she uncovers the lost stories of Holocaust victims.

October 5th 4:30 pm 

Naylor Auditorium, Gailor Hall 

Ritual of Mandate : Unraveling China's Election Journey

Dr. Arden Chao

In Chinese history, the term "election" is deeply intertwined with concepts such as "mandate of heaven," "virtuous governance," and "benevolence." The influx of Euro-American concepts like "democracy," "freedom," and "citizenship" in the nineteenth century created a hybrid system of political ideologies in modern China. While experiments with representative democracy failed, voting retains a highly symbolic role in the histories of both the Nationalist and Communist regimes and highlights how Chinese politics has navigated indigenous and Euro-American political systems. In addition to introducing the history of elections in China, this talk will also introduce Chinese perspectives on elections and politics in the United States from a comparative point of view in order to promote understanding across cultures.

The 2023 Anita S. Goodstein Lecture in Women's History

"Why History Matters: Understanding The U.S. Black Birthing Crisis" 

by Deirdre Cooper Owens

Monday, March 6

5:30pm

Gailor Auditorium

In her talk, Deirdre Cooper Owens will explain the linkage between the origins of modern American gynecology and slavery. Engaging with 19th-century ideas about so-called racial differences, Cooper Owens sheds light on the contemporary legacy of medical racism and its effects on Black birthing people in this nation.

Dr. Tiffany Momon will co-direct Sewanee's new THRT (Truth and Racial Healing Ctr)

Thursday, November 3
Blackman Auditorium
7:00pm CST

Prof. Maya Jasanoff, X.D. and Nancy Yang Professor and Coolidge Professor of History at Harvard University, will deliver a lecture entitled "Ancestry: Where do we come from and why do we care?"  

Sponsoring organizations are Phi Beta Kappa, the Department of English, the Department of History, and the University Lectures Committee. 

Sewanee student, Rebecca Cole is among the 2022 Appalachian College Association Scholars.  Each year, outstanding students are provided funding to help them to pursue research projects over the summer.  Ms. Cole will work under faculty mentors, Dr. Liesl Allingham and Dr. Shana Minkin on her project, Bridging the Gap between Representation and Interpretation in German and Eastern European Holocaust Commemoration.  Cole will present her work in the fall of 2022.

Associate Professor of History Kelly Whitmer has been awarded a research fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

Dr. Milam's April 25th talk drew on material from her recently released book, Creatures of Cain: the Hunt for Human Nature in Cold War America (Princeton University Press, 2019) which charts the rise and fall in Cold War America of a theory that attributed man’s evolutionary success to his unique capacity for murder.

Dr. Sharon Lynette Jones, Prof. of English at Wright State University will deliver a lecture entitled Encountering Gender, Class, and Race: Literary and Cinematic Representations of Angela Davis and the Civil Rights Movementon Wednesday, March 27, 2019 at 4 p.m. in Gailor Auditorium.