UO Today

Ryan Tucker Jones, History, and 2024–25 OHC Faculty Research Fellow. This interdisciplinary global history integrates the newest, exciting advances in whale science to reinterpret the last 500 years of human-cetacean relations. In the past decades, satellite tagging, drone footage, DNA analysis, and long-term behavioral studies have revealed whale lives in unprecedented detail. The newest cetacean...

William Hatungimana is an assistant professor of Global Studies in the Schnitzer School of Global Studies and Languages at the University of Oregon. He discusses his work on immigration and African-China relations. He also talks about the classes he teaches ie: "International Cooperation and Conflict" and "Transnational Migration." Research Notes-ICYMI Kemi Balogun is an associate professor of Wom...

Salvador Herrera is an assistant professor of Latinx Literature and Cultural Production in the Department of English at the University of Oregon. He discusses his work exploring transborder aesthetics providing Tanya Aguiñiga's "Metabolizing the Border" project as an example. He also talks about the classes he teaches and the value of UO's pursuit of becoming a Hispanic-serving Institution. Resear...

Deepa Iyer is a South Asian American writer, strategist, and lawyer. She leads projects on solidarity and social movements at the Building Movement Project. Deepa talks about her social change ecosystem framework which includes ten roles that many people play in the service of social change values. And she talks about her children's picture book "We Are the Builders!" Deepa Iyer: https://www.deepa...

Based on five years of ethnographic research, Allison Pugh offers a humanistic response to the rise of AI, one that probes the profound meaning of human connection, reckons with the challenges of seeing and being seen, and reimagines what we know of ourselves and others in light of the automation challenge. Allison Pugh is a professor of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University. She writes about how...

David Wacks, Romance Languages, and 2024–25 OHC Faculty Research Fellow. In this project I study medieval translations, chronicles, legends, and plays based on the Hebrew Bible from the Iberian Peninsula’s three religious traditions. I show how Muslim, Jewish, and Christian authors draw on shared languages and traditions, stage the religious polemics of the day, and how, under the surveillance of...

Allison Pugh is professor of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University and author of "The Last Human Job: The Work of Connecting in a Disconnected World." She talks about the importance of connective labor, the collaborative work of emotional recognition. She will give a talk "Re-imagining the Other/Ourselves: Finding the Human in the Age of AI" on April 17, 2025. Research Notes: Melissa Graboyes, His...

Nicholas Forster is an assistant professor of Cinema Studies at the University of Oregon. He talks about his interest in cinema and Black performance, and the book he is writing about Bill Gunn, an unsung hero of Black filmmaking. Research Notes: Stephen Rodgers is the Edmund A. Cykler Chair in Music and Professor of Music Theory and Musicianship at the School of Music and Dance at the University...

Parmida Mostafavi is an assistant professor of Anthropology who studies the connections between race, capital, and consumerism, with a focus on the material culture of the Iranian diaspora. Research Notes (26:34): Lanie Millar, associate professor of Spanish and Portuguese, discusses her book "Forms of Disappointment. Cuban and Angolan Narrative After the Cold War" (SUNY Press, 2019), which argues...

Olivia Wing, PhD candidate, History, and 2024–25 OHC Dissertation Fellow. By the late 1960s Asian American youth played a central role in the creation of a pan-Asian American political identity. My dissertation seeks the pre-1960s origin of youth’s increasing prominence in the creation of Asian American cultural citizenship by examining intersections of youth, gender, and leisure/recreation. Chart...

Eleanor Paynter is a scholar, teacher, poet, and Assistant Professor of Italian, migration, and global media in the School of Global Studies and Languages at the University of Oregon. She discusses her book "Emergency in Transit: Witnessing Migration in the Colonial Present"(https://www.ucpress.edu/books/emergency-in-transit/paper), her teaching, and what attracted her to the UO. The chapbook on t...

Candace Bond-Theriault discusses the need to center LGBTQIA+ communities in the conversation about reproductive health, rights, and justice. Bond-Theriault asserts that for reproductive justice to be truly successful, we must acknowledge that members of the LGBTQIA+ community often face distinct, specific, and interlocking oppressions when it comes to these rights. Family formation, contraception...

Aycan Akçamete is an assistant professor of Comparative Literature and Theatre Arts at the University of Oregon. She talks about her book project "Staging Turkey at Arcola Theatre: Intercultural Networks and Cosmopolitan Spectatorship" and her teaching. Research Notes: Mattie Burkert is an associate professor of English and Digital Humanities, and author of "Speculative Enterprise: Public Theaters...

Patty Krawec is an Anishinaabe/Ukrainian writer and speaker belonging to the Lac Seul First Nation in Treaty 3 territory in Ontario, Canada. She is author of "Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future."

Candace Bond-Theriault, author of "Queering Reproductive Justice: an Invitation," discusses the intersectionality of the reproductive justice movement and its core values. In Research Notes, Judith Raiskin and Linda Long discuss the Eugene Lesbian Oral History Project and the resulting documentary Outliers and Outlaws. https://outliersoutlaws.uoregon.edu

Patty Krawec is an Ojibwe Anishinaabe and Ukrainian writer and speaker. An activist and former social worker, she belongs to Lac Seul First Nation in Treaty 3 territory and resides in Niagara Falls, Ontario. Her first book, "Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future" was published in 2022 by Broadleaf Books. Her second book, "Bad Indian Book Club," will b...

Karl Scholz, President of the University of Oregon, discusses the UO's new strategic plan and how the Big Ten's Academic Alliance will benefit the university.

Lim's project is a cultural history of race in South Korea that examines ideas and practices of race in literary and cultural production and discourse shaped at the nexus of modern Korean history and globalization processes. She examines Korean racial formation through literature, K-pop, and TV dramas like Squid Game. She explores how Koreans’ ideas of race were informed by their experiences under...

In a world increasingly defined by crisis, public service institutions like colleges, universities, and nonprofit organizations require capable, dynamic, and trustworthy leadership—yet stories of leadership failures there abound. The problem, Kathleen Fitzpatrick argues in Leading Generously, is a fundamental mismatch between the communal purposes that leaders must serve and the individualistic st...

Beata Stawarska, Philosophy and 2024–25 Oregon Humanities Center Faculty Research Fellow My project engages with the untranslated and relatively unknown theoretical writings by L. S. Senghor, the first president of independent Senegal, a poet, and a philosopher. I will translate selected essays and author an article dealing with the topic of vital force in Senghor’s philosophy. I will argue that S...

Christopher Long, Provost of the University of Oregon, began his tenure at UO in June 2024. He discusses what attracted him to UO and his leadership style, which he characterized as relationship based, and values informed. He also talks about UO's participation in the Big Ten Academic Alliance, the importance of open access publishing, and the Humane Metrics Initiative.

A Work-in-Progress talk with Zachary Wallmark, Musicology, and 2024–25 OHC Faculty Research Fellow My project explores American cultural and social history through the lens of musical instruments. I offer critical examinations of the development, popularization, and sonic palette of instruments that have played an iconic role in American (and global) music and culture: banjo, trumpet, steel guitar...

Writer Miriam Gershow's debut novel The Local News, published in 2009, was an Oregon Book Award Finalist. Her collection, Survival Tips: Stories was published in 2024. She teaches writing in the English Department at the University of Oregon. Gershow discusses her writing and reads from Survival Tips.

Gabriela Pérez Báez, Linguistics, and 2023–24 OHC Faculty Research Fellow. “Diidxazá is an Indigenous endangered Mesoamerican language spoken in southern Mexico. I will test out pacing and methods towards publication of a 10,000 entry Diidxazá-Spanish-English dictionary. I will focus on Spanish and English definitions and on different data sets in preparation for a full-scale process in AY24–25. T...

Devin Grammon is an assistant professor of Spanish Sociolinguistics, and an affiliate in the Spanish Heritage Language Program in the Department of Romance Languages at the University of Oregon. Grammon talks about his research on language learning among students studying abroad in Southern Peru and how linguistic variation can be used to perpetuate racism and discrimination. He also talks about h...