UO Today

Kristen Seaman is an associate professor in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture, and an affiliated faculty member in the Department of Classics at the University of Oregon. Seaman is a 2021–2022 Oregon Humanities Center Coleman-Guitteau Professor. The teaching fellowship has funded her development of a new undergraduate class “Ancient Jewish Art and Architecture” which she will t...

Ron Jude is a professor of Photography at the University of Oregon. His recent project 12 Hertz is on view at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art through March 13, 2022. He discusses the exhibition and his other work and teaching.

Craig Kauffman, Political Science, OHC/CAS subvention recipient (co-authored with Pamela L. Martin) With the window of opportunity to take meaningful action on climate change and mass extinction closing, a growing number of communities, organizations, and governments around the world are calling for Rights of Nature (RoN) to be legally recognized. RoN advocates are creating new laws that recognize...

Middle Eastern American Theatre explores the burgeoning Middle Eastern American theatre movement with a focus on Arab American, Jewish American, Armenian American, Iranian American, and Turkish American theatres, playwrights, directors, and actors. By exploring the rich religious and cultural heritage of this diverse group, the book interrogates the rich and paradoxical nature of the term ‘Middle...

Julius McGee is an assistant professor of Sociology at the University of Oregon. Professor McGee’s research and teaching address questions at the intersection of structural inequality, development processes, and environmental change. His work engages scholarship in the fields of environmental sociology, environmental justice, climate justice, critical theories of race, energy transitions and techn...

Nathan Harris is author of the New York Times bestseller and nationally acclaimed novel The Sweetness of Water. It was an Oprah’s Book Club pick and one of President Obama’s favorite books of 2021. Harris earned his B.A. in English from the University of Oregon in 2014. He was a recipient of the Creative Writing Program’s Kidd Prize. On February 16th, 2022, Harris will give a virtual reading as a...

Jovencio de la Paz is an assistant professor and the curricular head of Fibers in the School of Art and Design at the University of Oregon. An artist, writer, and educator de la Paz’s work explores the intersection of textile processes such as weaving, dye, and stitchwork as they relate to broader concerns of language, histories of colonization, migrancy, ancient technology, and speculative future...

A’Lelia Bundles is the author of "On Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C.J. Walker," a book about her great-great-grandmother who was a successful entrepreneur in the early 20th century. Her nonfiction book is the inspiration for Self Made, a fictional Netflix series starring Octavia Spencer. She will give a talk titled “Your First Duty Is to Humanity: Echoes of Derrick Bell in Madam C.J...

Poet Julia Kolchinsky Dasbach is author of the collections "The Many Names for Mother," "Don't Touch the Bones," and the forthcoming "40 WEEKS." She reads some poems and discusses her work. Dasbach will give a virtual reading on January 26, 2022 as a guest of the UO's Creative Writing Program (https://crwr.uoregon.edu). https://ohc.uoregon.edu

What will it take to inspire and empower a critical mass to act in time to safeguard our climate, civilization, and the living world? In her new book, "Under the Sky We Make: How to Be Human in a Warming World" (2021), Lund University sustainability scientist Kimberly Nicholas argues that it’s a combination of facts, feelings, and action. Three guiding principles to make this shift from exploitati...

Lynn Stephen, Anthropology, OHC/CAS subvention recipient and 2015-16 OHC research fellow. From covering the massacre of students at Tlatelolco in 1968 and the 1985 earthquake to the Zapatista rebellion in 1994 and the disappearance of forty-three students in 2014, Elena Poniatowska has been one of the most important chroniclers of Mexican social, cultural, and political life. In Stories That Make...

Terry McDonald is the Executive Director of the St. Vincent de Paul Society of Lane County. He has served SVdP for over 50 years, 37 as Executive Director. McDonald is an alumnus of the University of Oregon having earned a bachelor's degree in History and Political Science, and a master's degree in Education. He discusses the vast array of services SVdP provides, as well as its retail, recycling,...

Kimberly Nicholas, Associate Professor of Sustainability Science at Lund University in Sweden, is the author of "Under the Sky We Make: How to be Human in a Warming World" (2021), and the monthly climate newsletter “We Can Fix It.” In her research, she studies the connections between people, land, and climate. Her goal is to understand how to steward ecosystems to support a good life for everyone...

Krista Chronister, Vice Provost of Graduate Studies at the University of Oregon, and professor of Counseling Psychology in the College of Education, discusses her research on partner violence and survivors’ vocational and economic development. Chronister was named the VP of Graduate Studies in June 2021. She talks about her goals for the Division of Graduate Studies and how they support graduate s...

“Unsettled Ecologies: Alienated Species, Indigenous Restoration, and U.S. Empire in a Time of Climate Chaos” Lisa Fink, PhD candidate, Environmental Studies, and 2021–22 OHC Dissertation Fellow. This project  investigates  the relationship between environmental conservation discourses of species  invasion and the racialization of immigrants in the  U.S. In  doing so, it traces environmental thinki...

Daniel Martinez HoSang is an associate professor of Ethnicity, Race, and Migration, and American Studies at Yale University; and holds a secondary appointment in the Department of Political Science and serves on the Education Studies Advisory Committee. Prior to joining the faculty at Yale in 2017, HoSang was an associate professor (and department head) of Ethnic Studies and Political Science at t...

Ari Purnama, assistant professor of Cinema Studies at the University of Oregon, talks about growing up in Indonesia and what led to his interest in film studies and filmmaking. He discusses his approach to his scholarship as well as his practice as a filmmaker. Purnama recommends a film that he finds especially interesting.

on March 10, 2015

"Speaking for Themselves: Rancheras and Respectability in Mexican California, 1800-1850" Yvette Saavedra, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and 2021–22 OHC Faculty Research Fellow My book project  explores how ideas of gender, sexuality, and nationalism took shape in early nineteenth century Los Angeles. In Mexican Los Angeles, women who violated social ideals of gender honor and propriety,...

Daniel Martinez HoSang, Ethnicity, Race, and Migration, and American Studies at Yale University (formerly at University of Oregon), discusses his numerous publications including the forthcoming "Under the Blacklight: The Intersectional Vulnerabilities that Covid Lays Bare" (Haymarket Press, Spring 2022, co-edited with Kimberle Crenshaw). HoSang will give a virtual talk "A Wider Type of Freedom: Ho...

Michelle McKinley, Law, and 2021–22 OHC Faculty Research Fellow. “Bound Biographies” charts the travel experiences of Afro-Iberians who left the peninsula in service of their owners, or as freed itinerant persons as they forged their lives in the Americas in the first two centuries of Spanish expansion and settlement in the New World. The project examines Afro-Iberian life on the Iberian Peninsula...

Aris Hall, coordinator of the Lyllye Reynolds-Parker Black Cultural Center at the University of Oregon, talks about the resources available at the center and how she supports Black students at the UO socially and academically.

Adrian Parr, Dean of the College of Design at the University of Oregon, is a transdisciplinary scholar whose work intersects in Philosophy, Aesthetic Theory, and environmentalism. She discusses her recent books and films, as well as what attracted her to the University of Oregon in spring of 2021.

Kristen Bell, Law, and 2021–22 OHC Faculty Research Fellow. My fellowship project focuses on writing a book proposal for work in philosophy of punishment. The book will address questions about justice and punishment through the lens of narratives from people who are currently incarcerated. The chapters of the book will emerge through iterative correspondence with people who were sentenced to life...

There are estimates that the U.S. population could reach 438 million by 2050. Where will these people be housed? What kind of metropolitan regions will they live in? Will these regions be sustainable or equitable or even livable? Is it only a dream that we can create sustainable, healthy, resilient, green, and equitable cities? Christina Rosan considers these questions in her talk. Christina Rosan...