10:00 a.m.
Please join us Tuesday mornings for a free cup of coffee, pastries, and conversation with your history department community! We’re excited to continue this tradition for our history undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, and staff. We hope to see you there!
3:30 p.m.
Join the Department of History and Nicholas B. Breyfogle from The Ohio State University for a talk on “Drowning the Sacred Sea: Lake Baikal and the Hydroelectric Moment in World History."
Free and open to the public.
This paper examines the building of the Irkutsk Hydroelectric dam and the human-induced, hydroelectric flooding of Siberia’s Lake Baikal that began in the mid-1950s and transformed the water systems, fish and human ecologies, energy flows, and cultural practices (especially religious) of the diverse peoples of the region. The dam resulted in a rise in water depth of more than 4 meters around the lake. Whole communities found their villages drowned, water transport infrastructure disappeared, the shoreline was irrevocably changed, and the spawning grounds for the lake's endemic (and iconic) fish, the omul, were destroyed. The Shamanist Buriat communities found religious sites dropped underwater and struggled to prevent (and then culturally to absorb) the loss of these sacred sites. This paper explores the ways that hydrological and geological factors merged with economic and technological to generate interest in building a multi-dam cascade along the Angara river; the extensive efforts to prepare the lands that would be flooded by the dam; the rise of new ways of thinking about and using the lake; and finally the impact the dam had on the omul population (and the fishing industry that was based on them) Throughout, the paper places the Baikal story in the larger context of global hydroelectric development.
Dr. Nicholas B. Breyfogle is Professor of History and Director of the Harvey Goldberg Center for Excellence in Teaching at The Ohio State University in Columbus, OH. He is a specialist in the history of Russia/Soviet Union and in global environmental and water history. He is the author/(co-)editor of multiple volumes, including Hydraulic Societies: Water, Power, and Control in East and Central Asian History (2023), Place and Nature: Essays in Russian Environmental History (2021), Nature at War: American Environments and World War II (2020), Eurasian Environments: Nature and Ecology in Imperial Russian and Soviet History (2018), Readings in Water History (2020), Peopling the Russian Periphery: Borderland Colonization in Eurasian History (2007), and Heretics and Colonizers: Forging Russia’s Empire in the South Caucasus (2005). He is currently completing two books: “Baikal: the Great Lake and its People” and “Water: A Human History.” Since 2007, Breyfogle has worked as co-editor of the online magazine/podcast/video channel Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective, http://origins.osu.edu and most recently on Picturing Black History, https://www.picturingblackhistory.org/. In 2022, he was awarded The Herbert Feis Award for Distinguished Contributions to Public History from the American Historical Association. In 2024, his next co-edited book, Picturing Black History: Photographs and Stories that Changed the World will be published with Abrams Books.
The Department of History Seminar Series runs throughout the academic year and features guest speakers from the top universities who share their perspectives on history. Visit history.uoregon.edu for more information about the seminar series.
4:00–5:30 p.m.
Roots and Rhythms: A Conversation on Afrodescendencia, Indigenous Heritage, and Community Empowerment in Mexico and Puerto Rico
April 29 / 4PM-5:30PM / Lawrence 115
Join us for a research colloquium as we delve into the intersections of Afrodescendencia, Indigenous heritage, and community empowerment in Mexico and Puerto Rico.
Alai Reyes-Santos (Professor of Practice, UO School of Law) and Abigayle Mitchell (Grad Student, UO School of Law) will present their research on La Piedra del Sapo, a significant Indigenous site in Puerto Rico. They'll explore how this site can facilitate meaningful engagement with the past and shape sustainable futures for the people of Cidra and the Puerto Rican diaspora.
Abraham Landa (Grad Student, Ethnomusicology) will share his research project, "Black Mexico: Music, Dance, and the Construction of Afrodescendencia in Costa Chica." This project examines the performance of African music and dance in Costa Chica, Mexico, and how Afro-Mexican communities use cultural expressions to claim historical presence and cultural recognition.
This event provides a platform for CLLAS-funded researchers to share their findings and engage in a broader conversation about the significance of these topics. We hope to see you there!
noon
Preserving Latinx Stories: A Conversation with NPR's VP of Research, Archives, and Strategy Laura Soto-Barra
April 30 / 12pm-1pm / Zoom
Join us for a virtual conversation with Laura Soto-Barra, NPR's Vice President of Research, Archives, and Strategy. Learn about NPR's archival work, the significance of preserving Latinx stories from the 1980s, and efforts to digitize and preserve Latinx voices. Moderated by Chris Chávez, CLLAS Director.
CLICK HERE TO JOIN VIA ZOOM
1:30–2:30 p.m.
This event, offered by the University of Tennessee Knoxville, is an opportunity for postdoctoral scholars to gain valuable insights and guidance as they navigate their career paths. Former postdocs will share their personal experiences and provide invaluable advice to help postdocs achieve their career goals
This "Academic Teaching Panel" workshop will bring former postdocs who are current assistant professors at other US institutions. They will share their search experience, including interview/negotiation, tips, and tricks.
Register using your UO email address at https://tennessee.zoom.us/meeting/register/Docx_ki8R4-HNNcQ-hECuA#/registration
5:30–7:00 p.m.
As the Trump administration hits its 100-day mark, UO faculty from History, Law, and Political Science help make sense of the headlines and place today’s events in historical context. Pizza will be served.
DEPORTATION: Wednesday, April 23, 2025 AUTHORITARIANISM: Wednesday, April 30, 2025 ANTI-ENVIRONMENTALISM: Wednesday, May 14, 2025
All events held from 5:30 pm to 7:00 pm in McKenzie Hall 375. Free and open to the public
2:00–5:00 p.m.
The Department of Romance Languages will host three exciting guest speakers as part of a Symposium on Gender, Race, and Empire. All sessions will be in the Knight Library Dream Lab (Knight 121).
May 1, 2:00
Prof. Johanna Montlouis-Gabriel (French, Emory University): "Textured Archives: An Afrofeminist Creative Praxis of Hair, History, and Intimate Methodologies"
May 1, 3:30
Prof. Nicholas Jones (Spanish and Portuguese, Yale University): "Cervantine Blackness: A Breakup with Academia's Languages for a Revolutionary Situation"
May 2, 12:00
Prof. Estefanía Bournot (Latin America Studies, Harvard University and the Austrian Academy of Sciences): "The Specular Atlantic: South-South Readings and Diasporic (Be)Longings"
4:00–5:30 p.m.
Larry Diamond is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Mosbacher Senior Fellow in Global Democracy at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He also chairs the Hoover Institution Project on Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region and is the principal investigator of the Global Digital Policy Incubator, part of Stanford’s Cyber Policy Center. Diamond has served as a consultant to the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and advised and lectured to the World Bank, the United Nations, the State Department, and other agencies dealing with governance and development. His books include In Search of Democracy (2016), and The Spirit of Democracy (2008). He has edited or coedited some fifty books on democratic development around the world.
Francis Fukuyama is the Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and a faculty member of FSI's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. He is also director of Stanford's Ford Dorsey Master's in International Policy. Fukuyama has written widely on issues in development and international politics. His 1992 book, The End of History and the Last Man, has appeared in over twenty foreign editions. His latest book, Liberalism and Its Discontents, was published in May 2022.
This event is sponsored by the School of Global Studies and Languages, Global Studies Institute in the Division of Global Engagement, Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics, and the Department of Political Science.
Free and open to the public.
4:00–5:00 p.m.
The challenges of climate change and inequality are caught in a dynamic of dual acceleration. That is, racial, socioeconomic, and global inequality help drive climate change. In turn, climate change helps drive racial, socioeconomic, and global inequality. Local leaders and activists are critical actors in breaking this momentum. When they invest in rebuilding democracy and social networks from below, they can help adapt communities to climate change and recover from natural disasters. Those same measures also help protect vulnerable people from the worst harms of poverty, social isolation, and deteriorated public services. Using examples of place-based struggles to empower and organize poor communities, this talk will focus on local democracy as one solution to the problem of accelerating climate change and inequality.
Michelle Wilde Anderson is a professor of local government law, poverty, environmental justice, and state/local climate law at Stanford Law School and the Stanford School of Sustainability. Her book The Fight to Save the Town: Reimagining Discarded America (published by Simon & Schuster) was awarded the 2023 Zócalo Public Square Book Prize for Nonfiction. Her other writing has appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and dozens of other publications. The American Law Institute (ALI) awarded her their Early Career Scholars Medal in 2019. Anderson is the Chair of the Board of Directors of the National Housing Law Project and a board member for the East Bay Community Law Center in Oakland. She lives with her family in San Francisco.
noon
The Department of Romance Languages will host three exciting guest speakers as part of a Symposium on Gender, Race, and Empire. All sessions will be in the Knight Library Dream Lab (Knight 121).
May 1, 2:00
Prof. Johanna Montlouis-Gabriel (French, Emory University): "Textured Archives: An Afrofeminist Creative Praxis of Hair, History, and Intimate Methodologies"
May 1, 3:30
Prof. Nicholas Jones (Spanish and Portuguese, Yale University): "Cervantine Blackness: A Breakup with Academia's Languages for a Revolutionary Situation"
May 2, 12:00
Prof. Estefanía Bournot (Latin America Studies, Harvard University and the Austrian Academy of Sciences): "The Specular Atlantic: South-South Readings and Diasporic (Be)Longings"