Past Event Category: Seminar
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Feb 12American Blitzkrieg or Ecological Indian?: A Whodunit Mystery 12,000 Years in the Making
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar Melissa Charenko William Coleman Dissertation Fellow (2017-2018) History of Science, Medicine, and Technology, UW–Madison Approximately 12,000 years ago, North America’s megafauna went extinct. Scientists originally ascribed the extinction of species like the giant beaver, mastodon, and mammoth to changes in the climate, claiming that these and other species had not been able …
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Feb 5Hell and Eden at World’s End: Early Twentieth Century Settler Life on the Galápagos Islands
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar: Elizabeth Hennessy Resident Fellow (2017-2018) History, UW–Madison; Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies The Galápagos Islands are best known today as a natural laboratory of evolution where biologists and tourists alike can venture to see nature as Charles Darwin himself did nearly two centuries ago. For much of the late nineteenth and early …
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Jan 29American Holidays, American Nature
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar Neil Prendergast UW System Fellow (2017-2018) History; International Studies, UW-Stevens Point For nearly two centuries, millions of Americans have been celebrating Christmas with a tree and Thanksgiving with a turkey, yet despite that depth of experience, an enduring ambivalence remains: Which type of tree and which type of turkey should enter the …
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Jan 22Following in the Footsteps of African Americans in 20th Century Denmark
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar: Ethelene Whitmire Race, Ethnicity, and Indigeneity Fellow (2017-2018) School of Library & Information Studies, UW–Madison While walking through a cemetery in Copenhagen in 2013, I noticed a name that seemed out of place. Hear about my discovery and the basis for my new book project about the transnational experiences of African Americans …
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Dec 11The Development Novel: World Literature and the Political Economy of Growth
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar: Peter Ribic Dana-Allen Dissertation Fellow (2017-2018) English, UW–Madison My dissertation research connects two genres of global writing that emerged in the immediate postwar period: development economics, which undertook to theorize and facilitate the transition from “traditional” to “modern” economies in the recently discovered “Third World”; and the postcolonial bildungsroman, which uses the …
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Dec 4Digesting Bodies: Status, Gender, and Mastery in Roman Society and Homes
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar: Mira Green Solmsen Fellow (2017-2018) History; Classics, University of Washington Providing a distinct window into the social and political developments of the early Roman Empire, my research focuses on Roman attitudes towards the digesting body and the domestic practices associated with its needs in order to probe Roman notions of embodiment. …
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Nov 27Queer Love on Barbary Lane: The Sexual Politics of Serial Gay Fiction in Armistead Maupin’s “Tales of the City”
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar: Ramzi Fawaz Resident Fellow (2017-2018) English, UW–Madison In this talk, I analyze the content and reading experience of Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City, the most popular serialized gay fiction of the 1970s, which appeared in daily installments in the San Francisco Chronicle between 1976-1983. I argue that the serialized rhythm of …
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Nov 13Listening to Contemporary Art: Vocality as a Technology of Relation
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar: River Encalada Bullock Dana-Allen Dissertation Fellow (2017-2018) Art History, UW–Madison Extending from my dissertation research this talk attends to works of art that ask us to listen just as much as they ask us to look. This call to listen is crucial to the ethical and political aims of art of women …
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Nov 6Songs to Encourage the Cessation of Litigation: Printing, Orality, and Legal Knowledge in China, 1595-1949
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar: Joseph Dennis Resident Fellow (2017-2018) History, UW–Madison How did people form their attitudes towards law in early modern and Republican period China? How did mass legal education affect the uses of law in daily life? This talk will examine the publication, circulation, and performance of “songs to encourage the cessation of …
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Oct 30How to Talk to Strangers: Interpreters in Early Modern Encounters
University Club, Room 212
Monday Seminar: Su Fang Ng Solmsen Fellow (2017-2018) Clifford A. Cutchins III Associate Professor of English, Virginia Tech Early modern European long-distance voyages had their impetus in the search for the source of spices, the Spice Islands of the Moluccas, or Maluku. When Europeans sailed to the East Indies, how did they communicate …