FALL 2025
Colloquium with Suman Seth
October 8, 2025 | 1pm | Hurst Lounge, Duncker Hall (2nd floor)
The Ratio of Mortality: Army Medical Statistics and the Values of Disease
Suman Seth is the Marie Underhill Noll Professor of the History of Science and Chair of the Department of Science and Technology Studies at Cornell University. He received his Ph.D. in History from Princeton University in 2003. He published his first book, Crafting the Quantum: Arnold Sommerfeld and the Practice of Theory, 1890-1926 with MIT Press in 2010. His second book, Difference and Disease: Medicine, Race, and the Eighteenth-Century British Empire was published by Cambridge University Press in 2018. His latest book, Mortality and Measurement: Race-Medicine, Statistics, and the Making of Empire will appear with Cambridge UP in 2027. He is the editor of a special issue of Postcolonial Studies (2009), on “Science, Colonialism, Postcoloniality;” of a FOCUS section of Isis (2014) on “Re-Locating Race;” and—with Erika Milam—of BJHS Themes on the Descent of Darwin (2021). He has a paper out in the last (2024) issue of Osiris, on Disability and the History of Science, entitled “A Decided Inaptitude in His Constitution:” Race, Slavery, and Disability in the Nineteenth-Century British Empire.
SPRING 2025
Eye Witnesses to History: Finding Everyday Life in Courts‑Martial Files from Occupied Japan
April 9, 2025, 1 PM at Umrath Hall (Lounge)
Connor Mills, University of Oregon, Courtesy Asst. Professor of History
Sponsored by the Department of History and Global Studies
Imagining the Globe: The Sfera Project between Merchants, Maps and Manuscript
March 26, 2025, 1 PM at McMillan Hall (Café)
Carrie Beneš, Professor of History at New College of Florida
Sponsored by the Department of History, the Humanities Digital Workshop, and the Center for the Humanities.
Exploring the Digital Humanities with La Sfera
Workshop planned in conjunction with "Imagining the Globe"
Workshop with Shefali Chandra and Antoinette Burton
February 3, 2025,
Antoinette Burton, Professor of History, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Sponsored by the Department of History and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
Bovine Interventions: Thinking with Animals in Enlightenment Venice
February 26, 2025, 1 PM at Duncker Hall (Hurst Lounge)
Karl Appuhn, Associate Professor of History And Italian at New York University
Sponsored by Department of History and Environmental Studies
FALL 2024
A Century of Immigration Quotas: The Origins, Impact, and Legacy of the 1924 Immigration Act
November 13, 2024, 3:30 PM at Duncker Hall (Hurst Lounge)
Maddalena Marinari (Gustavus Adolphus College)
Book workshop: Dalen Wakely-Smith
Workshop planned in conjunction with "A Century of Immigration Quotas": November 13, 2024 in Busch 201
Asian Americans and STEM
October 16, 2024, 3:30 PM at McMillan Café
Mary Lui, Yale University, Prof. of American Studies & History
Sponsored by History and American Culture Studies
Slavery, Commodification, and Unfreedom in Indian Territory, 1830–1860
October 9, 2024, 3:30 PM at McMillan Café
Nakia Parker, Michigan State University
Sponsored by History and AMCS
SPRING 2024
Survivors and the Stillborn: Lives and Afterlives in an Egyptian Medical Museum
April 10, 2024
Beth Baron, CUNY Graduate Center
The Silver Women: How Black Women's Labor Made the Panama Canal
March 27, 2024
Joan Flores-Villalobos, Assistant Professor of History at USC Dornsife
FALL 2023
The Pacific Journeys of the South Asian Martyr Saint Gonçalo Garcia: India, Japan & Brazil
November 15, 2023
Erin Kathleen Rowe, Professor of History - Johns Hopkins University
Maladies of Empire: How Colonialism, Slavery & War Transformed Medicine
October 18, 2023
Jim Downs, Gilder Lehrman NEH Chair of Civil War Era Studies and History Civil War Era Studies, Gettysburg College
FALL 2022
Catholicism as the key to Understanding the Religions of the World in the Eighteenth Century
November 2, 2022
Mark Valeri, Interim Director of Program in Religious Studies, Director of Undergraduate Studies for Program in Religious Studies, and Reverend Priscilla Wood Neaves Distinguished Professor of Religion and Politics
This paper addresses Anglo-Protestant views of Catholicism during the eighteenth century, especially through the extraordinary 7-volume dictionary of “Religious Customs and Ceremonies,” by Bernard Picart and Frederic Bernard.
History, Temporality and China's revolutions
October 12, 2022
Rebecca E. Karl, Professor of History, New York University
Sponsored by the department of History and East Asian Languages and Cultures
HIV/AIDS and the Politics of Caregiving: Surfacing Coalitional Intimacies through the Domestic Archive
September 7, 2022
Stephen Vider, Assistant Professor of History and Director of the Public History Initiative, Cornell University
Material World of Modern Segregation: St. Louis in the Long Era of Ferguson
September 30, 2022
A volume panel discussion, that features Douglas Flowe, Iver Bernstein, along with Heidi Kolk and Eric Sandweiss, Thomas and Kathryn Miller Professor of History at Indiana University, sponsored by the University City Public Library
SPRING 2022
Forging Ties, Forging Passports: Migration and the Modern Sephardi Diaspora
March 30, 2022
Devi Mays, Associate Professor of Judaic Studies and History, Frankel Center for Judaic Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
FALL 2021
Digital Methods for Chinese Historical Research and the "Books in China Database"
November 11, 2021
Joseph Dennis, Associate Professor - University of Wisconsin
In providing an overview of a project at the Max Planck Institute for History of Science that maps the circulation of books in China by time and space, this talk explores how digital tools are transforming research on Chinese history and literature.
Professor Joseph Dennis' visit is generously funded by the Goldschmidt Graduate Research Grant.
FALL 2020
History in the Time of Pandemic: A Conversation with Paul Ramirez
December 9, 2020
Paul Ramírez, Assistant Professor of History at Northwestern University
The History Department invited Paul Ramirez to present his work on epidemic disease outbreaks, vaccination campaigns, and the promises and paradoxes of Enlightenment medicine in colonial Mexico.
Roundtable Discussion- Legacies of Violence and Genocide: Can Memorials and Museums Help Us Build a Better Future?
November 12, 2020
Erin McGlothlin moderated this panel discussion.
Roundtable participants for this event included:
Avril Alba, Senior Lecturer in Holocaust Studies and Jewish Civilization in the Department of Hebrew, Biblical and Jewish Studies, University of Sydney
Zahava D. Doering, editor emerita of Curator: The Museum Journal
David Cunningham, professor and chair of Sociology at Washington University
Mark Valeri, Interim Director of Program in Religious Studies, Director of Undergraduate Studies for Program in Religious Studies
SPRING 2020
Informality as History
February 14, 2020
Round Table Conversation with Brodwyn Fischer, Department of History & Director, Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Chicago
Funk Money: The End of Empire and the Expansion of Tax Havens, 1950s-1960s
February 19, 2020
Vanessa Ogle, University of California, Berkeley
This talk explored the history of decolonization from an economic and financial perspective.
The Great Chernobyl Acceleration
February 25, 2020
Kate Brown, Professor of History in the Science, Technology, and Society Department of Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This event was organized by the Wastelands Faculty Seminar and was co-sponsored by the Center for the Humanities, Department of History and International and Area Studies Program.
Israeli National Security: A New Strategy for an Era of Change
February 26, 2020
Charles Freilich, Columbia University
Sponsored and funded by the Office of the Dean of Faculty of Arts & Sciences. Co-sponsored by The Israeli Institute and the Department of Jewish, Islamic, and Middle Eastern Studies
