Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation
Can Indigenous artists, curators, and historians resist the colonial narrative of art museums when the museum itself is a colonizer institution? Reflecting on his own experience visiting the museum on the Gila River Indian Community, David Martínez argues that the path to resistance lay in the land itself in his talk “There Is No Word […]
Work-in-Progress talk with Priscilla Peña Ovalle, Cinema Studies, and 2025–26 OHC Faculty Research Fellow In the female-dominant profession of hair styling, women rarely achieve the same visibility as men—even in Hollywood. Using original interviews with hairstylists for performers like Prince and Beyoncé, I highlight the labor behind iconic pop performers on US television. Hair Moves […]
Michael Stern, associate professor of German and Scandinavian, will give a book talk on his new book Thinking Nietzsche with Africana Thought. In the book, Michael Stern sets Nietzsche in conversation with Africana artists and philosophers to explore the role of aesthetics in decolonial worldmaking. Nietzsche, a theorist of power, morality, and aesthetics supplies a […]
Work-in-Progress talk with Daniel Rosenberg, History, and 2025–26 OHC Faculty Research Fellow My project examines the graphite pencil as both historical artifact and contemporary technology. It explores how analog and digital technologies function as components of a shared communication environment, how the meaning and use of analog technology changes with the advent of the digital, […]
Nadine Strossen, the John Marshall Harlan II Professor of Law Emerita at New York Law School and past President of the American Civil Liberties Union (1991-2008), is a Senior Fellow with FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights and Education) and a leading expert and frequent speaker/media commentator on constitutional law and civil liberties, who has […]
Work-in-Progress talk with Alejandro Marin, PhD candidate, Romance Languages , and 2025–26 OHC Dissertation Fellow Migration today is often framed as crisis, but literature reveals it as a site of creativity and resistance. Contemporary novels from Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Equatorial Guinea portray movement across borders as an opportunity to forge new communities and […]
The Oregon Humanities Center presents its 2025–26 speaker series centered on the theme of “Attention.” The “Attention” series will explore the dynamics of how, why, and what we focus on shapes our reality and creates our purpose. Also known as concentration, alertness, focus, notice, awareness, heed, regard, and consideration—Attention is the fundamental cognitive ability to […]
Work-in-Progress talk with Jessica M. Johnson, PhD candidate, History of Art and Architecture, and 2025–26 OHC Dissertation Fellow During the Georgian era, a period noted for the transatlantic slave trade and the development of racial theory, an individual’s class could outweigh their race. My dissertation considers the utilization of portraiture by wealthy and influential Blacks […]
Christopher Brown and his jazz band Each moment of our lives presents us with opportunities and challenges for us to make decisions that will shape the next minute, hour, day, week, month, year, and decade to come. If we want positive outcomes, the challenge is learning how to string together appropriate decisions in each moment. […]
Ada Limón is the author of seven books of poetry, including Startlement: New & Selected Poems; The Hurting Kind, which was a finalist for the Griffin Prize; The Carrying, which won the National Books Critics Circle Award and was a finalist for the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award; and Bright Dead Things, which was named a […]
