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Wednesday, April 22
12:00pm-1:00pm

This lecture reframes the University of the ²ÝÝ®ÊÓƵ's founding story, centering the estimated 40,000 enslaved people whose forced labor generated the 1.2 million dollars pledged by the university's first 295 benefactors. Using the Roberson Project's Founding Funders digital humanities project as a starting point, this presentation explores the lives and experiences of those enslaved people and asks what we can discover about our institution's origins when the story starts with them.

Pizza and drinks provided!

This year’s two-night Anita S. Goodstein Lecture in Women’s History offered a memorable opportunity to reflect on the achievements of the women’s and gender studies program and its founder Dr. Julie Berebitsky  at the University of the ²ÝÝ®ÊÓƵ.

April 7-8, 2026

6:30pm

On April 7, Sewanee is proud to welcome Dr. Katherine Parkin, Professor and Jules Plangere, Jr. Endowed Chair in American Social History at Monmouth University, and Dr. Katherine Turk, Professor and Adjunct Associate Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, to campus as the 2026 Anita S. Goodstein Lecturers in Women's History. 

On April 8, Sewanee welcomes alumni from the university's Women's and Gender Studies Program, Ron Allen, C'03, Jane Johnson, C'08, Summer Martins, C'00, Claire Forbes, C'15, Dr. Carrie Barske Crawford, C'22, and Jessica Osaki, C'22, to join us as part of the Goodstein Lecture events.

Past Chair of WGS Andrea Mansker, who also serves as the David E. Underdown Professor of Modern European History, has won the 2025 University Award in Scholarship, Research, or Creative Activity! She was recognized at a ceremony in McGriff Alumni House on March 31, 2025.

Thursday, April 10, 2025 
7:30 pm 

WMST faculty member Dr. Andrea Mansker, David E. Underdown Professor of Modern European History, has published her latest book, (Cornell University Press, 2024). Her study uncovers the unexplored history of matrimonial agents, their novel marketing tactics, and the rise of personal advertisements to track the commercialization of marriage in nineteenth-century France.

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Please join the History Department for the 2024 Anita S. Goodstein Lecture in Women's History on Thursday, March 21 at 6 p.m. in Convocation Hall:

Ayohka: Bridging Cherokee Educational Pasts, Presents, and Futures

by Julie L. Reed

Associate Professor of History at Penn State University

Julie L. Reed, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation, received her Ph.D. in History from the University of North Carolina. She is the author of Serving the Nation: Cherokee Sovereignty and Social Welfare, 1800-1907. Her current book project is a history of Cherokee education, and she is also co-authoring a new history of the Cherokee Nation, supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. She is a co-host of the blog Think Tsalagi and is a featured scholar in the new season of Native America by PBS.

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Sponsored by the Goodstein Lecture Fund

Bearing Witness

A two-year odyssey takes a Sewanee history and German major from Tennessee to Berlin to navigate a web of archives and emotional revelations as she uncovers the lost stories of Holocaust victims.

October 5th 4:30 pmÌý

Naylor Auditorium, Gailor HallÌý

Ritual of Mandate : Unraveling China's Election Journey

Dr. Arden Chao

In Chinese history, the term "election" is deeply intertwined with concepts such as "mandate of heaven," "virtuous governance," and "benevolence." The influx of Euro-American concepts like "democracy," "freedom," and "citizenship" in the nineteenth century created a hybrid system of political ideologies in modern China. While experiments with representative democracy failed, voting retains a highly symbolic role in the histories of both the Nationalist and Communist regimes and highlights how Chinese politics has navigated indigenous and Euro-American political systems. In addition to introducing the history of elections in China, this talk will also introduce Chinese perspectives on elections and politics in the United States from a comparative point of view in order to promote understanding across cultures.

The 2023 Anita S. Goodstein Lecture in Women's History

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"Why History Matters: Understanding The U.S. Black Birthing Crisis"Ìý

by Deirdre Cooper Owens

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Monday, March 6

5:30pm

Gailor Auditorium

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In her talk, Deirdre Cooper Owens will explain the linkage between the origins of modern American gynecology and slavery. Engaging with 19th-century ideas about so-called racial differences, Cooper Owens sheds light on the contemporary legacy of medical racism and its effects on Black birthing people in this nation.

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Dr. Tiffany Momon will co-direct Sewanee's new THRT (Truth and Racial Healing Ctr)

Thursday, November 3

7:00pm CST

Prof. Maya Jasanoff, X.D. and Nancy Yang Professor andÌýCoolidge Professor of History at Harvard University, will deliver a lecture entitled "Ancestry: Where do we come from and why do we care?" Ìý

Sponsoring organizations are Phi Beta Kappa, the Department of English, the Department of History, andÌýthe University Lectures Committee.Ìý

Sewanee student, Rebecca Cole is among the 2022 Appalachian College Association Scholars.Ìý Each year, outstanding students are provided funding to help them to pursue research projects over the summer.Ìý Ms. Cole will work under faculty mentors, Dr. Liesl Allingham and Dr. Shana Minkin on her project,ÌýBridging the Gap between Representation and Interpretation in German and Eastern European Holocaust Commemoration.Ìý Cole will present her work in the fall of 2022.

Associate Professor of History Kelly Whitmer has been awarded a research fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

Dr. Milam's April 25th talk drew on material from her recently released book, Creatures of Cain: the Hunt for Human Nature in Cold War America (Princeton University Press, 2019) which charts the rise and fall in Cold War America of a theory that attributed man’s evolutionary success to his unique capacity for murder.

Dr. Sharon Lynette Jones, Prof. of English at Wright State University will deliver a lecture entitled Encountering Gender, Class, and Race: Literary and Cinematic Representations of Angela Davis and the Civil Rights Movementon Wednesday, March 27, 2019 at 4 p.m. in Gailor Auditorium.