Events

The Oregon Humanities Center hosts weekly Work-in-Progress Talks to showcase the humanities research of its many fellows. This week, Naomi Sussman presents her research on "Peoples of the Heartland: Native Nations, Sovereign Acts, and the Making of California."

Sussman's research maps how small Indigenous polities in California used relationships with human neighbors and the natural world to enact their sovereignty between 1769 and 1930. Indigenous peoples’ sovereign acts made the California interior into a Native heartland that survived and shaped four waves of Native and Euro-American invasion: first a Native confederacy on the Colorado River and the Spanish Empire, then Mexico and United States. Their story is an epic of Native power and adaptiveness in the face of enslavement and genocide. 

Join us for this Work-in-Progress Talk in the OHC Conference Room (Prince Lucien Campbell Hall 159) at noon on Fridays. These events are free and open to the public. Please register for this event online at ohc.uoregon.edu.

Get your costume on and join us for a free family event. Spooky decor...Halloween crafts...face painting...photo booth...costume parades! 

This event brings high school students from across Oregon together to learn about cybersecurity, digital safety, and technology careers.

High school groups, individual student registrations, and school counselor inquiries must be submitted through the official portal.

Mini-symposium and reception for launch of the new Center for Environmental Futures’ podcast, Environmental Futures.

Melody Allison (Environmental Futures podcast and PhD student in philosophy, UO) Sean J Patrick Carney (Time Zero podcast) Leah Sottile (Burn Wild and Bundyville podcasts)

Sponsor: Center for Environmental Futures 

Join the Department of Cinema Studies for a cup of coffee or hot apple cider every week on Tuesdays during fall term!

The Global Opportunities Fair is a collaborative initiative hosted by the Schnitzer School of Global Studies and Languages and the Lundquist College of Business (LCB). The event connects students with academic and co-curricular global experiences through partnerships with the Center for Academic Advising, Global Education Oregon (GEO), the Career Center, and other campus partners.

Bringing together academic programs, advisors, student organizations, career services, study abroad providers, and faculty, the fair highlights how international experiences and language proficiency can enrich students’ education and contribute to professional success across industries and sectors.

Whether you’re a Lundquist College student exploring global markets or a Schnitzer School student looking to apply your language and cultural skills in international business contexts, the Global Opportunities Fair is an opportunity to discover new connections, explore global experiences, and uncover pathways that bridge academics, culture, and career development.

Join the Department of History and Paula Findlen, Stanford University, for a talk on "A Paper World: Urbano Monte's Global Perspective ca. 1587."

In 1587, Urban Monte completed the first of three different versions of his world map in Milan. This talk explores why Monte decided to create this ambitious project and how he acquired the knowledge he needed to map the world.  What did it mean to make global knowledge in Spanish Milan? How did Monte perceive different parts of the world from this vantage point? 

Attend this workshop to learn about the Boren Scholarship, an award of up to $25,000 for studying a critical language abroad. This includes languages such as Japanese, Korean, Russian, Chinese, Arabic, Portuguese, Swahili, among others.

This event is part of International Education Month (IEM) programming. View the full calendar of IEM events here: https://international.uoregon.edu/IEM.

Environmental concerns—from nature conservation to air and water quality—are often associated with progressive politics. But under Fascisms past and present, ecological ideas have also animated authoritarian projects. This speaker series examines how dictatorships mobilize nature as both metaphor and material resource. As a metaphor, agrarianism evokes Fascism’s foundational mythos: the dictator will restore the country’s glorious national past. To live a rural, old-fashioned lifestyle was to be a more patriotic citizen. “Italy must be ruralized!” proclaimed Benito Mussolini in 1927. As a material resource, nature is often put to use in service of eugenics and racial hygiene.

Our speakers will examine the professional biographies of the scientists, industrialists, and entrepreneurs hired by Fascist regimes to determine the limits of biological possibility. Case studies from empire and the colonies will investigate the Fascist programs for experimental plant nurseries, animal breeding, and chemical trials. Rather than treating eco-fascism as a contradiction in terms, our speakers will situate it within longer histories of environmental planning, population management, and technocratic governance. They will explain how dictatorships use the tools of authoritarian governance to modify the environment in their pursuit of more Fascist futures.

Please join us for these illuminating discussions.

Talk details:

Fascist Climates: Tracking Weather in the Italian Colonial Empire (1929-1939)

Speaker: Prof. Angelo Caglioti, Barnard College 

With the onset of the Great Depression, the 1930s were a time of deep socio-economic crisis, environmental concerns about the scarcity of natural resources, and international competition with the rise of the “air age.” When Mussolini’s invasion and colonization of Ethiopia triggered international sanctions by the League of Nations and drained state coffers, the fascist regime ordered that the Italian scientific community contribute to achieving Autarky, namely national self-sufficiency, by cutting costs, aligning their activities with national priorities, and avoiding the duplication of areas of influence.

This paper examines the radicalization of the fascist regime and the transformation of the climate and atmospheric sciences in interwar Italy in the name of Autarky. In this political climate of scarcity and austerity, scientists working across agricultural and colonial meteorology, aeronautical weather forecasting, hydrology, and medical climatology competed to defend their scientific interests and institutions by claiming that their activities were more autarkic than others. In the paper, Caglioti highlights how autarky, scarcity, and political conformism became crucial tools in scientific boundary-making as competition for resources required defining the jurisdiction and areas of expertise of different research institutes, ministries, and technical state departments. In conclusion, the paper argues that claims about scarcity were central to the making of a fascist, authoritarian, Anthropocene.

For more information, please contact Prof. Diana Garvin, dgarvin@uoregon.edu.

Supported by: Department of Romance Languages, Italian Sector.

Muslim philanthropy represents an important yet understudied dimension of charitable giving in the United States. This talk examines the landscape of Muslim philanthropy through an academic review of giving patterns, exploring how religious beliefs, cultural traditions, and institutional contexts shape Muslim charitable practices. It considers the role of Islamic philanthropic traditions, including zakat (obligatory almsgiving), sadaqah (voluntary charity), and waqf (endowment), alongside contemporary forms of charitable engagement through mosques, Muslim-led nonprofits, and broader philanthropic institutions. By synthesizing existing scholarship, the talk identifies key findings of new research, emerging trends, and gaps in the literature on Muslim American giving. It also considers the implications of these patterns for understanding religious philanthropy, strengthening nonprofit practice, and advancing a more inclusive and comprehensive study of philanthropy in the United States.

This event is part of International Education Month (IEM) programming. View the full calendar of IEM events here: https://international.uoregon.edu/IEM.

Sponsored by: Al Askari Islamic Studies Initiative within the Global Studies Institute

Co-sponsored by: Arab Student Association, Global Studies, Muslim Studies Association, Religious Studies, The Schnitzer School of Global Studies and Languages, and the School of Planning, Public Policy and Management.