Please join Women in Graduate Sciences for our 11th Annual Fundraising Gala. We are hosting two back-to-back events designed to provide an engaging and informative evening celebrating women and marginalized genders in STEM! 

From 5 to 6 PM, join us for a cocktail hour where community members are invited to learn about WGS's initiatives, meet our executive board, and hear from WGS members, including scholarship winners and our outreach team. Stay for the main event from 6-8 PM, where we welcome everyone for a buffet style dinner, banquet raffle, and exciting seminar by Dr. Laura Ackerman-Biegasiewicz, an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Emory University whose research focuses on developing technology for accelerating reaction discovery in sustainable chemistry.

As the annual WGS fundraising benefit, the event offers a sliding scale of ticket prices ($50 for students, $100 for non-students, and $800 for an 8-person table). Purchase tickets or donate to WGS.

Native American and Indigenous Research Colloquium

Students from the UO School for Architecture and Environment have been working with NILI (Northwest Indigenous Language Institute) and Native American and Indigenous Studies on a project focused on Native Language learning, preservation, and revitalization. This project has two design stages: first, the renovation of the current infrastructure of the NILI house based on a real demand; second, a speculative proposal with the intention to expand the preservation and revitalization of the Native Languages to a broader audience.

Join students as they share their proposals imagining how languages can be expressed and celebrated in diverse and inclusive ways, creating a dynamic cultural space for the community.

The Department of Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies welcomes Kit Myers, Assistant Professor of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at UC Merced, for a talk on “The Violence of Love: Race, Adoption, and Family in the United States.”

12:00 pm on Friday, April 25 in EMU Crater Lake North (Room 146) Free and Open to the Public

The Violence of Love challenges the narrative that adoption is a solely loving act that benefits birth parents, adopted individuals, and adoptive parents–a narrative that is especially pervasive with transracial and transnational adoptions. Using interdisciplinary methods of archival, legal, and discursive analysis, Kit W. Myers comparatively examines the adoption of Asian, Black, and Native American children by White families in the United States. He shows how race has been constructed relationally to mark certain homes, families, and nations as spaces of love, freedom, and better futures–in contrast to others that are not–and argues that violence is attached to adoption in complex ways. Propelled by different types of love, such adoptions attempt to transgress biological, racial, cultural, and national borders established by traditional family ideals. Yet they are also linked to structural, symbolic, and traumatic forms of violence. The Violence of Love confronts this discomforting reality and rethinks theories of family to offer more capacious understandings of love, kinship, and care.

Cosponsored by the Mellon Foundation.

Kit Myers is transracial and transnational adoptee from Hong Kong and grew up in Oregon. He is currently an assistant professor in the Department of History & Critical Race and Ethnic Studies. He received his Ph.D. and M.A. from the University of California, San Diego in ethnic studies and his B.S. in ethnic studies and journalism from the University of Oregon. His book, The Violence of Love: Race, Family, and Adoption in the United States, was recently published with the University of California Press (2025). Myers has published journal articles in Adoption Quarterly, Critical Discourse Studies, Adoption & Culture, and Amerasia. He has also written on issues of race and policing. He serves on the executive committee for the Alliance for the Study of Adoption and Culture and previously served on the leadership team of the Adoption Museum Project. When Myers is not working, he loves spending time with his partner and two kids, being in nature, watching sports, coaching his daughters' soccer teams, and visiting family in Oregon.

The Division of Graduate Studies invites you to a celebration of the research, scholarship, and creative expressions of UO graduate students. The forum regularly showcases the work of more than 100 students representing more than 35 disciplines. Join us for the popular poster and networking session !

To participate, all graduate-level students are invited to submit a proposal by April 16, 2025. All accepted posters will be judged. Posters are categorized by field; first place in each category will win $300.

For more information, go to https://graduatestudies.uoregon.edu/forum

Presented by the Oregon Humanities Center

In an era of increased isolation where civic deserts, disinformation, and technological dependence separate us from one another, how can we reimagine our capacity for deeper connection and sustainable collaboration in our current reality? Deepa Iyer, a social justice advocate, will lead an exploration of the pathways that strengthen ecosystems for social change in her talk titled “Re-imagine: Our Social Change Ecosystems” on Wednesday, May 14, 2025 at 4 p.m. in the Knight Library Browsing Room. 

Deepa Iyer is a South Asian American writer, strategist, and lawyer. Her work is rooted in Asian American, South Asian, Muslim, and Arab communities where she spent fifteen years in policy advocacy and coalition building in the wake of the September 11th attacks and ensuing backlash. Currently, Deepa leads projects on solidarity and social movements at the Building Movement Project, a national nonprofit organization that catalyzes social change through research, strategic partnerships, and resources for movements and nonprofits. She conducts workshops and trainings, uplifts narratives through the “Solidarity Is This” podcast, and facilitates solidarity strategy for cohorts and networks. 

 Deepa’s first book, We Too Sing America: South Asian, Arab, Muslim, and Sikh Immigrants Shape Our Multiracial Future (2015), chronicles community-based histories in the wake of 9/11 and received a 2016 American Book Award. Her debut children’s picture book, We Are The Builders!, was released in 2024.  

 Deepa’s book Social Change Now: A Guide for Reflection and Connection (2022) is a practical guide for those on journeys towards justice, equity, and solidarity. It introduces an ecosystems framework that includes ten roles that many people play in service of social change values. Over the past three years, individuals and organizations around the world have used the social change ecosystem framework to respond to the pandemic, express solidarity during the uprisings against anti-Black racism, and support multiracial coalitions struggling for reproductive rights, immigrant and refugee protections, and climate justice. Free copies of Social Change Now will be available at Iyer’s talk. 

Iyer is the UO’s 2024–25 Lorwin Lecturer in Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. Her talk, part of the OHC’s “Re-imagine” series, is free and open to the public and will be livestreamed and recorded. Please register at ohc.uoregon.edu

Join the Native American and Indigenous Studies, Black Studies, Indigenous, Race and Ethnic Studies, and the Latinx Studies departments for our 2025 Commencement ceremony on Sunday, June 15th at 1:00 pm in the Miller Theatre Complex.