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Past Events

PAST EVENTS are aranged chronologically according to years (see left sidebar). For recaps and summaries of some of the Center conferences and lectures—see our IN DEPTH section.

Be sure and have a look at our MULTIMEDIA section for interviews with guest speakers (from the CCHS YouTube channel), as well as a video archive with films of past lectures and panel discussions.


RECENT PAST EVENTS

2020-21

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic 2020-21 events took place online via Zoom.

The CCHS co-sponsored History Department Zoom events for Northwestern historians and the Northwestern community under the rubric Historians at Home or H@H. See Co-sponsorships.

Events are RECORDED and can be viewed on YouTube on our MULTIMEDIA page.


winter 2021

Samuel MOYN (Yale University), author of Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World (2018)—Thursday, Feb. 25 lunch lecture from 12:30 to 2 p.m.—with Daniel Immerwahr, on "The Coming of Humane War."

See also Historians @  Home events.


spring 2021

Sophia ROSENFELD (University of Pennsylvania), author of Democracy and Truth: A Short History (2019)—Thursday, April 29 from 12:30 to 2 p.m.

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Two FRIDAY all-day graduate conferences (via ZOOM):

APRIL 16—"History of the Self" convened by T.H. Breen Graduate Fellow RUBY DAILY, with keynote speaker Professor Judith COFFIN (University of Texas-Austin), author of Sex, Love, and Letters: Writing Simone de Beauvoir, 1949-1972 (2020)

MAY 14— “The End of the World as They Knew It: Crisis and Collapse in History” convened by T.H. Breen Graduate Fellow SIAN OLSON DOWIS, with keynote speaker Professor Kate BROWN (MIT), author of Manual for Survival: An Environmental History of the Chernobyl Disaster (2019).

 For more information, see Conferences.

 


FaLL 2020

Lara PUTNAM (U of Pittsburgh), author of Radical Moves: Caribbean Migrants and the Politics of Race in the Jazz Age (2013)

Reading: Lara Putnam, “The Transnational and the Text-Searchable: Digitized Sources and the Shadows They Cast” https://academic.oup.com/ahr/article-abstract/121/2/377/2581842

Co-sponsored by the Medill School of Journalism.

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James MILLWARD (Georgetown University), author of The Silk Road: A Very Short Introduction (2013)

         To register for the event, go to http://planitpurple.northwestern.edu/event/56807

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In collaboration with the Holocaust Educational Foundation of Northwestern (HEFNU)

 Erin McGLOTHLIN (Washington University, St. Louis), author of Second-Generation Holocaust Literature: Legacies of Survival and Perpetration (2006) and the forthcoming The Mind of the Holocaust Perpetrator in Fiction and Nonfiction (2021)

To register for the event, go to http://planitpurple.northwestern.edu/event/568083


 

SPRING 2020: events cancelled due to conronavirus pandemic


 

WINTER 2020

Kendi crowd Feb 2020


 

FALL 2019

Fuentes and grads 2019


 

SPRING 2019

WINTER 2019


 

FALL 2018

This year a major conference on "WRITING HISTORY THROUGH CHILDREN" (Oct. 5-6) kicked off our Fall Quarter events.


Spring 2018

Spring flyer

For History faculty and graduate students—faculty work-in-progress workshop

Sean HANRETTA—topic tba—Monday, April 9 (catered light lunch at noon, discussion at 12:30 p.m.)


Joint CCHS/CAAH Distinguished lecture on African American History

Claude CLEGG (University of North Carolina), author of Troubled Ground: A Tale of Murder, Lynching, and Reckoning in the New South (2010)—Thursday, April 12 at 4:30 p.m. (with reception to follow)


Gray Boyce Memorial Lecture in Medieval History (co-sponsored with the History Department)

Joel KAYE (Barnard College), author of A History of Balance, 1250-1375 (Chicago UP, 2014)—Thursday, April 19 at 4:30 p.m. (with reception to follow)


Graduate CONFERENCE on “Resistance in History: From Transgression to Transformation” (convened by Breen Fellow Bonnie ERNST)--Friday, April 20 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.


Lynn THOMAS (University of Washington), author of Politics of the Womb: Women, Reproduction, and the State in Kenya (2003)—Tuesday, April 24—lunch lecture (12:15 to 1:50 p.m.)


Prasenjit DUARA (Duke University), author of The Crisis of Global Modernity: Asian Traditions and a Sustainable Future (2015)—Tuesday, May 1—lunch lecture (12:15 to 1:50 p.m.)


For History faculty and graduate students—faculty work-in-progress workshop

Lina BRITTO—“Hurricane Marijuana: A New History of Colombia's First Drug Paradise”—Monday, May 7 (catered light lunch at noon, discussion at 12:30 p.m.)


Graduate CONFERENCE on “Generations in History: Youth, Age, and Metrics of Cultural Change” (convened by Breen Fellow Emily Curtis WALTERS)--Friday, May 11 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Winter 2018

Winter flyer.pdf

Anne HYDE (University of Oklahoma), author of Empires, Nations, and Families: A New History of the North American West, 1800-1860 (2011)—Thursday, January 11–lunch lecture (12:15 to 1:50 p.m.)—"Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor, Rich Woman, Poor Woman, Beggar Man, Thief”: The Fortunes of Half-Breed Life in the U.S. West”


Joint CCHS/University Library Lecture on the History of the Book:

Janice RADWAY (NU), author of A Feeling for Books: The Book-of-the-Month Club, Literary Taste, and Middle Class Desire (1999)—Thursday, February 22 at 4:30 p.m. (lecture with reception to follow)—“Girl Zines, the 1990s, and the Challenge of Historical Narration”


Special event: "Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's The Vietnam War: A Discussion with Two Historians and a Filmmaker"--Michael J. ALLEN (NU History), Mark Philip BRADLEY (U of Chicago History) and Kyle HENRY (NU Radio/TV/Film) discuss the PBS documentary--Tuesday, February 27 at 4:30 p.m. with reception to follow

 

FALL 2017

Special event co-sponsored with the History Department and the Kaplan Institute for the Humanities

Nancy MACLEAN (Duke University), speaking on the subject of her new book—Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America (2017)—Wednesday, September 27 at 4:30 p.m.


Lynn HUNT (UCLA), author of Writing History in the Global Era (2014)

Tuesday, October 10, 2017--lunch lecture (12:15 to 1:50 p.m.)—“Tea, Women, and the 18th-C. Concept of Civilization


For History faculty and graduate students—faculty work-in-progress workshop

Scott SOWERBY—“The Confessional State and the Fiscal-Military State in Early Modern Europe”—Monday, October 16 (catered light lunch at noon, discussion at 12:30 p.m.)


In collaboration with the Holocaust Educational Foundation of Northwestern (HEF)

Jan GRABOWSKI (University of Ottawa), author of Hunt for the Jews: Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland (2014)—Monday, October 23 at 5 p.m. (with reception to follow)—“Polish ‘Blue’ Police & the Extermination of Polish Jews, 1939-1945”


Jane KAMENSKY (Harvard University), author of A Revolution in Color: The World of John Singleton Copley (2016)

Thursday, November 9—lunch lecture (12:15 to 1:50 p.m.)—“The Republic of Letters and the Empire of Pictures: John Singleton Copley and the Problem of Provincialism


For History faculty and graduate students—faculty work-in-progress workshop

Sarah MAZA—"The Kids Aren't All Right: Historians and the Problem of Childhood"—Monday, November 20 (catered light lunch at noon, discussion at 12:30 p.m.)


Fall 2016

Flyer

In collaboration with the Holocaust Educational Foundation of Northwestern (HEF)

Paul JASKOT (DePaul University), author of The Nazi Perpetrator: Postwar German Art and the Politics of the Right (2012)

Tuesday, September 27--lunch lecture (12:15 to 1:50 p.m.)

“A Plan, A Testimony, and a Digital Map: Architecture and the Spaces of the Holocaust


For History faculty and graduate students:

History Faculty work-in-progress workshops convened by Daniel Immerwahr

Kate MASUR work-in-progress WORKSHOP—"Free Black Sailors, Personal Liberty, and the Antebellum Constitutional Order"

Monday, October 10 (catered light lunch at 12 noon, discussion of pre-circulated text at 12:30 p.m.)


Tara ZAHRA (U of Chicago), author of The Lost Children: Reconstructing Europe’s Families after World War II (2011)

Tuesday, October 18–lunch lecture (12:15 to 1:50 p.m.)

“The Great Departure: Mass Migration from Eastern Europe and the Making of the Free World


In collaboration with the Kaplan Institute for the Humanities  

Louis HYMAN (Cornell University), author of Debtor Nation: The History of America in Red Ink (2011)

Thursday, October 20--lunch lecture (12:15 to 1:50 p.m.)

"From Personal Credit to Market Debt: How Loans Became Commodities"


Giancarlo CASALE (University of Minnesota), author of The Ottoman Age of Exploration (2010)

Thursday, November 3–lunch lecture (12:15 to 1:50 p.m.)

“ISIL and the Global Past: A Deep History of the Caliphate”


Winter 2017

Flyer

CANCELLED! Jane KAMENSKY (Harvard U), author of The Exchange Artist: A Tale of High-Flying Speculation and America’s First Banking Collapse (2008)

"The Republic of Letters and the Empire of Pictures: John Singleton Copley and the Problem of Provincialism"

Thursday, January 12–lunch lecture (12:15 to 1:50 p.m.)--rescheduled for November 9.


Joint CCHS/CAAH Distinguished lecture on African American History

David BLIGHT (Yale University), author of American Oracle: The Civil War in the Civil Rights Era (2011)

"Writing the Life of Frederick Douglass--Why and Why Now? The Post Civil War Years"

Thursday, February 16 at 4:30 p.m. (lecture with reception to follow)


Joint CCHS/University Library Lecture on the History of the Book:

ERIC SLAUTER (U of Chicago), author of The State as a Work of Art: The Cultural Origins of the Constitution (2009)

"Walden's Carbon Footprint: People, Plants, Animals, and Machines in the Making of an American Classic"

Tuesday, February 21 at 4:30 p.m. (lecture with reception to follow)


Spring 2017

Anand YANG (University of Washington), author of Bazaar India: Markets, Society, and the Colonial State Bihar, 1765-1947 (1998)—Tuesday, April 4—lunch lecture (12:15 to 1:50 p.m.)

“Empire of Convicts: Indian Bandwars in Indian Ocean Penal Colonies in the Late Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries"  


For History faculty and graduate students—faculty work-in-progress workshop

Laura HEIN—“Post-Fascist Political Culture in Japan”

Monday, April 10 (catered light lunch at noon, discussion of pre-circulated text at 12:30 p.m.)


Graduate CONFERENCE: “THE POPULAR AND/IN HISTORY”

Friday, April 14 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. (convened by Breen Fellow Mariah Hepworth)

Keynote speaker: T.J. Jackson Lears (Rutgers U), author of Rebirth of a Nation: The Making of Modern America, 1877-1920 (2009)

Keynote lecture: "The Wild Card: Animal Spirits and the Calculating Self"


The GRAY BOYCE Memorial lecture:

Brian CATLOS (University of Colorado), author of The Victors and the Vanquished: Christians and Muslims of Catalonia and Aragon, 1050-1300 (2004)—Wednesday, April 26 at 4:30 p.m.

“Foreigners in their Own Lands: The Muslims of Medieval Europe”


Cynthia RADDING (UNC), author of Landscapes of Power and Identity: Comparative Histories in the Sonoran Desert and the Forests of Amazonia from Colony to Republic (2005)—Thursday, May 11—lunch lecture (12:15 to 1:50 p.m.)—note change of date!

“Indigenous Landscapes and Contested Boundaries: Reading Nature into Colonial Archives”



For History faculty and graduate students—faculty work-in-progress workshop

Michael ALLEN—“The Arrogance of Power”

Monday, May 15 (catered light lunch at noon, discussion of pre-circulated text at 12:30 p.m.)


Graduate CONFERENCE: “PUNISHMENT AND ITS DISCONTENTS”

Friday, May 19 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. (convened by Breen Fellow Matthew June)

Keynote speaker: Heather Ann Thompson, author of Speaking Out: Activism and Protest in the 1960s and 1970s (2010)

Keynote lecture: "Blood in the Water: Attica and Prisoner Rights Past and Present."

There are no upcoming events at this time.