Juliet Schor is an Economist and a professor of Sociology at Boston College. She discusses her research on consumer society and consumer culture, working hours and lifestyles, environmental degradation, the sharing economy. Schor is the 2022 Wayne Morse Chair in Law and Politics. She gave a talk "Gig Economy: Predatory Platforms, Precarious Work" as part of the Morse Center’s two-year focus on Making Work Work.

UO Today interview: Juliet Schor, Economist and Professor of Sociology, Boston College

Britt Wray is a Human and Planetary Health Postdoctoral Fellow at the Stanford Center for Innovation in Global Health, Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine’s Centre on Climate Change and Planetary Health. She is the author of the book Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis (2022).

Her research focuses on the mental health impacts of the climate crisis on young people and frontline community members, socio-emotional resilience and capacity building for vulnerable communities, and public engagement for improved mental wellbeing and planetary health.  

On March 8th, 2023, Britt Wray will give a talk “How to Cope with Climate Anxiety: Saving the Earth and Saving Ourselves” as the Oregon Humanities Center’s 2022-2023 Kritikos Lecturer and part of the “Belonging” series.

UO Today interview: Britt Wray, author Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis

Poet Matthew Dickman is a visiting assistant professor of Creative Writing at the University of Oregon. He discusses his work and reads from his latest collection. 

He is the author of the collections All-American Poem (2008) winner of the APR/Honickman First Book Prize, Mayakovsky’s Revolver (2012), and Wonderland (2018). In 2016 he co-authored a collection Brother with his brother Michael. His latest collection Husbandry was published in 2022.

UO Today interview: Matthew Dickman, poet and visiting assistant professor, Creative Writing

Devin Grammon, Romance Languages and 2023–24 OHC Faculty Research Fellow.

The idea that bilingual signage helps to create welcoming and inclusive public spaces for U.S. Spanish speakers is complicated by the inequitable treatment of English and Spanish on many signs in terms of translation quality, text size, fonts, and other factors. My project examines bilingual public signs in downtown Eugene in order to explore how representations of Spanish can reinforce racializing stereotypes about U.S. Latinos and construct a public sphere that is hostile to members of this ethnolinguistic group.

"Spanish in the Linguistic Landscape of Eugene, Oregon'

Artist Omar Khouri was born in London and spent his childhood in Lebanon.  
In 2002, he graduated from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston with a BFA in illustration. After spending a year in Los Angeles working in cinema and television, he returned to Beirut.  

In 2006, Khouri cofounded Samandal Comics Magazine, the first experimental comics periodical in the Arab world. He is currently Samandal’s Editor-in-Chief and one of its many international contributing artists.  

In 2010, Khouri's sociopolitical satire Utopia won Best Arabic Comic book at the Algerian International Comic Book Festival. His work spans many art forms including painting, comics, animation, theatre, film, and music.  

Khouri is currently artist-in-residence for the UO’s Comics and Cartoon Studies program. He is producing a U.N. report on the right to food in comics form as a collaboration with Law professor Michael Fakhri and English and Comics Studies professor Kate Kelp-Stebbins. This work is in conjunction with professor Fakhri’s appointment as Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food for the United Nations.

UO Today interview: Omar Khouri, comics artist

Miguel Gualdrón Ramírez is an assistant professor of Philosophy at the University of Oregon. 

His research interests include Critical Philosophy of Race, Latin American and Caribbean Philosophy, Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art, 18th and 19th century German Philosophy, and 20th century Continental Philosophy.  

Gualdrón Ramírez studied philosophy as an undergraduate and MA student at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, and earned a PhD in Philosophy from DePaul University, Chicago.  

Before joining UO, he was Assistant Professor in the Philosophy and Religion Department at the University of North Texas (2021-2023) and Visiting Professor of Philosophy at Oxford College of Emory (2018-2020).

UO Today interview: Miguel Gualdrón Ramírez, assistant professor, Philosophy

Three UO humanities scholars with extensive expertise in the philosophy of AI, computation, digital humanities, information politics, and data ethics engage, through perspectives rooted in the humanities, the challenges that AI and other data-driven technologies increasingly present today.

Ramón Alvarado, assistant professor of Philosophy and Data Science Initiative, the Data Ethics coordinator, and author of Simulating Science: Computer Simulations as Scientific Instruments (2023)

Mattie Burkert, associate professor of English, director of the Minor in Digital Humanities, the interim director of the New Media and Culture Certificate, and the Principal Investigator and Project Director for the London Stage Database

Colin Koopman, professor of Philosophy, author of How We Became Our Data: A Genealogy of the Informational Person (2019), and the project lead of the Our Data, Our Selves web project.

Faculty Panel: “AI And The Humanities”

Laura Pulido professor of Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies and Geography at the University of Oregon where she 
studies race, environmental justice, and cultural memory. Her research explores the relationship between race, place, and social and environmental processes. She has devoted much of her career to studying environmental racism, especially how racism is conceptualized and operationalized in the scholarship and practice of environmental justice. Most recently, she has been studying how white supremacy and white nationalism impact climate denial and refusal.

"White Nationalism and GOP Climate Obstruction"

Maxwell Foxman is an assistant professor of Media Studies and Game Studies in the School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Oregon. 
 
Professor Foxman’s primary research focus is on how games and play interact with non-game contexts and media professions. This research engages several overlapping realms such as immersive media, game journalism, esports, and game production.

Foxman is the co-author of Mainstreaming and Game Journalism with David Nieborg which was published in 2023 by the MIT Press.

UO Today interview: Maxwell Foxman, Media Studies and Game Studies

Stephen J. Shoemaker, Religious Studies, and 2023–24 OHC Faculty Research Fellow.

“My project will provide something that has long been needed: a book-length study of the historical figure of Muhammad, the formation of the Qur’an, and the beginnings of Islam that is both grounded in the methods of historical criticism and aimed at the general reader. Unfortunately, this important perspective has been largely absent from public discourse on Islam, and it is this significant gap that my book aims to fill.”

“Muhammad and the Beginnings of Islam: A Critical History”

Nina Amstutz is an Associate Professor of the History of Art and Architecture at the University of Oregon. Professor Amstutz along with Portland artist and activist Cleo Davis curated the exhibition “Policing Justice” which is on view at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art through May 19, 2024.

UO Today interview: Nina Amstutz, History of Art and Architecture

Chandler James is an assistant professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon, who specializes in American Politics, with a focus on the U.S. presidency and public opinion. In addition, he is a committed environmentalist and outdoorsman. He joined the UO faculty in fall 2023.

UO Today interview: Chandler James, Assistant Professor, Political Science

Arigon Starr is an enrolled member of the Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma. She is an award-winning musician, composer, actor, playwright, and artist. She created the comic Super Indian. Arigon Starr gave the final talk in this year’s Indigenous Comics Speaker series on April 22nd, 2024, hosted by the Native American and Indigenous Studies program and the Comics and Cartoon Studies program at the University of Oregon.

UO Today interview: Arigon Starr, Kickapoo artist

Three UO humanities faculty whose scholarship engages the natural sciences in various ways talk about their work across the divide between the science and the humanities and why that work matters: why it is important for humanists to study the sciences, to work with scientists, and to interrogate the two cultures’ divide, especially in this moment.

Vera Keller, Professor and Department Head of History, is a historian of early modern Europe particularly interested in the emergence of experimental science and the entanglements of research with capitalism, colonialism, and political economy and more broadly in the history of knowledge, of research, and of the research disciplines. 

Nicolae Morar is an Associate Professor of Environmental Studies and Philosophy, and associate member of the UO Institute for Ecology and Evolution. Professor Morar’s research interests lie at the intersection of biology, ecology, and bioethics. His work considers how various conceptual analyses in the philosophy of biology and ecology influence and transform debates in bioethics, and in ethics broadly construed.

Cera Smith is an Assistant Professor of Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies and Black Studies. Professor Smith’s research focuses on twentieth and twenty-first century U.S. Black literature, Black Studies, and the health humanities. Their current book project analyzes how and why U.S. Black artists use biology to depict racialized life.

"Science and the Humanities" faculty panel

Katherine Kelp-Stebbins, Comics and Cartoon Studies, and 2023–24 OHC Faculty Research Fellow.

“My project examines graphic reportage as a tool for documenting international human rights struggles. The book considers how reporter-artists use comics to tactically and ethically intervene in discourses of injustice and representation. Via their subjective verbal-visual mediality, comics challenge the differential optics by which some lives are made more or less visible and valuable. Questioning how journalistic objectivity has overdetermined the documentation of humanitarian crises, the book uses comics to rethink the evidentiary claims of the image.”

"Comics Journalism: Tactical Human Rights"

Poet and critic Mark Jarman is author of twelve poetry collections and four books of essays. His most recent book of poetry is Zeno’s Eternity published in 2023. He discusses his work and reads from his recent collection. Jarman gave a reading at the University of Oregon on May 2nd, 2024, as a guest of the Creative Writing Program.

UO Today interview: Mark Jarman, poet

Joe Buck is the Vice President for Advancement at the University of Oregon. He talks about the fundraising priorities for the university and the value of philanthropy for higher education.

UO Today interview: Joe Buck, Vice President for Advancement at the University of Oregon

Moeko Yamazaki, PhD candidate, History, and 2023–24 OHC Dissertation Fellow

“My dissertation critically examines the logistics industry by looking at the history of FedEx. I examine how economic deregulation, the expansion of precarious employment, and the weakening of labor unions made the growth of logistics possible. I demonstrate that the logistics industry enabled businesses and consumers to enjoy the benefits of the technological developments of speed and efficiency while preserving the longstanding power dynamics of capitalist industrial relations in which the most vulnerable workers pay the greatest cost.”

“From “People-First” to Precarious Labor: A History of Antiunionism at FedEx, 1971–2000”

Aimée Morrison is an associate professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. She talks about her work to understand how people decide how to represent themselves online, what motivates those decisions, and what effects they have.

She also discusses her experience as a  professional woman who has been diagnosed later in life with ADHD and her work to bridge scholarly and popular knowledge about neurodiversity.  
 
On May 16th, 2024, Morrison gave a talk titled “Touch Grass” as the annual lecturer for the UO’s New Media and Culture Certificate program.

UO Today interview: Aimée Morrison, English Language and Literature, University of Waterloo

Writer Maurice Carlos Ruffin is author of the novel The American Daughters published in 2024. He talks about his writing and teaching and reads a passage from The American Daughters. 

Ruffin is an associate professor of Creative Writing at Louisiana State University. 
 
He gave a reading at the University of Oregon on May 22, 2024, as a guest of the Creative Writing Program.

UO Today interview: Maurice Carlos Ruffin, author of The American Daughters

Devin Grammon is an assistant professor of Spanish Sociolinguistics, and an affiliate in the Spanish Heritage Language Program in the Department of Romance Languages at the University of Oregon.

Grammon talks about his research on language learning among students studying abroad in Southern Peru and how linguistic variation can be used to perpetuate racism and discrimination. 

He also talks about his current project as an OHC Faculty Research Fellow “Spanish in the Linguistic Landscape of Eugene, Oregon.”

UO Today interview: Devin Grammon, assistant professor, Spanish Sociolinguistics

Gabriela Pérez Báez, Linguistics, and 2023–24 OHC Faculty Research Fellow.

“Diidxazá is an Indigenous endangered Mesoamerican language spoken in southern Mexico. I will test out pacing and methods towards publication of a 10,000 entry Diidxazá-Spanish-English dictionary. I will focus on Spanish and English definitions and on different data sets in preparation for a full-scale process in AY24–25. The dictionary will be a peer-reviewed, electronic, open access publication which stands to make immeasurable contributions to the revitalization of Diidxazá and the advancement of the study of Mesoamerican languages.”

“A Pilot towards Completion of a Diidxazá Dictionary”

Writer Miriam Gershow's debut novel The Local News, published in 2009, was an Oregon Book Award Finalist. Her collection, Survival Tips: Stories was published in 2024. She teaches writing in the English Department at the University of Oregon.

Gershow discusses her writing and reads from Survival Tips.

UO Today interview: Miriam Gershow, author of Survival Tips: Stories

Leah Middlebrook, Comparative Literature and Spanish at the UO, is the in-coming director of the Oregon Humanities Center. She talks about her scholarship and what attracted her to the OHC. Paul Peppis, English at the UO, is the out-going director of the OHC, having served 11 years. He talks about his scholarship and how academia has changed during his 29-year career as a professor of English.

UO Today interview: Leah Middlebrook and Paul Peppis

Eugene artist Keith Achepohl and Jill Hartz, Executive Director of the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, discuss "Vision of Nature | Vessel of Beauty," an exhibition of work by Achepohl. Achepohl created the work with inspiration from his experiences at the Morris Graves Foundation Artist Residency, The Lake, in Loleta, California. Achepohl discusses his residency at The Lake and his intimate relationship with the flora in his work. "Vision of Nature | Vessel of Beauty" is on view at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art through April 29th, 2018.

UO Today With Keith Achepohl

Current debates on the future of public lands call for a focus on who is included in the ‘public.’ Who is inside the circle and who is not? Whose voices are heard, and whose are silenced? Indigenous people have largely been excluded from decision-making involving public lands—as has their sophisticated environmental philosophy and practice, derived from traditional ecological knowledge. How might the indigenous concepts of the personhood of non-human beings expand our notion of the public good? This talk explores facets of how respectful engagement with indigenous knowledge might re-draw the boundaries of “We, the People” as we consider our relationship to ancestral ‘public’ lands.

Robin Wall Kimmerer: "We the People": Expanding the Circle of Citizenship

Camisha Russell, assistant professor of Philosophy at the University of Oregon, discusses her book The Assisted Reproduction of Race, which examines how concepts of race are reinforced by reproductive technologies. Russell talks about how race is a social construct and asks, "what does the idea of race do?" and posits that race is a technology (something made and used).

UO Today With Camisha Russell

Helena María Viramontes, the Goldwin Smith Professor of English at Cornell University, is the author of numerous short stories and two novels, Their Dogs Came with Them and Under the Feet of Jesus. She discusses her writing and Under the Feet of Jesus which is the University of Oregon's 2019-20 Common Reading selection. Viramontes also reads a passage from the book.

UO Today With Helena Maria Viramontes

Brian Gillis is a professor of art in the College of Design and the director of the Center for Art Research (CFAR), which is housed in the 510 Oak building in downtown Eugene. Gillis talks about the CFAR as a collaborative, artist-run platform for experimentation and exchange rooted in art making. The Center cultivates diverse modes of engagement related to the practices of contemporary artists by supporting speculative research, discourse, exhibitions, and publications. Gillis also talks about his art practice and teaching.

UO Today With Brian Gillis

Avinnash Tiwari, Career Instructor of English and Composition, and the acting director of the newly formed Black Studies Program at the University of Oregon, discusses the history of establishing the program and the why the academic study of Black history, Black literature, and anti-Black racism is important.

UO Today with Avinnash Tiwari

The Oregon Humanities Center is the sole interdisciplinary umbrella organization for the humanities at the University of Oregon.  We encourage scholars to articulate their ideas in language that is accessible both to scholars in other fields and to the general public.  The OHC sponsors a wide array of free public programs designed to provide a forum for discussion of and reflection on important issues.

Popular tracks by Oregon Humanities Center