UO Today

"My book seeks to diversify Soviet intellectual history by highlighting a cohort of writers, creative artists, and scholars, primarily from Central Asia and the Caucasus, who were involved in cultural outreach to the postcolonial world. Postcolonial encounters, unlike travel to the West, affirmed Soviet ideology during the Cold War. Exploring the impact of anti-imperialism and non-Western cultural traditions on the creative work of non-Russian cultural elites, my book also shows that “Afro-Asian solidarity” shaped their civic activities, social networks, and identities."

Lesley Jo Weaver is an associate professor of Global Studies at the University of Oregon, and author of "Sugar and Tension: Diabetes and Gender in Modern India." Weaver, along with former colleagues at the University of Alabama, produce an interdisciplinary podcast called “Speaking of Race.” She discusses her research in India and Brazil. Weaver also talks about her class Global Story of Race and the "Speaking of Race" podcast. [speakingofrace.ua.edu]

Françoise Baylis is a bioethicist and a University Research Professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and author of "Altered Inheritance: CRISPR and the Ethics of Human Genome Editing." She discusses some of the ethical issues surrounding gene editing technology and the need for "slow science." Baylis also talks about the COVID-19 pandemic and the ethics of immunity passports and vaccine certificates.

Shuangting Xiong, PhD candidate, East Asian Languages and Literatures, and 2020-21 OHC Dissertation Fellow

"My dissertation examines how melodrama, a quintessentially bourgeois form, was utilized and repurposed across different media by intellectuals and writers to produce new affective experiences, to cultivate new political subjectivities, and to make revolution in modern China. I argue that revolutionary melodrama functions as an emotional pedagogy in which abstract revolutionary ideas and ideals are made emotionally legible, and political solidarities more possible, to people at the micro-level of individuals and families."

Paul Peppis speaks with Vien Truong, a policy expert and strategist who works on building an equitable green economy. Her firm, Eco Equity, advises lawmakers, universities, and organizations on developing an inclusive workforce, creating sustainable economies, and equitable environmental policies. She currently serves as the Senior Director of Global Engagement and Sustainability with Nike. Vien will give a virtual lecture on Tuesday, February 2, 2021. Register for her talk at: ohc.uoregon.edu

Jina Kim, East Asian Languages and Literatures, and 2020-21 OHC Faculty Research Fellow

"My book project attends to the junction between sound and literature in focusing on works written for radio broadcast from the Japanese Colonial Period. In the chapter “Performing Historical Anecdotes: Yadam Boom on Radio and Stage,” I demonstrate the relationship between yadam as a traditional literary narrative that has oral origins and its remediazation through the advent of the microphone and radio. That remediazation ironically facilitated oral storytelling contests, making Korean language and tradition more audible and often serving a kind of pedagogical purpose for the Korean listeners—who, in the late 1930s, were colonial subjects living under a Japanese language soundscape."

Tara Keegan, PhD candidate, History, and 2020-21 OHC Dissertation Fellow

My project examines Native survival in post-Gold Rush California and the ways in which Native individuals and communities shaped early 20th-century society and culture in Northern California’s “Redwood Empire.” Through a sports history that traces the implications of the first official “ultramarathon” in U.S. history, the project offers insights into the essential contributions of Native historical actors in developing regional economy and identity.

Poets Michelle Peñaloza and Tina Mozelle Braziel are alumni of the UO’s Creative Writing Program.

Michelle Peñaloza's collection Former Possessions of the Spanish Empire, published in 2019, won the 2018 Hillary Gravendyk National Poetry Prize.

Tina Mozelle Braziel's collection Known by Salt, published in 2019, won the 2017 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry.

Peñaloza and Braziel will give virtual readings of their work on January 20th, 2021 as guests of the UO’s Creative Writing Program.

Melissa Graboyes is an associate professor of Medical History and African History in the Clark Honors College at the University of Oregon. Graboyes talks about her experience living in Italy when COVID-19 hit, and shares her perspectives as a public health expert. "It's good the vaccine is not available to the mass public for another few months. Now is the time for the hard work of public health communication, reaching out and listening to why people are hesitant to take the vaccine, and trying to meet them where they are—to find the place where they are comfortable getting vaccinated—because that's critical for everyone's health."

How can centuries of environmental exploitation and social injustice in the U.S. be unraveled? Robin Robin Morris CollinMorris Collin, the Norma Paulus Professor of Law at Willamette University College of Law, shares her passion for creating solutions to remedy environmental injustice.