UO Today

Candace Bond-Theriault, author of "Queering Reproductive Justice: an Invitation," discusses the intersectionality of the reproductive justice movement and its core values.

In Research Notes, Judith Raiskin and Linda Long discuss the Eugene Lesbian Oral History Project and the resulting documentary Outliers and Outlaws.

https://outliersoutlaws.uoregon.edu

Patty Krawec is an Ojibwe Anishinaabe and Ukrainian writer and speaker. An activist and former social worker, she belongs to Lac Seul First Nation in Treaty 3 territory and resides in Niagara Falls, Ontario.

Her first book, "Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future" was published in 2022 by Broadleaf Books. Her second book, "Bad Indian Book Club," will be published later in 2025.

Patty discusses her Indigenous and Ukrainian background and how she approaches relation, spirituality, history, and activism.

Lim's project is a cultural history of race in South Korea that examines ideas and practices of race in literary and cultural production and discourse shaped at the nexus of modern Korean history and globalization processes. She examines Korean racial formation through literature, K-pop, and TV dramas like Squid Game. She explores how Koreans’ ideas of race were informed by their experiences under Japanese colonialism and U.S. neo-colonialism, connecting Korean studies with concepts like racial formation, white supremacy, and anti-Blackness.

Karl Scholz, President of the University of Oregon, discusses the UO's new strategic plan and how the Big Ten's Academic Alliance will benefit the university.

In a world increasingly defined by crisis, public service institutions like colleges, universities, and nonprofit organizations require capable, dynamic, and trustworthy leadership—yet stories of leadership failures there abound. The problem, Kathleen Fitzpatrick argues in Leading Generously, is a fundamental mismatch between the communal purposes that leaders must serve and the individualistic structures under which they operate.

Transforming institutions so they can be resilient in the face of uncertain futures will require a similar transformation in leadership practices, turning hierarchies into collective and collaborative spaces designed for the common good. Doing so, however, requires a willingness to reimagine the idea of leadership itself. Kathleen Fitzpatrick explores not just the problems with the institutional status quo but also the tools to transform it. Her wide-ranging research brings together key theories of leadership with the experiences of successful leaders whose stories demonstrate innovative possibilities for collaboration in the service of institutional transformation.

Kathleen Fitzpatrick is Interim Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies and Professor of English at Michigan State University. Prior to assuming this role, she was Director of DH@MSU and founding director of Mesh Research, a lab focused on the future of digital scholarly communication. Her work across her career has focused on building resilient, sustainable scholarly communities and transforming their processes of communication to foreground connection, conversation, and collaboration.

Beata Stawarska, Philosophy and 2024–25 Oregon Humanities Center Faculty Research Fellow

My project engages with the untranslated and relatively unknown theoretical writings by L. S. Senghor, the first president of independent Senegal, a poet, and a philosopher. I will translate selected essays and author an article dealing with the topic of vital force in Senghor’s philosophy. I will argue that Senghor’s ideas are rooted in the traditional West African culture, especially Serer animism, wherein life and death, bodies and spirits, are interdependent rather than mutually opposed. Senghor’s philosophy indicates therefore a departure from European efforts to articulate an African ontology of life force.

Christopher Long, Provost of the University of Oregon, began his tenure at UO in June 2024. He discusses what attracted him to UO and his leadership style, which he characterized as relationship based, and values informed. He also talks about UO's participation in the Big Ten Academic Alliance, the importance of open access publishing, and the Humane Metrics Initiative.

A Work-in-Progress talk with Zachary Wallmark, Musicology, and 2024–25 OHC Faculty Research Fellow

My project explores American cultural and social history through the lens of musical instruments. I offer critical examinations of the development, popularization, and sonic palette of instruments that have played an iconic role in American (and global) music and culture: banjo, trumpet, steel guitar, saxophone, electric organ, drumset, electric guitar, synthesizer, and turntables.

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.

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.