Join us for Idaho State's 5th annual History Speaker Series! Organized by Dr. Meghan Woolley, this year's theme is The Medieval World, featuring four great speakers throughout the spring semester.
These events are free and open to ISU and the greater Pocatello community. For more information, please email the History Department at histdept@isu.edu.
Sponsored by the Cultural Events Committee and the Idaho State University Department of History.
Dr. Sierra Lomuto - February 12th from 1-2 P.M. (Zoom)
Dr. Sierra Lomuto is an Assistant Professor of English at Rowan University in New Jersey. Her book-in-progress, Exotic Allies: Mongols and Racial Fantasy in the Literature of Medieval England, places medieval literature within a global framework in order to examine how the geopolitics of European-Mongol relations engendered a discourse of racial ideologies long before they were institutionally codified in the modern era.
Dr. Lomuto is the editor of The “Medieval” Undone: Imagining a New Global Past, a special issue of boundary 2 (Duke). Her essays have also been published in the peer-reviewed journals Exemplaria and postmedieval, The Chaucer Encyclopedia (Wiley), and the edited collections Caroline Bergvall’s Medievalist Poetics (Arc Humanities Press) and Rethinking Medieval Margins and Marginality (Routledge). She has published public essays in venues such as In the Middle, Public Books, and Medievalists of Color; and she has been quoted in The Economist, The New Yorker, and Teen Vogue. She has forthcoming work in Global Medieval Travel Writing: A Literary History (Cambridge), Approaches to Teaching the Arthurian Tradition (MLA), and Journal for Medieval and Early Modern Studies (JMEMS). She is also co-editing the centennial issue of Speculum, titled Speculations.
Register here to join us on Zoom on February 12th from 1-2 P.M. for her presentation titled, "Race and the Mongol Empire in Chaucer's Squire's Tale.”
Dr. Valerie Hansen - March 12th from 4-5 P.M. (Zoom or SUB Little Wood River)
Dr. Valerie Hansen teaches Chinese and world history at Yale, where she is the Stanley Woodward Professor of history. In the course of writing The Year 1000, she traveled to some twenty different countries and was a visiting scholar at Xiamen University in China, University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom, and the Collège de France in Paris.
Having lived in China for six plus years, Valerie has visited at least 300 temples, climbed the Great Wall multiple times (once during a lightning storm), and posed next to the Terracotta Warriors eleven times. (All this in the company of her husband and three children)
Her books include The Year 1000: When Explorers Connected the World—and Globalization Began, The Silk Road: A New History, The Open Empire: A History of China to 1800, Negotiating Daily Life in Traditional China, Changing Gods in Medieval China, 1127-1279, and Voyages in World History (co-authored with Kenneth R. Curtis).
Join us on Zoom or in the Student Union Little Wood River Room on March 12th from 4-5 P.M. for her presentation titled, “Before Da Gama: The Asian Age of Exploration When Spices and Ceramics Traveled Halfway around the Globe.”
Dr. John Eldevik - April 3rd from 2:15-3:15 P.M. (Zoom)
Dr. John Eldevik is a professor of history at Hamilton College in New York. John Eldevik holds the Licence in Mediaeval Studies from the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. His primary research and teaching interests are in medieval social and religious history, particularly the role of the bishop in the early Middle Ages, the Crusades, and the history of political and religious dissent.
Eldevik's first book, Episcopal Lordship and Ecclesiastical Reform in the German Empire, 950-1150, examines how medieval bishops used the collection of tithes to foster social and political relationships. He is working on a study of the manuscript transmission of texts on the Crusades and Islam in medieval Bavaria.
Join us on Zoom on April 3rd from 2:15-3:15 P.M. for his presentation titled, “Prester John, Monastic Reading, and Images of India in the Middle Ages.”
Dr. John Mulhall - April 24th from 1-2 P.M. (Zoom)
Dr. John Mulhall is an Assistant Professor at Purdue University in Indiana. John’s research explores the history of science and religion in the medieval Mediterranean, focusing specifically on intellectual interactions among the Islamic, Byzantine, and Latin Christian worlds. John’s first book project, The Republic of Translators: Islam, Byzantium, Latin Europe, and a New Age of Science and Philosophy in the Twelfth Century, examines the cultural upheaval wrought by the medieval translation movement, when hundreds of new scientific and philosophical texts were translated from Greek and Arabic into Latin.
In addition, Dr. Mulhall works on the history of medicine in the Greek, Arabic, and Latin traditions, and has a particular interest in uniting his textual research with new advances in microbiology, genetics, and archaeoscience. His most recent publications have appeared in the Journal of Late Antiquity, the Bulletin of the History of Medicine and The Washington Post.
Join us on Zoom on April 24th from 1-2 P.M. for his presentation titled, “The Republic of Translators: Latin, Greek, Arabic, and a New Age of Science, Philosophy, and Theology in the Twelfth Century."
Dr. Julian Saporiti | Scholar of Asian-American History and Musician
"Exploring History Through Music Making"
Dr. Saporiti creates music with the name "No-No Boy." To listen to his music, you can visit Spotify or YouTube.
Dr. Jared Farmer | Geohumanist and Walter H. Annenberg Professor of History - University of Pennsylvania
"The Sound of Modern Mormonism"
Dr. Richard Etulain | Professor Emeritus - University of New Mexico
"Boyhood Among the Woolies: Growing up on a Basque Sheep Ranch"
Dr. Ryan Tucker Jones | University of Oregon
"Red Leviathan: The Soviet Union and the Secret Destruction of the World's Whales"
Dr. Negar Mottahedeh | Duke University
"Listening to Feminist Revolution"
Dr. Jacopo Galimberti | Universita IUAV di Venizia
"The Work of Love: Milli Gandini from the Wages for Housework to the Italian Socialist Party"
Dr. Amanda Hendrix-Komoto | Montana State University
Making Native Kin: Latter-day Saints and the Politics of the Assimilation in the Aftermath of Colonization"
Organized by Dr. Arunima Datta, Dr. Jonathan Fardy, and Dr. Lauren MacDonald
Dr. Emily Mokros | University of Kentucky
"The Global Travels of the Peking Gazette"
Dr. Alvaro Caso Bello | University of Ottawa
"The Americas in Madrid: People, Goods, and Ideas in the Late 18th and Early 19th Centuries"
Dr. Emily Conroy-Krutz | Michigan State University
"Missionary Diplomacy"
Dr. Joseph W. Ho | Albion College
"Bridging Visions: Transnational Cameras and Modern China"
Organized by Dr. Sarah Robey
Dr. Alaina Roberts | University of Pittsburgh
"Black Slaves and Indian Masters: a History of Indian Territory"
Dr. Tyler Parry | University of Nevada
"Jumping the Broom: The Surprising Multicultural Origins of a Black Wedding Ritual"
Ms. Tarienne Mitchell, MLS | Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints History Library
"Through Their Eyes: History of the LDS Church through the Black Experience"
Dr. Ava Purkiss | University of Michigan
"The Quest for 'Fitness': Black Women's Exercise and Public Health in the Early Twentieth Century"
Organized by Dr. Marie Stango
