Past Lecture Series

2009 - 2010 "War and Society"

Thursday, 24 September, 2009 - 11:00 a.m.
“Did the Revolutionary War Make Revolutionary Americans?"
Peter Silver, Rutgers University

Wednesday, 28 October, 2009 - 4:15 p.m.
"U.S. Policing Power and the Transformation of Border Controls"
Peter Andreas, Brown University

Thursday, 19 November, 2009 - 11:00 a.m.
"all the slain soldiers": Poetry and the American Civil War
Cristanne Miller, SUNY-Buffalo

Thursday, 11 February, 2010 - 11:00 a.m.
"Medicalized Weapons and Modern War"
Michael Gross, University of Haifa

Thursday, 11 March, 2010 - 11:00 a.m.
"War and Liberty in the Age of Obama"
Geoffrey Stone, University of Chicago Law School

2008-2009 "The Environment and American Society"

2 October, 2008
"The Portage: Space, Time, and Storytelling in the Making of an American Place" William Cronon, University of Wisconsin

6 November, 2008
"The Global Energy Crunch: Options for America"
Michael Klare, Hampshire College

29 January, 2009
"Millennial Hope: Climate Change and the Far Horizon of Possibility"
David Orr, Oberlin College

12 March, 2009
"Green to Gold: How Smart Companies Use Environmental Strategy"
Daniel Esty, Yale Law School

9 April, 2009
"Chocorua's Curse: Indians, Native Place, and the Making of the New England Landscape"
Karen Halttunen, University of Southern California

2007-2008 "American Film"

27 September, 2007
“Hollywood Left and Right: How Movie Stars Shaped American Politics”
Steven Ross, University of Southern California

8 November, 2007
"Hollywood's Censor: Joseph I. Breen and the Production Code Administration"
Thomas Doherty, Brandeis University

6 December, 2007
"Sound Effects: Technology and Transformation in the American Film Industry, 1925-1933"
Emily Thompson, Princeton University

21 February, 2008
"The Star Machine: How Hollywood Made Movie Stars"
Jeanine Basinger, Wesleyan University

3 April, 2008
"Memory, Forensics, Justice: Civil Rights Movement Cold Cases on Film"
Valerie Smith, Princeton University

2006-2007 "The US in the World"

5 October, 2006
"Empire's Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism"
Greg Grandin, New York University

26 October, 2006
"THE IRON CAGE: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood" Rashid Khalidi, Columbia University

1 February, 2007
"The Problem from Hell: America in the Age of Genocide"
Samantha Power, Harvard University

8 March, 2007
"The Moral Consequences of Economic Growth"
Benjamin Friedman, Harvard University

12 April, 2007
"Consumer Culture as Taproot of American Global Hegemony: An historical perspective"
Victoria de Grazia, Columbia University

2005-06 "American Science"

22 September, 2005
"Race and Demography in British America: Who Counted?
Joyce Chaplin, Harvard University

3 November, 2005
"Geography, Science, and the American Lebensraum"
Neil Smith, The Graduate School of the City University of New York

2 February, 2006
"Mr. Powell Goes to the UN"
Hugh Gusterson, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

1 March, 2006
"Cognitive Science as Applied Philosophy"
John Searle, University of California, Berkeley

6 April, 2006
"His Brother's Keeper: A Story from the Edge of Medicine"
Jonathan Weiner, Columbia Graduate School of Journalism

2004-05 "Supreme Court Decisions"

September 16, 2004
"Bad Guys: The President's Power to Detain Enemy Combatants in the War on Terrorism"
David Cole, Georgetown Law School

October 28, 2004
"Plessy v. Ferguson and the Strange Career of Civil Rights"
Eric Foner, Columbia University

February 3, 2005
"At the Border of Law and Politics: Bakke and Affirmative Action"
Laura Kalman, University of California, Santa Barbara

March 3, 2005
"Gender Equity Cases: The Meaning of Equality"
Susan Estrich, USC Law School

2003-04 "American Music"

October 2, 2003
Feminine Flamboyance in 18th-Century Mexico: The Music from America's First Music Conservatory
Craig Russell, California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo
and performance of Mexican Baroque Music by Ramo de Flores

November 4, 2003
Jazz in the Bittersweet Blues of Life
Wynton Marsalis

February 12, 2004
A Year in the Life: George Gershwin in 1925
Richard Crawford, University of Michigan

April 1, 2004
Jeepers Creepers: The Songs of Johnny Mercer
Robert Dawidoff, Claremont Graduate University

2002-03 "Public Intellectuals/Public Issues"

September 26, 2002
W.E.B. Dubois' Dusk of Dawn: The End of a Beginning in African Americanist Inquiry
Kenneth Warren, University of Chicago

October 31, 2002
Updating Veblen: Conspicuous Consumption and Invisible Workers
Barbara Ehrenreich

November 21, 2002
Between Islands and Factories: Southern California through the Eyes of Carey McWilliams
George Sanchez, University of Southern California

February 6, 2003
Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove: America's Cold War Strange Love
Michael Sherry, Northwestern University

March 6, 2003
The Fallout of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring
William Cronon, University of Wisconsin

April 17, 2003
Amazing Grace: The Ethical Resilience of Low Income Children In Our Nation's Segregated and Unequal Schools
Jonathan Kozol

2001-02 "American Dreams"

October 15, 2001
The Puritan Utopia: Fault Lines, Diversity, and Holy Rage
Bernard Bailyn, Harvard University

November 15, 2001
Secular Scripture: The Declaration of Independence as an Exemplar
David Brion Davis, Yale University

January 31, 2002
Winning and Losing the Right To Have Rights: Race and Citizenship In the Era of the Spanish-Cuban-American War, 1898-1903
Rebecca J. Scott, University of Michigan

February 28, 2002
Competing Visions of Race and and Nation at the Dawn of the American Century
Thomas C. Holt, University of Chicago

March 28, 2002
Dorothea Lange and the American Dream
Alan Brinkley, Columbia University

March 10 – May 19, 2002
Art Exhibit Pomona College Museum of Art The Public Record: Photographs of the Great Depression from the J. Paul Getty Museum