Dinosaur fossils were first found in England, but a series of spectacular discoveries in the American West turned the United States into a world center for vertebrate paleontology during the late nineteenth century. Around the same time, the U.S. also emerged as an economic powerhouse of global proportions, and large, fierce, and spectacular creatures like Tyrannosaurus, Brontosaurus, and Triceratops became powerful emblems of American capitalism. In this presentation, Lukas Rieppel reveals how these giant extinct reptiles became entwined with commercial culture, philanthropy, and the popular imagination during America’s Long Gilded Age.

Lukas Rieppel is the David and Michelle Ebersman Assistant Professor of History at Brown University. He works at the intersection of the history of science and the history of capitalism, focusing especially on the life sciences in 19th and 20th century America. He is especially interested in evolution and development, as well as geology and paleontology, in addition to the history of museums, the organism, and the corporation.

“Pluralism about Ritual in the ‘Balancing
Customs’ Chapter of the Huainanzi,”
Alexus McLeod, Philosophy, UConn.

“From Nation-state to ‘New Civilization’:
Li Dazhao in the May Fourth Period,”
Lian DUAN, History, Hunan Normal University.

“Manchuria, 1930: The Year of No Return,”
Victor Zatsepine, History, UConn.

This lecture is part of the History Department's annual Fusco Distinguished Lecture Series.

Jay Rubenstein is a Professor of History and the Riggsby Director at the Marco Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at the University of Tennessee.

Professor Rubenstein is an internationally recognized scholar of medieval history and has been awarded several prestigious grants and awards, including the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. His research focuses on 12th-century texts that grapple with the meaning of the First Crusade (1095-1099) and its profound consequences for the future of Europe.

Rubenstein's publications include: "Guibert of Nogent, Portrait of a Medieval Mind" (2002), "Armies of Heaven: The First Crusade and the Quest for Apocalypse," (2011), and "The First Crusade: A Brief History with Documents" (2015).

Lecture begins at 4:30 pm, reception to follow.

Our UCHI Fellow will be presenting their research talk on “What Are the Wild Waves Saying: Virginia Woolf, Bloomsbury, and the Public Schools” followed by a light reception. For more information, please visit https://humanities.uconn.edu/fellowships/current-and-previous-fellows/. If you require accommodation for this event, please contact uchi@uconn.edu at least one week prior to the event.

Please join us for this History Department Wednesday Workshop featuring Professor Tom Balcerski, Assistant Professor of History at Eastern Connecticut State University.

This workshop will serve as a book talk for Professor Balcerski, and is titled "Bosom Friends: The Intimate World of James Buchanan and William Rufus King.”

57th Annual Wallace Stevens Poetry Program with D. A. Powell.
March 25 in McHugh Hall 102. 6pm reception, 7pm reading.
March 26 at Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts, 9:30am.
Both readings are free and open to the public

Acclaimed poet D.A. Powell has been praised for both his gravity and his wit. As one critic wrote, “No accessible poet of his generation is half as original, and no poet as original is this accessible.” Powell’s early books Tea (1998), Lunch (2000), and Cocktails (2004) are often read as a trilogy on the AIDS epidemic. Powell’s fourth book, Chronic (2009), won the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His latest collection, Useless Landscape, or A Guide for Boys (2012), won the National Book Critics Circle Award for poetry. Fellow writer Carl Phillips describes Powell’s poems as “entirely of-the-moment while at every turn [announcing] … not merely an awareness, but an actual confidence with such prosodic traditions as the heroic couplet and the pentameter line, such cultural and literary traditions as those of the Old Testament and of meaningfully comic punning…. No fear, here, of heritage nor of music nor, refreshingly, of authority. Mr. Powell recognizes in the contemporary the latest manifestations of a much older tradition: namely, what it is to be human.” Powell has taught at Harvard University and Columbia University, and is currently a Professor at the University of San Francisco.

Co-sponsored by the Humanities Institute's Publishing NOW program and the Digital Humanities and Media Studies initiative, UConn Libraries, and UConn Department of English

Sponsored by the CLAS Dean's Office, Publishing NOW is a series of talks and conversations with editors from across the field of publishing. Learn how to pitch your ideas, get your book or article out, publicize yourself and your work, and adjust to the changing landscape of publishing.

Join the Africana Studies Institute as our faculty discuss Ibram X. Kendi's latest book "How to be an Antiracist". We welcome you to a lively discussion!

Discussants:
Dr. Melina Pappademos, Director and Associate Professor, Africana Studies and History

Dr. David Embrick, Associate Professor, Africana Studies and Sociology

Dr. Alexis Boylan, Associate Director of the Humanities Institute, Associate Professor, Africana Studies, Art and Art History

Learn to look with a critical eye
Friday, March 27th,
12:15–12:45pm

Tap your powers of observation and
investigate a single work of art through
close looking and discussion with
Amanda Douberley, Assistant Curator/
Academic Liaison.

The focus of this month's subject is (coming soon)

Develop your critical thinking skills by learning to look at objects in detail. This skill is useful in navigating everyday life, your job or studies.

Please join us for a conversation with Jonathan M. Katz, who is an internationally known journalist and author.

His first book, "The Big Truck That Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster," was a PEN Literary Award finalist and won the Overseas Press Club of America’s Cornelius Ryan Award for the year’s best book on international affairs. Katz was the Associated Press correspondent in Haiti and provided the first international alert of the deadliest earthquake ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere. He was awarded the Medill Medal for Courage in Journalism in 2011. Katz was a 2019 National Fellow at New America in the Future of War program. Katz is writing a book about Smedley Butler and the Marines who created America's empire.

Reception at 4:30, talk at 5 pm.

This event is free and open to the public.