UO Today

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.

Gabriela Pérez Báez, Linguistics, and 2023–24 OHC Faculty Research Fellow. “Diidxazá is an Indigenous endangered Mesoamerican language spoken in southern Mexico. I will test out pacing and methods towards publication of a 10,000 entry Diidxazá-Spanish-English dictionary. I will focus on Spanish and English definitions and on different data sets in preparation for a full-scale process in AY24–25. The dictionary will be a peer-reviewed, electronic, open access publication which stands to make immeasurable contributions to the revitalization of Diidxazá and the advancement of the study of Mesoamerican languages.”

Devin Grammon is an assistant professor of Spanish Sociolinguistics, and an affiliate in the Spanish Heritage Language Program in the Department of Romance Languages at the University of Oregon. Grammon talks about his research on language learning among students studying abroad in Southern Peru and how linguistic variation can be used to perpetuate racism and discrimination. He also talks about his current project as an OHC Faculty Research Fellow “Spanish in the Linguistic Landscape of Eugene, Oregon.”

Writer Maurice Carlos Ruffin is author of the novel The American Daughters published in 2024. He talks about his writing and teaching and reads a passage from The American Daughters. Ruffin is an associate professor of Creative Writing at Louisiana State University. He gave a reading at the University of Oregon on May 22, 2024, as a guest of the Creative Writing Program.

Aimée Morrison is an associate professor of English Language and Literature at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. She talks about her work to understand how people decide how to represent themselves online, what motivates those decisions, and what effects they have. She also discusses her experience as a professional woman who has been diagnosed later in life with ADHD and her work to bridge scholarly and popular knowledge about neurodiversity. On May 16th, 2024, Morrison gave a talk titled “Touch Grass” as the annual lecturer for the UO’s New Media and Culture Certificate program.

Moeko Yamazaki, PhD candidate, History, and 2023–24 OHC Dissertation Fellow “My dissertation critically examines the logistics industry by looking at the history of FedEx. I examine how economic deregulation, the expansion of precarious employment, and the weakening of labor unions made the growth of logistics possible. I demonstrate that the logistics industry enabled businesses and consumers to enjoy the benefits of the technological developments of speed and efficiency while preserving the longstanding power dynamics of capitalist industrial relations in which the most vulnerable workers pay the greatest cost.”

Joe Buck is the Vice President for Advancement at the University of Oregon. He talks about the fundraising priorities for the university and the value of philanthropy for higher education.

Poet and critic Mark Jarman is author of twelve poetry collections and four books of essays. His most recent book of poetry is Zeno’s Eternity published in 2023. He discusses his work and reads from his recent collection. Jarman gave a reading at the University of Oregon on May 2nd, 2024, as a guest of the Creative Writing Program.

Katherine Kelp-Stebbins, Comics and Cartoon Studies, and 2023–24 OHC Faculty Research Fellow. “My project examines graphic reportage as a tool for documenting international human rights struggles. The book considers how reporter-artists use comics to tactically and ethically intervene in discourses of injustice and representation. Via their subjective verbal-visual mediality, comics challenge the differential optics by which some lives are made more or less visible and valuable. Questioning how journalistic objectivity has overdetermined the documentation of humanitarian crises, the book uses comics to rethink the evidentiary claims of the image.”

Three UO humanities faculty whose scholarship engages the natural sciences in various ways talk about their work across the divide between the science and the humanities and why that work matters: why it is important for humanists to study the sciences, to work with scientists, and to interrogate the two cultures’ divide, especially in this moment. Vera Keller, Professor and Department Head of History, is a historian of early modern Europe particularly interested in the emergence of experimental science and the entanglements of research with capitalism, colonialism, and political economy and more broadly in the history of knowledge, of research, and of the research disciplines. Nicolae Morar is an Associate Professor of Environmental Studies and Philosophy, and associate member of the UO Institute for Ecology and Evolution. Professor Morar’s research interests lie at the intersection of biology, ecology, and bioethics. His work considers how various conceptual analyses in the philosophy of biology and ecology influence and transform debates in bioethics, and in ethics broadly construed. Cera Smith is an Assistant Professor of Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies and Black Studies. Professor Smith’s research focuses on twentieth and twenty-first century U.S. Black literature, Black Studies, and the health humanities. Their current book project analyzes how and why U.S. Black artists use biology to depict racialized life.

Arigon Starr is an enrolled member of the Kickapoo Tribe of Oklahoma. She is an award-winning musician, composer, actor, playwright, and artist. She created the comic Super Indian. Arigon Starr gave the final talk in this year’s Indigenous Comics Speaker series on April 22nd, 2024, hosted by the Native American and Indigenous Studies program and the Comics and Cartoon Studies program at the University of Oregon.

Chandler James is an assistant professor of Political Science at the University of Oregon, who specializes in American Politics, with a focus on the U.S. presidency and public opinion. In addition, he is a committed environmentalist and outdoorsman. He joined the UO faculty in fall 2023.

Nina Amstutz is an Associate Professor of the History of Art and Architecture at the University of Oregon. Professor Amstutz along with Portland artist and activist Cleo Davis curated the exhibition “Policing Justice” which is on view at the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art through May 19, 2024.

Stephen J. Shoemaker, Religious Studies, and 2023–24 OHC Faculty Research Fellow. “My project will provide something that has long been needed: a book-length study of the historical figure of Muhammad, the formation of the Qur’an, and the beginnings of Islam that is both grounded in the methods of historical criticism and aimed at the general reader. Unfortunately, this important perspective has been largely absent from public discourse on Islam, and it is this significant gap that my book aims to fill.”

Maxwell Foxman is an assistant professor of Media Studies and Game Studies in the School of Journalism and Communication at the University of Oregon. Professor Foxman’s primary research focus is on how games and play interact with non-game contexts and media professions. This research engages several overlapping realms such as immersive media, game journalism, esports, and game production. Foxman is the co-author of Mainstreaming and Game Journalism with David Nieborg which was published in 2023 by the MIT Press.

Laura Pulido professor of Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies and Geography at the University of Oregon where she studies race, environmental justice, and cultural memory. Her research explores the relationship between race, place, and social and environmental processes. She has devoted much of her career to studying environmental racism, especially how racism is conceptualized and operationalized in the scholarship and practice of environmental justice. Most recently, she has been studying how white supremacy and white nationalism impact climate denial and refusal.

Three UO humanities scholars with extensive expertise in the philosophy of AI, computation, digital humanities, information politics, and data ethics engage, through perspectives rooted in the humanities, the challenges that AI and other data-driven technologies increasingly present today. Ramón Alvarado, assistant professor of Philosophy and Data Science Initiative, the Data Ethics coordinator, and author of Simulating Science: Computer Simulations as Scientific Instruments (2023) Mattie Burkert, associate professor of English, director of the Minor in Digital Humanities, the interim director of the New Media and Culture Certificate, and the Principal Investigator and Project Director for the London Stage Database Colin Koopman, professor of Philosophy, author of How We Became Our Data: A Genealogy of the Informational Person (2019), and the project lead of the Our Data, Our Selves web project.