Center for the Humanities

Scholars’ Convocation Speaker: LeAnne Howe
Poet, fiction writer, filmmaker, and playwright
Thursday, April 3, 2025
Rosenfield Center, Room 101, 11 a.m.

A Choctaw In King Abdullah's Court

LeAnne Howe was born and raised in Oklahoma and is an enrolled member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. She is the author of the poetry collection Evidence of Red: Poems and Prose (2005), which won the Oklahoma Book Award.  Her latest collection of poems and prose, Savage Conversations, (2019) is a play with two characters, Mary Todd Lincoln, and the "Savage" she testified in court saying he tortured her nightly.  (The reason a Chicago court ordered Lincoln to an insane asylum in Batavia Illinois.)   

Scholars’ Convocation Speaker: Jen Shook
Thursday, April 10, 2025
Humanities and Social Studies Center, Room A1231, 11 a.m.

Instead of RedFace: Relational Trails in "Indian Country," Onstage, Online, and IRL

What connects performance history, digital presence, and Indigenous futurities? How do we revisit the past without reifying the same old stories? 2024-25 Humanities Center Fellow Jen Shook navigates these intersections with digital and performance dramaturgies and pedagogies from small local archives to new Vivero projects.

Bailey J. Dann ’17
Thursday, Nov. 21, 2024

4:15 p.m., HSSC, Room S1325

Where the Medicine Grows: Healing Generational Trauma through
Land, Language, and Culture

Bailey Dann will weave together the stories of her family and her community's journey to reclaim what was nearly lost—our languages, our culture, our connection to the land. Grounded in both personal experience and community resilience, she'll explore how the deep roots of language, culture, and land offer pathways to healing generational trauma, particularly the lasting scars of boarding schools.

Eric Zimmer
Thursday, Oct. 10, 2024

Book Discussion
4 p.m., Humanities and Social Studies Center, Room A2231 (Auditorium) — Note change in location

He will lead a book discussion about his book, Red Earth Nation: A History of the Meskwaki Settlement.

Public Talk
7 p.m., Humanities and Social Studies Center, Room A2231 (Auditorium)

Reclaiming the Indigenous Midwest: The Meskwaki Settlement as #Landback

Red Earth Nation: A History of the Meskwaki Settlement (University of Oklahoma Press: Norman, 2024)

Dr. Ned Blackhawk (Western Shoshone) 
Howard R. Lamar Professor of History, Yale University

Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024
Rosenfield Center 101, 7 p.m.

Resisting the Mythology of Indigenous Disappearance: Native Activists in the Early 20th Century World

“If our schools and universities are to remain vital civic institutions, we must create richer and more truthful accounts of the American Republic’s origins, expansion, and current form. Studying and teaching America’s Indigenous truths reveal anew the varied meanings of America”

The Rediscovery of America: Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History (Yale UP, 2023), 2023 National Book Award for Nonfiction

Conversation in the Humanities
Organized by Pride vs. Prejudice Student Organization
Ray Young Bear ’76
Tuesday, March 4, 2025
Harris Center Concert Hall, note: location change
7-9 p.m., (This event will last two-hours)

From Red Earth Drive: Creating Meskwaki Poetry and Songs Through Animism and a Series of Otherworldly Events

Ray Young Bear’s presentation will be in three parts: the talk, which is basically a narration of the creative process, past and present, where selected poems are read and explained. This includes a contrast of previously published poems in English and new poems composed in the Meskwaki language. These first language compositions are often introduced and shared as tribal word-songs performed with a hand drum. After the talk, there’ll be a question-and-answer period. The final presentation will be members of the Meskwaki Nation singing, dancing, and drum playing.