OU Gibbs College is pleased to announce that Chadwick Allen is invited to give a public lecture in the upcoming fall semester, co-sponsored by OU Departments of English, Film & Media Studies, Geography and Native American Studies. Chadwick Allen serves as the Associate Vice Provost for Faculty Advancement at the University of Washington Seattle (UW), where he is also a Professor of English and Adjunct Professor of American Indian Studies. He has published numerous books and has conducted interdisciplinary work on Indigenous earthworks – a study of cultural and political revitalization through the built environment.
For his lecture, Professor Allen will give a brief overview of his book, Earthworks Rising: Mound Building in Native Literature and Arts (University of Minnesota Press, 2022) and discuss examples of how Indigenous nations in Oklahoma are re-engaging and reimagining ancient traditions of building large-scale earthworks. Allen will explore how these new mounds occupy space, organize relations and create meaning for local tribal citizens and the descendants of mound-building peoples in the post-removal era. The lecture will take place on Monday, November 13 from 4 – 5 p.m. in Nielsen Hall, room 170.
Allen is also a former editor of the journal Studies in American Indian Literatures and a past president of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA). His books include Blood Narrative: Indigenous Identity in American Indian and Maori Literary and Activist Texts and Trans-Indigenous: Methodologies for Global Native Literary Studies.
For more information, contact Joanna Hearne (jhearne@ou.edu) or Chris Morrey (chris.morrey@ou.edu).
The University of Oklahoma College of Architecture is proud to announce that Model Schools in the Model City, authored by Director of the Institute for Quality Communities, Amber N. Wiley, Ph.D., has been named one of ten finalists for the 2026 ASALH Book Prize for Best New Book in African American History and Culture.
This semester, students in the LA 5535 Studio: Ecological Planning and Design, led by Prof. Afsana Sharmin, took on an ambitious hypothetical project to redesign key parts of the OU campus. Their mission: to tackle the critical real-world challenge of stormwater management through innovative green design.
Petya Stefanoff, Chair of the Educational Committee with the American Planning Association, Oklahoma Chapter (APA-OK) and Gibbs College PhD candidate, has developed a new training program for local government officials. The program, focused on land use, zoning principles, and land development, recently certified its first graduates with Certified Citizen Planner status.
