All are welcome to join us for the Forum's Sponsored Research Colloquia Series for 2026-2027. Faculty and graduate students are especially encouraged to attend as we create an interdisciplinary intellectual community in the arts and humanities at OU. The registration link was circulated ahead of the gathering. Join us!
Charles M. Russell Center for the Study of Art of the American West
Exciting research from a kaleidoscope of perspectives and methods relating to the American West is underway across the humanities at OU. The rich interdisciplinary work is one of the University’s strengths, bolstered by a wealth of collections and centers across campus and the press. Many OU faculty and graduate students focusing on cultural production, histories of dispossession, and multi-cultural identities in the American West are pushing new conversations in the field, whether analyzing historical or contemporary material. This colloquium enables contributors to share work in progress for that project in addition to their own ongoing scholarship. Through an array of presentations crossing the Dodge Family College of Arts and Sciences and the Weitzenhoffer College of the Fine Arts and disciplines from history, English, anthropology, film and media studies along with art history, a deeper and broader sense of the methodological approaches and stakes of writing about the American West today will become clarified.
Colloquium Schedule
[Excepting off-site workshop sessions, Meetings will be in person at the Charles M. Russell Center for the Study of Art of the American West, Wednesdays 9-10:30 AM]
Fall 2026
Wed Sep 2 - Session 1 – Welcome Breakfast
Wed Sep 9 – Session 2 –Yve Chavez (Art History), “The Absence and Misrepresentation of California Indians in Murals of the 1930s”
Wed Sep 16 – Session 3 (located at 5th floor Bizzell Library) – Western History Collections, “Orientation to New Western History Collections”
Wed Sep 23 – Session 4 – Kimberly Marshall (Anthropology), “Spectacle and Silence in Boise’s Freak Alley Gallery”
Wed Sep 30 – Session 5 – Emilie Upczak (Film and Media Studies), “Life Without End”
Wed Oct 14, 5-6 PM – Session 6 – Kathleen Brosnan (History), “Reading the Label: Linking the Environment, the Consumer and the State in a Bottle of Napa Wine”
Wed Oct 28 – Session 7 – Anthony Gomez (English), “Animal Fuel: John Rollin Ridge’s Exploration of Cyclical Energy and Horses as Power in Post-Mexico California”
Wed Nov 4 – Session 8 - Katie Baker, Katrina Schroeder, and Andrew Berzanskis (OU Press), “Publishing Your Book: An Inside Look at Pitching, Making, and Marketing a University Press Book”
Wed Nov 11 – Session 9 – Travis Catalano (Art History), “The Stone and the Sublime: Geologic Formations in 19th Century Landscape”
Wed Dec 2 – Session 10 – Emily Burns (Art History) with Sharon Burchett (Russell Center), “Research Collections at OU’s Russell Center”
Spring 2027
Wed Jan 27 – Session 11 – Kathleen Brosnan (History), Kalenda Eaton (AFAM and the Honors College), and Emily Burns (Art History), “Visual Wests”
Wed Feb 3 – Session 12 – Kathryn Florence (Art History), “Carrying Our Kin: Making Relations Through a Set of Horse Regalia”
Wed Feb 10 – Session 13 (located at Sam Noble Museum) – Claire Nicholas (Anthropology / Sam Noble), “Workshop on Sam Noble Collections”
Wed Feb 24 – Session 14 – Jennifer Holland (History), “Lobbying, OK: The Defeat of Queer-Friendly, Rural Populism”
Wed Mar 3 – Session 15 – Valentine Karrer (Art History), “Residual Light: Material Traces of Non-Settler Agency in American West Photography”
Wed Mar 24 – Session 16 – Farina King (Native American Studies),” From Lamanite Generation to Living Legends: Performance, Identity, and Indigenous Mormon Expression”
Wed Mar 31 – Session 17 - Maxwell Yamane (Ethnomusicology), “Powwow in the Capital: The Native American Urban Community and Sonic Acts in Washington, DC”
Wed April 7 – Session 18 – Heather White (Art History), “Nineteenth-Century Texas Landscapes”
Wed Apr 14 – Session 19 – Joanna Hearne (Film and Media Studies), ”Sandra Osawa and the Origins of Indigenous Television in the 1970s”
Wed Apr 28 – Session 20 – Closing Breakfast
Kaufman Hall, 221 B
The Global Pre-Modern: Centers, Peripheries, and Interimperial Zones brings together scholars from the University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State University to examine how knowledge was made, contested, and transmitted across medieval and early modern Europe, the Mediterranean, the Islamic world, South Asia, and the colonial Americas between roughly 1200 and 1700. The colloquium places Western and non-Western worlds in productive dialogue, asking how ideas traveled across confessional and geographic boundaries, how bodies and voices negotiated institutional control, and how communities at the margins generated their own compelling forms of knowledge. A partnership with OU Libraries' Special Research Collections connects scholarly conversation to archival practice.
Colloquium Schedule
Fall 2026
Tues 9/1 - Session 1 (5th Floor Bizzell Memorial Library) - JoAnn Palmeri, (OU Libraries), “Archives and the Global Pre-Modern: An Introduction to OU Special Research Collections”
Wednesday 9/16 - Session 2 (Bizzell Community Room) - Merle Eisenberg (Oklahoma State University), “Medieval Pandemics and Grand Narratives: History, Science, and Interdisciplinary Research”
Wed 10/14 - Session 3 - Joseph Mansky (English), “The Idea of Innovation in English Thought, c. 1550–1650”
Wed 11/11- Session 4 - Amelia Manas-Raboso (MLLL), “Urban Images: The Mexican Colonial Space”
Spring 2027 (4-5:30 pm)
Wed 1/27 – Session 5 - Diego Valdecantos-Monteagudo (MLLL), “Sor Marcela de San Félix and Eucharistic Poetry”
Wed 2/3– Session 6 - Paul Feller-Simmons (Music), “From the Bridegroom to the Grave: Ritual and Sonic Boundaries in Early Modern Sephardic Amsterdam”
Wed 3/24 – Session 7 - Du Fei (History), “’They Swim Like Birds in the Sky’: Gendering the Wonders of Creation in Medieval and Early Modern Islamic Art”
Wed 4/7 – Session 8 - Liran Yadgar (MLLL), “’In Cairo Once, I Debated with a Jewish Scholar’: Muslim-Jewish Polemics in the Mamluk Era”
Wed 4/28 – Session 9 - Andreea Marculescu (MLLL), “Cankerworms and Covens: The Naturalist Witch in Early-Modern France”
DHT 905
The Francophone World Workshop is an intellectual community and colloquium series that unties faculty and staff from across campus through the shared study of the Francophone World. Anyone with interest in these topics is welcome to attend!
Colloquium Schedule
Fall 2026
Thurs 9/24 - Session 1 - Claire Nicholas (Anthropology / Sam Noble), Book talk and reception: Threading the NeedleCraft and Heritage Development in Postcolonial Morocco (Indiana University Press, 2026)
Thurs 10/1 - Session 2 - Meghan O'Donoghue (North Carolina State University), “Cultivating Knowledge in 20th century French West African Schools”
Thurs 10/29 - Session 3 - Nathan Dougherty (Musicology), “Sentimental Singing, Sympathy, and the Nineteenth-Century French Romance”
Thurs 11/19 - Session 4 - Jennifer J. Davis (History), “Debating Polygamy in Eighteenth-Century France”
Spring 2027 TBA
Do you have an idea for a Faculty Research Colloquim? Click here for more information on how to apply for funding.
