Today, Professor Manisha Sinha‘s interview with Salon, an online news website, was published. The article, which can be read here, connects Professor Sinha’s work to the modern day and delves into her book “The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic, Reconstruction 1860-1920”.

Later this month, Professor Sergio Luzzatto will be delivering the Virgilio Lectures at the University of Chicago, sponsored by the Romance Languages and Literatures Department.  He will be giving three different lectures, on April 16, April 18, and April 22, on “Primo Levi and His Auschwitz Companions: Between History and Literature.” The lectures will draw on his recently published book Primo Levi e i suoi compagni (Donzelli, 2024).  While the lectures will be in Chicago, they can be followed virtually on line as well. Full details can be found on the U Chicago website:  https://events.uchicago.edu/event/246646-virgilio-lecture-series-with-sergio-luzzatto-.

Congratulations to Professor Luzzatto on this important new book, and major honor.

Earlier this month, the “My Story, Our Future” exhibit opened at the Greenwich Historical Society. The exhibit, which will run from February 3rd to March 2nd, was a joint effort on the part of the Greenwich Historical Society, the India Cultural Centers, and the UConn Asian and Asian American Studies Institute. This is the program’s third year running, and was created “in alignment with Connecticut’s mandated K-12 Asian American/Pacific Islander (AAPI) curriculum”. The goal of this initiative is to bring focus onto the voices of South Asian American youth in Connecticut through the collection of their stories, and explore the history of the South Asian American community in Connecticut. For this years exhibit, local students interviewed their family members about their experiences immigrating to North America from South Asia, and then learned how to create their own display of curated objects to help tell that history.

Dr. Jason Oliver Chang, who was a main proponent of the creation of the initiative and of the inclusion of AAPI curriculum in schools, spoke at the opening of the exhibit. Professor Chang “shared his experiences as faculty mentor and guide and spoke of the challenges and opportunities of introducing the AAPI curriculum to the state’s 170 school districts and to the teachers who have not previously studied it“.

The exhibit will be open to the public until March 2nd at the Greenwich Historical Society. To listen to the oral histories, you can visit the historical society’s website, where there is a link to their Spotify.

This Thursday, Professor Manisha Sinha will be presenting her talk, “The Fall of the Second American Republic” as speaker for the Joanna Dunlap Cowden Memorial Lecture. The event will take place at California State University Chico at 5:30 pm. The talk will draw from her book, The Rise and Fall of the Second American Republic: Reconstruction, 1860-1920.

The memorial lecture was established in 2001 to honor the legacy and work of Professor Joanna Dunlap Cowden, a history professor who taught at California State University Chico for 25 years. Professor Cowden’s work focused on United States antebellum and Civil War history.

Professor Deirdre Cooper Owens has been named the Stafford Ellison Wright Black Alumni Scholar-in-Residence at Occidental College in Los Angeles California. This award is funded by the Stafford Ellison Wright Endowment, created by the Black Alumni Organization in honor of the college’s first black graduates, Dr. Janet Stafford, George F. Ellison, and Barbara Bowman Wright. Through this program, Occidental College is able to invite, “distinguished Black scholars, artists, elected officials, and others to spend time in residence at Occidental each year.“

Dr. Cooper Owens will be in residence between February 18th and 19th, 2025, visiting talking with students, as well as holding a healing circle on February 19th. On the 18th at 7pm, she will also present, “Slavery, Gynecology and Black Placental Resistance: Why Black Mothers Matter“, a free public lecture.

To read more about this impressive achievement: Occidental College