Douglas Tallamy, "Nature's Best Hope"
October 7, 2021, 6 p.m., 4th Floor Program Room
Doug Tallamy is the T. A. Baker Professor of Agriculture in the Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware. He is the author of Bringing Nature Home (2007), The Living Landscape (2014; co-authored with Rick Darke), and the New York Times best seller, Nature's Best Hope (2020). Among his awards are the Garden Club of America Margaret Douglas Medal for Conservation, the 2018 Morrison Communication Award, and the 2019 Cynthia Westcott Scientific Writing Award. During his talk, Tallamy will discuss simple steps that each of us can—and must take to reverse declining biodiversity, why we must change our adversarial relationship with nature to a collaborative one, and why we, ourselves, are nature’s best hope.
Voice of Witness: An Evening with Carolyn Forché
October 28, 2021, 7 p.m., 4th Floor Program Room
Renowned as a “poet of witness,” Carolyn Forché is the author of five books of poetry, including Gathering The Tribes (Yale University Press, 1976), The Country Between Us (Harper and Row, 1982), The Angel of History (HarperCollins, 1994), Blue Hour (HarperCollins, 2003), and In the Lateness of the World (Penguin Press, 2020), which was a finalist for the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in poetry. She is also the author of the 2019 memoir What You Have Heard Is True (Penguin Random House), a devastating, lyrical, and visionary book about a young woman’s brave choice to engage with horror in order to help others (2019 National Book Award finalist). Forché is Lannan Visiting Professor of Poetry and Professor of English at Georgetown University. She will read selections from her poetry and memoir.
Claudio Saunt, "Unworthy Republic: A History of Indian Removal, Mass Deportation, and American Exceptionalism"
March 24, 2022, 7 p.m., 4th Floor Program Room
Claudio Saunt is Richard B. Russell Professor of American History and Co-Director of the Center for Virtual History at the University of Georgia. He is the author of West of the Revolution: An Uncommon History of 1776 (WW Norton, 2014), Black, White, and Indian: Race and the Unmaking of an American Family (Oxford UP, 2005), and A New Order of Things: Property, Power, and the Transformation of the Creek Indians (Cambridge UP, 1999). His most recent book, Unworthy Republic: The Dispossession of Native Americans and the Road to Indian Territory (Norton, 2020) was awarded the Bancroft Prize, the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, and was a finalist for the National Book Award. The book was recognized by the Washington Post and Publishers Weekly as one of the ten best books of 2020, the New York Times as a Critics’ Top Book, and the Boston Globe as one of the best books of the year. Saunt has developed several online projects, including the Invasion of America and, with Elizabeth Fenn, Pox Americana.
Stephanie Savell, "The American Failure to See War for What It Is: The Past, Present and Future of the US Post-9/11 Wars"
April 11, 2022, 6 p.m., 4th Floor Program Room
Stephanie Savell is an anthropologist of militarism, security, civic engagement, and political culture, and has studied these topics in the United States and in Brazil. She co-directs Brown University's Costs of War Project and conducts research and outreach on the U.S. war on terrorism and its costs for Americans and others around the world. Another major line of research is on policing and activism in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where she has conducted extensive field research. Savell writes for academic and public audiences; she has published in PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review, Focaal: Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology, the Smithsonian magazine, US News and World Report, Axios, and The Nation, among others, and is co-author of The Civic Imagination: Making a Difference in American Political Life (Routledge, 2014).