American Studies - Commencement 2025 Remarks and Awards
Remarks and awards for American Studies department seniors and their families.
Location: American Studies Conference Room, Axinn Center
Middlebury College
Past Events
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AMST, ENGL, FMMC, and HIST Commencement 2025 Reception
Departments of American Studies, English, Film & Media Culture, and History joint reception for graduating seniors and their guests in Axinn Center Winter Garden.
Axinn Center Winter Garden
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Storying Harm: Centering Victims of Vermont’s Sterilization Program
In 1931, Vermont passed a sterilization law aimed at curbing what it saw as “undesirable” traits in its population. But who, exactly, was this law applied to — and why? While it is documented that this law primarily targeted people of low socioeconomic standing, and those who were institutionalized and disabled, many instead claim that the program disproportionately affected Indigenous people—a claim which evidence does not support.
Axinn Center 219
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Making and Unmaking Categories: Queer/Trans/Disabled Resistance and Joy
White, disabled, and genderqueer, Eli Clare lives near Lake Champlain in unceded Abenaki territory (also known as Vermont) where he writes and proudly claims a penchant for rabble-rousing. He has written two books of essays, the award-winning Brilliant Imperfection: Grappling with Cure and Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation, and a collection of poetry, The Marrow’s Telling: Words in Motion.
Franklin Environmental Center, The Orchard-Hillcrest 103
Open to the Public
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Disabled Ecologies: Lessons from a Wounded Desert
A virtual book talk with author Sunara “Sunny” Taylor, an American academic, painter, writer and activist for disability and animal rights.
Co-Sponsored by the Program in American Studies, Environmental Studies, Advisory Group on Disability Access and Inclusion, and the Academic Speaker Supplement Fund.
Virtual event, open to the public. Registration is required.
https://middlebury.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_y4FDHNthSpOVOJM2O-HG7gVirtual Middlebury
Open to the Public
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Professor J Finley: Sass: Black Women's Humor and Humanity
J Finley, Associate Professor of Africana Studies at Pomona College, will be discussing her exciting new book, Sass: Black Women’s Humor and Humanity (UNC, 2024). Dr. Finley will offer an overview of the book and the methodologies of studying the genre of stand-up comedy. Professor Finley was formerly a member of the American Studies Program at Middlebury College and critical in founding Black Studies at the College.
Axinn Center 229
Open to the Public
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Place Attachment and the Geographies of Being
The Middle of Somewhere: Place Attachment and the Geographies of Being
Place attachment is a burgeoning field of scholarship that investigates place identities and their relation to mobility and migration. Professor Alexander Diener’s research project considers people’s varied capacities to make and remake place attachments, and how this shapes everyday routines, social interactions, major life choices, and identities at different scales. His talk will engage with topics such as home/homeland, mobility/immobility, biological geographies, sacred place, and moral geographies.
McCardell Bicentennial Hall 104
Open to the Public
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Objects of Wonder: Makings from across the Middlebury campus
Objects of Wonder
In the upcoming exhibition Objects of Wonder, students, faculty, staff, and alumni offer an intersection of research, art, history, and academia. These objects are curious snapshots-sneak peeks at the varied interests and endeavors present across this campus. Free and open to the public. Johnson Exhibition Gallery, Johnson Memorial Building room 208.Johnson Gallery/Crit (208)
Open to the Public
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Emily St. John Mandel in Conversation
Acclaimed author Emily St. John Mandel will bring her work and perspectives to Middlebury College in this special reading, Q&A and book signing.
This event is in-person and open to the public.
Can’t make it? A recording will be available February 16-March 1, 2024 at https://vimeo.com/911642948
Password: EmilyMidd2024
Wright Theatre
Open to the Public
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"The Imperial Origins of American Policing"
The Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs Program on Global and International History presents Julian Go and “Policing Empires: Militarization, Race, and the Imperial Boomerang in Britain and the US.”
Robert A. Jones '59 Conference Room
Open to the Public
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Queer Anthropology: A Dialogue
Erin Durban and Lucinda Ramberg, two feminist, queer, postcolonial scholars, will have a conversation about queer anthropology: What does it mean to queer anthropology? How can we do anthropology, as well as ethnographic methods more broadly, in a queer way and for queer purposes?Axinn Center Abernethy Room (221)
Open to the Public
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The Sexual Politics of Empire: Postcolonial Homophobia in Haiti
Erin Durban, a scholar of queer anthropology, will discuss their book The Sexual Politics of Empire: Postcolonial Homophobia in Haiti. Evangelical Christians and members of the global LGBTQI human rights movement have vied for influence in Haiti since the 2010 earthquake. Each side accuses the other of serving foreign interests. Yet each proposes future foreign interventions on behalf of their respective causes despite the country’s traumatic past with European colonialism and American imperialism. As Durban shows, two discourses dominate discussions of intervention.Axinn Center Abernethy Room (221)
Open to the Public
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Nana-Ama Danquah,“The Beautiful Deception of Wellness”
The line between wellness and illness seems thick, well drawn, and impermeable. We believe ourselves, and others, to be firmly situated on one side or the other. But that is not true. We all come to realize this about physical illness. We come to realize that eventually it will touch and alter our lives, either through our own direct experience or that of a loved one. So, we begin to learn the language of cancer, of Alzheimer’s, of Parkinson’s. What of mental illness, though?Axinn Center 229
Open to the Public
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Author Talk with Lisa Uperesa: Gridiron Capital: How American Football became a Samoan Game
Since the 1970s, a “Polynesian Pipeline” has brought football players from American Samoa to Hawaii and the mainland United States to play at the collegiate and professional levels. In Gridiron Capital Lisa Uperesa charts the cultural and social dynamics that have made football so significant to Samoan communities.Virtual Middlebury
Open to the Public
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An Evening with Paul Asbell
Join us for a performance by internationally recognized fingerstyle guitarist Paul Asbell. With a multi-decade career that includes joining the seminal Butterfield Blues band, founding and leading jazz group Kilimanjaro, and playing and recording with a veritable who’s who of blues and jazz greats, Asbell is a musician’s musician. This performance will highlight the history of the American guitar, as Asbell will demonstrate how the instrument itself changed and was changed by the music people made with it.Mahaney Arts Center, Olin C. Robison Concert Hall
Open to the Public
Free
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Career Conversation with Writer Abe Streep ’04
Please join us for a Career Conversation with Writer Abe Streep ’04. He will discuss his career journey and various aspects of the industry. He is the author of Brothers on Three: A True Story of Family, Resistance, and Hope on a Reservation in Montana, winner of the Montana Book Award and the New Mexico-Arizona General Nonfiction Book Award.
Davis Family Library Center for Teaching, Learning and Research
Closed to the Public
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Author Talk by Abe Streep '04 about Brothers on Three
Award-winning journalist Abe Streep (‘04) will be in conversation with esteemed sports writer, Alexander Wolff to discuss his first book, Brothers on Three: A True Story of Family, Resistance, and Hope on a Reservation in Montana (Celadon Books, 2021). The book follows the boys basketball team from Arlee High School as they defend their state championship. Streep reports on the place of basketball in the lives of members of the Flathead Reservation’s Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes.Franklin Environmental Center, The Orchard-Hillcrest 103
Open to the Public
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Conversations in Translation: Two Translators Discuss Their Work
This event will place in conversation two high profile translators of Asian novels. Stephen Epstein, translator of The Wandering by Intan Paramaditha, and Stephen Snyder, translator of The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa will discuss their work as professional translators of novels in Asian languages. Epstein, Director of the Asian Languages and Cultures Programme at Victoria University in Wellington has translated multiple novels from Korean and Indonesian to English.Axinn Center 229
Open to the Public
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Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar Lecture: Thinking about Migration through Latinx Art
A lecture by Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar Professor Charlene Villaseñor Black, Professor of Art History and Chicana/o Studies Studies at UCLA. Professor Charlene Villaseñor Black will offer a public lecture on the relationship between migration and art. In introducing the lecture, Charlene Villaseñor Black writes: Can art effect political change, and if so, how? Can it move us to action, empathy, andhope? I consider these questions as I investigate Chicanx (Mexican American) artists’ responses to global migration, in particular, Los Angeles artist Sandy Rodriguez (born1975).Dana Auditorium (Sunderland Language Center)
Open to the Public
