Office of Advancement

Of the many commodities carried on Dutch East and West India Company ships in the 17th and 18th centuries, textiles were by far the most numerous. Not only valuable trade items, textiles were also potent signifiers in an increasingly global world, where clothing played a critical role in shaping identities in colonial and European circles. Although extant examples of these textiles are scarce, painted images and archival documents hint at their social and economic importance.

Precolonial Ethnic Violence: The roots of Hindu-Muslim conflict in India

Is ethnic violence in the non-Western world a legacy of colonialism or the precolonial period? Professor Verghese evaluates these competing perspectives using the influential case of Hindu-Muslim violence in India. He has constructed a new dataset of all conflicts between Hindu and Muslim states from 1000 to 1850 AD and finds that historical violence began around 1700 AD—before the British ruled the subcontinent.

Same but Different is a dance-theater performance created and performed by Christal Brown and Lida Winfield. The scholar-artists explore their similarities and differences in a cultural commentary on race, age, and gender. In this webinar, the artists will share excerpts of the work and discuss how it is a reflection of their lived values, artistic practice, and communal existence.

Is the Snow Bowl getting higher? How recent tectonic events have shaped the New England landscape

Digging beneath the surface of something very familiar can be richly rewarding. Such is the case with Old Chapel. Beyond its importance to Middlebury College, this structure recorded in the Historic American Building Survey and listed on the National Register of Historic Places has connections that transcend its accumulated local associations. Prof.

Nineteenth-century Americans often saved or exchanged locks of hair as mementos, constructing elaborate items of jewelry or keepsake wreaths that embodied familial relationships and kinship networks. These tokens could serve memorial purposes or solidify friendships. This material, crafted from the body, was often worn on the body, near the heart, or displayed within the intimate space of the home. In more recent decades, hair has become a potent political medium for artists highlighting feminism and ethnic or racial identity.

Conspiracies and Disinformation: New Challenges or Sources of Timeless Turmoil?

Jason M. Blazakis will discuss the international security challenges posed by conspiracies and disinformation and how these have manifested during the COVID-19 pandemic. He will also share some observations from his own research and that of the Middlebury Institute Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism.

In this talk, James Chase Sanchez argues that contemporary rhetoric of white supremacy is built around structures of preservation. Using ethnographic and autoethnographic research in his hometown of Grand Saline, Texas, Sanchez pinpoints the ways communities preserve their white supremacy via tactics of identity formation, storytelling, and silencing.

After the last military dictatorship in Argentina ended in 1983, the long decades of post-dictatorship posed a challenge: how to transmit the memory of that period to younger generations. This talk will explore questions such as: Is there a pedagogy of memory? Is it possible to build a curriculum that addresses the difficult issue of traumatic memories? Are institutions willing or able to deal with this issue? Professor Evangelista will also address the complex ways in which Argentine schools and universities, along with human-rights organizations, have dealt with memory.

Last March, theatre professor Dana Yeaton and actor-playwright Cole Merrell ’21 started writing a play together. Their inspiration was the legendary teacher-student relationship between Aristotle and Alexander the Great. Actor Ethan Bowen joined the weekly Zoom sessions to improvise the role of Aristotle, with Merrill playing the teenaged Alexander. Join Bowen and Merrill for a performance of excerpts directed by Assistant Professor of Theatre Michole Biancosino.