See below for more information

1st Wednesday of every month - HIS 702 Proseminar on History Careers

Febraury 3, 2023 - Prof. Dalia Muller Scholars@Hallwalls

February 13, 2023 - Informational Coffee Break: Dept. of History Spring Scholarship Competition

February 17, 2023 - Prof. Erik Seeman

February 22, 2023 - Prof. Susan Burch of Middlebury College

March 3, 2023 - Prof. Ndubueze Mbah

March 6, 2023 - Informational Coffee Break: Study Abroad Opportunities

March 10-11, 2023 - Milton Plesur Conference

April 14, 2023 - New Book Celebration for Prof. Hal Langfur with comments by Cynthia Radding of the University of North Carolina

April 17, 2023 - Informational Coffee Break: Thinking About Grad School?

Date: 1st Wednesday of each month during the Spring Semester
Time: 4:00 - 6:00 PM
Place: Park 545

HIS 702 is a forum for conversations on the diverse array of careers available to holders of MA and PhD degrees in History. Class sessions are devoted to discussion of readings on career diversity and strategies to prepare for careers within and beyond the academy. Alumni of UB's History graduate program, as well as other programs, visit class to share their experiences. Open as an elective to all graduate students.

Spring 2023 Topics:

February 1st - Framing Career Diversity
March 1st - Academic Publishing and the Archive
April 5th - Applying in the Academy
May 3rd - Start it UP!: Historians at Startups

Time: 2:00 - 3:00 PM
Place: Park 532 and online
Dates and Topics:
February 13, 2023 - Department of History Spring Scholarship Competition
March 6, 2023 - Study Abroad Opportunities
April 17, 2023 - Thinking About Grad School? Explore the Possibilities!

Join us on the dates above for an undergraduate series: Informational Coffee Breaks!

During these sessions students will meet from 2:00-3:00 in Park 532 for coffee (or tea or hot chocolate!), snacks, and to learn about different opportunities available to History undergraduate students (including UB Teach and History/Law students).

Students will hear from guest speakers, History faculty and staff, and others about the topic of the day. Students are encouraged to ask questions and drop in and out as their schedule allows.

The Department of History will provide beverages and light refreshments! Students are free to bring their own if they choose.

Students can join in person or on Zoom. All attendees must register.

Date; April 14, 2023
Time: 3:00-5:00 PM
Place: Park 532 and Zoom

Join the Department of History for a celebration and discussion in honor of Prof. Hal Langfur and the publication of his book, Adrift on an Inland Sea: Misinformation and the Limits of Empire in the Brazilian Backlands. Prof. Langfur will be joined in conversation by Dr. Cynthia Radding, Gussenhoven Distinguished Professor of History, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

This is a hybrid event taking place both in person in Park 532 and online via Zoom. All attendees must registrer and indicate if they will be attending in person or online.

A Zoom link will be distributed closer to the time of the event.

Excerpts from Adrift on an Inland Sea will be circulated in advance of the event.

From 1750 until Brazil won its independence in 1822, the Portuguese crown sought to extend imperial control over the colony's immense, sea-like interior and exploit its gold and diamond deposits using enslaved labor. Carrying orders from Lisbon into the Brazilian backlands, elite vassals, soldiers, and scientific experts charged with exploring multiple frontier zones and establishing royal authority conducted themselves in ways that proved difficult for the crown to regulate. The overland expeditions they mounted in turn encountered actors operating beyond the state's purview: seminomadic Native peoples, runaway slaves, itinerant poor, and those deemed criminals, who eluded, defied, and reshaped imperial ambitions.

This book measures Portugal's transatlantic projection of power against a particular obstacle: imperial information-gathering, which produced a confusion of rumors, distortions, claims, conflicting reports, and disputed facts. Drawing on interdisciplinary scholarship in the fields of ethnohistory, slavery and diaspora studies, and legal and literary history, Hal Langfur considers how misinformation destabilized European sovereignty in the Americas, making a major contribution to histories of empire, frontiers and borderlands, knowledge production, and scientific exploration in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Date: April 5, 2023
Time: 3:00-4:30 PM
Place: In Person Cellino and Barnes Conference Center, 509 O’Brian Hall and Online (Zoom)

This event is hosted by the Department of Africana and American Studies.

Dr. Berry is a renowned scholar, distinguished public servant and social justice activist.

Mary Frances Berry became the Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought and Professor of History in 1987. She received her PhD in History from the University of Michigan and JD from the University of Michigan Law School. She is the author of twelve books.

Professor Berry has had a distinguished career in public service. From 1980 to 2004, she was a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, and from 1993-2004 served as Chair. Between 1977 and 1980, Dr. Berry served as the Assistant Secretary for Education in the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW). She has also served as Provost of the University of Maryland and Chancellor of the University of Colorado at Boulder.

In recognition of her scholarship and public service, Professor Berry has received 35 honorary doctoral degrees and many awards, including the NAACP's Roy Wilkins Award, the Rosa Parks Award of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and the Ebony Magazine Black Achievement Award. She is one of 75 women featured in I Dream A World: Portraits of Black Women Who Changed America. Sienna College Research Institute and the Women's Hall of Fame designated her one of "America's Women of the Century." In 1990-91 she was President of the Organization of American Historians. She is a Fellow of the Society of American Historians and of the National Academy of Public Administration and is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Society for Legal History. She is a recipient of the Roy Rosenzweig Distinguished Service Award of the Organization of American Historians.

Date: April 12, 2023
Time: 2:00-3:30 PM
Place: Online

In this special event hosted by Haymarket (co-sponsored by the Dept. of History), Robin D.G. Kelley will discuss with the authors Helena Hansen, Jules Netherland, and David Herzberg how Whiteness drove the opioid crisis.

In the past two decades, media images of the surprisingly white “new face” of the US opioid crisis abounded. But why was the crisis so white? Some argued that skyrocketing overdoses were “deaths of despair” signaling deeper socioeconomic anguish in white communities. Whiteout makes the counterintuitive case that the opioid crisis was the product of white racial privilege as well as despair.

Anchored by interviews, data, and riveting firsthand narratives from three leading experts—an addiction psychiatrist, a policy advocate, and a drug historian—Whiteout reveals how a century of structural racism in drug policy, and in profit-oriented medical industries led to mass white overdose deaths. The authors implicate racially segregated health care systems, the racial assumptions of addiction scientists, and relaxed regulation of pharmaceutical marketing to white consumers. Whiteout is an unflinching account of how racial capitalism is toxic for all Americans.

These events are funded by The Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy and co-sponsored by the UB Departments of Africana and American Studies, English, Philosophy, Arts Management, and History.

Thursday, April 20, 2023
509 O'Brian Hall & via Zoom
3:30 - 5:00pm (EDT)
Free and open to the public.

“61% of the entire planet is laboring informally. And what characterizes informal employment is a blurred divide between the productive and the reproductive.”

Alessandra Mezzadri, GLUNetwork Interview (8/10/2022)

Contemporary social reproduction debates are primarily focused upon the “crisis of care” in high income countries. Less attention has been paid to social reproduction in post-colonial and post-socialist contexts both theoretically and empirically. The “Social Reproduction from Majority World Perspectives” panel highlights how work is experienced as the blurring of the productive and the reproductive for the vast majority of workers in the global economy. From sweatshop workers in India and women factory workers of iPhones in China to migrant domestic workers in Lebanon, this panel will address the links between exploitation and social reproduction from a global and intersectional lens.

Sponsors: Alison Des Forges Memorial Committee; University at Buffalo: The Baldy Center for Law and Social Policy; Departments of Comparative Literature, History, Philosophy, and Political Science; Gender Institute; The Gordon and Gretchen Gross Professorship in Jewish Thought; Humanities Institute; James Agee Chair in American Culture; Office of the Vice Provost for International Education.

This symposium honors the life and work of human rights activist Alison Des Forges (1942-2009). For more information, email Roger Des Forges at rvd@buffalo.edu, Ellen Dussourd at dussourd@buffalo.edu, or Shaun Irlam at irlam@buffalo.edu.

Date: Wednesday, April 26, 2023
Time: 8:30 AM  3:30 PM
Place: Buffalo Room, Capen Hall 10, North Campus, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY 14260 (map)

This symposium will examine the Russo-Ukrainian war and what it tells us about the strengths and weaknesses of the contemporary international system. It will explore war crimes, crimes against humanity and alleged genocide arising from the conflict. It will also revisit the enduring dichotomy between Russian authoritarian imperialism and Ukrainian democratic nationalism.

This Symposium is free and open to the public but registration is requested. Register for In-Person and Virtual Symposium by emailing dussourd@buffalo.edu.

Check back soon for more events!

Date: April 6, 2023
Time: 11:00-12:30
Place: Park 532

Graduate students and faculty are welcomed to a brown bag conversation about digital scholarship organized by graduate students Brandon Burger and Ashley Morin and faculty member Claire Schen.

We have two main themes to guide our discussion: the methodologies of digital scholarship (analyzing and interpreting research with digital tools) and presentations of research findings in digital formats.

• Roundtable conversation: no demonstrations or presentations
• Some core questions, even if you haven’t started yet: what are the questions you want to answer with digital scholarship? What do you want to “see” through digital analysis, and ultimately in presentations?
• If a project is underway, what tools have you tried, and what have you learned from them? Or, what tools or methodologies have you wanted to learn about or try?
• What next steps do we need?