Upcoming Events
At the Department of History, we believe history should be shared, discussed and debated—both in the classroom and out in the world. That’s why we regularly host guest speakers, faculty talks and public events on and off campus. Whether you’re a student, alum or a curious visitor, we’d love to see you at one of our upcoming gatherings.
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Monthly Events:
The Human Right to Truth and Truth Commissions
Dates: Friday & Saturday, June 6–7, 2025
Time: 9 a.m. –6 p.m.
Location: 509 O’Brian Hall, University at Buffalo
The Department of History is proud to co-sponsor The Human Right to Truth and Truth Commissions Conference, a two-day event examining how the right to truth has transformed the relationship between law, justice, and historical understanding.
This conference will explore the evolution of truth commissions—beginning with the landmark 1984 Nunca Más Reportby Argentina’s CONADEP—and how these institutions assert the victim's and society's right to truth in the aftermath of violence and systemic human rights abuses.
Key themes include:
- The shift from traditional judicial truth to truth-seeking mechanisms centered on victims
- The role of interdisciplinary commissions in reconstructing historical context
- The potential of truth commissions to foster democratic transitions and peace
This event will bring together legal scholars, historians, human rights advocates, and practitioners from around the world.
📢 Open to all who are interested in justice, history, and human rights.
🔗 Learn more: Truth Commissions Conference Info
Two Events with Oscar-Nominated Director Ramin Bahrani
🎬 Student Workshop: Filmmaking, Identity and Social Justice
Join Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Ramin Bahrani for an exclusive student workshop exploring his journey in filmmaking, the role of cinema in shaping social justice narratives and the creative process behind his acclaimed works. Gain invaluable insights from one of the most influential voices in contemporary cinema. Light snacks and refreshments will be served!
Date: Monday, April 21, 2025
Time: 12:30–3:30 p.m.
Location: 250 Baird Hall, Baird Recital Hall
🎥 Film Screening and Q&A: “The White Tiger”
Experience Bahrani’s critically acclaimed film "The White Tiger," followed by an in-depth Q&A session with the director himself. Engage in a thought-provoking discussion on storytelling, representation, and the intersection of film and social justice. Light snacks and refreshments will be served!
Date: Monday, April 21, 2025
Time: 4:30–8 p.m.
Location: 310 Silverman Library, Capen Hall
About Ramin Bahrani:
Ramin Bahrani is an Academy Award, BAFTA, WGA, and Emmy nominee known for films like "Man Push Cart,” “Chop Shop," "Goodbye Solo," "99 Homes" and "The White Tiger." His work has premiered at top festivals and Roger Ebert hailed him as “the director of the decade.” A Guggenheim Fellow and PGA-winning producer, his films are preserved in MoMA’s permanent collection.
📖 Sponsored by:
UB Middle East Studies Initiative, the Department of History, the Center for Global Film and Media and the Office of the Vice Provost for International Education.
Medicine, the Body, and the Senses: Asian Perspectives
Date: Friday, April 11, 2025
Time: All Day
Location: Buffalo Room- 10 Capen Hall, North Campus
Join twenty-two scholars from Asia, Europe, and North America as they gather at UB for the 2025 annual conference of the Asia Research Institute. This multidisciplinary conference will explore how understandings of the body and the senses shape:
- Healing outcomes in medical traditions
- Religious experiences and embodied practice
- Gender relations and sociopolitical processes across Asia
- The influence of social, political, and religious contexts on sensorial perception
Keynote Speaker:
Judith Farquhar
Max Palevsky Professor Emerita of Anthropology and Social Sciences, University of Chicago
Renowned for her groundbreaking research on traditional medicine, popular culture, and everyday life in contemporary China, Professor Farquhar’s work has shaped the field of medical anthropology.
Conference Conveners:
- Yan Liu – Associate Professor of History, UB
- Genie Yoo – Postdoctoral Fellow, Dumbarton Oaks & Incoming Assistant Professor of History, UB
📖 Conference Sponsors:
Asia Research Institute, Office of International Education, Department of History, Asian Studies Program, Office of Global Health Initiatives in the School of Public Health and Health Professions, School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences and Department of Anthropology.
Feminist Drug Activism Since 1975: Trajectories Beyond the Grassroots
Date: Wednesday, April 9, 2025
Time: 12–1:30 p.m.
Location: 214 O'Brain Hall, North Campus
Join us for a thought-provoking talk by Trysh Travis, exploring how feminist activists have worked to improve treatment options for women who use drugs since the 1970s. This talk examines the Women’s Action Alliance (WAA) and its grassroots efforts, which evolved into the Women’s Alcohol and Drug Education Project (WADEP) in the 1980s on New York’s Lower East Side.
- Discover how feminist solidarity shaped drug policy and activism
- Explore the intersections of race, gender, and drug economies in urban communities
- Reflect on lessons from past activism for today’s harm reduction movements
At a time of intense political polarization and renewed interest in community-based harm reduction, this discussion provides crucial historical insights for contemporary activism and policy.
📖 Sponsored by:
The Department of History and the Humanities Institute Science in Society and the Clinical and Research Institute on Addictions.
2nd Annual Francis J. and Shirley A. Wozniak Lecture
The Asian Age of Exploration: When Spices and Ceramics Traveled Halfway Around the World
Valerie Hansen
Stanley Woodward Professor of History, Yale University
Date: Friday, April 4, 2025
Time: 4–5:30 p.m.
Location: 25 O’Brian Hall, North Campus
Join Yale historian Valerie Hansen for an engaging talk on the long-overlooked history of global exchange along the Silk Road and maritime trade routes. Centuries before the European Age of Exploration, sophisticated trade networks linked Baghdad with East Africa and China with the Philippines, shaping a vibrant system of cultural and economic exchange. Hansen’s storytelling brings to life the brave unnamed Asian sailors who traversed these routes without royal sponsorship, leaving behind records in Arabic and Chinese that still reveal their remarkable achievements.
Discover how this 7,000-mile route profoundly influenced global history from the Islamic world to Southeast China long before Vasco da Gama's famed voyages.
About Valerie Hansen:
Valerie Hansen teaches premodern Chinese and world history at Yale, where she is the Stanley Woodward Professor of History. Her most recent book, “The Year 1000: When Explorers Connected the World—and Globalization Began” (Scribner, 2020) has been translated into fifteen languages so far.
Pink Triangle Legacies:
Queer History for Queer Liberation: A Workshop on LGBTQ+ Digital History
Date: Wednesday, March 26, 2025
Time: 2–3:30 p.m.
Location: 205 Capen Hall
Join the Pink Triangle Legacies Project for a workshop exploring the transformation of an academic monograph into a digital public history project. Attendees will learn about navigating the challenges and opportunities of using digital history to restore LGBTQ+ voices to historical narratives, foster community, and combat homophobia and transphobia today.
Featured speakers: Dr. Jake Newsome and Grace Shaffer
Holocaust History & the Fight for LGBTQ+ Rights
Date: Tuesday, March 25, 2025
Time: 2 p.m.
Location: 107 Capen Hall
Join us for a powerful and inspiring talk by Dr. Jake Newsome, historian and author, as he explores the history of the pink triangle—from a Nazi concentration camp badge to an enduring symbol of LGBTQ+ pride, liberation, and community.
Through unexplored archival sources and original interviews, Dr. Newsome highlights the voices of LGBTQ+ Holocaust victims and the individuals who reclaimed the pink triangle as a beacon of resilience and activism in the post-Holocaust world.
- Discover the untold history of LGBTQ+ persecution and resistance
- Explore the evolution of an enduring pride symbol
- Engage in a thought-provoking Q&A and book signing
Don’t miss this opportunity to reflect, learn, and celebrate the legacy of LGBTQ+ history and activism!
The National Archives: Research, History, and the Public
The National Archives may seem distant from our daily lives, but its records shape how we understand history. Join Dr. Cari Casteel and Dr. Claire Schen for an engaging conversation about what the National Archives are, why they matter, and how they impact research and public knowledge.
Date: Monday, March 10, 2025
Time: 3–4:30 p.m.
Location: 545 Park Hall
Key Questions:
- When and why were the National Archives created?
- How do scholars and the public use archival records to write history?
- What do changes at the Archives mean for future historians, students, and society?
This discussion is open to History students and anyone interested in research, writing, and historical inquiry.
Come explore the significance of archival research and its role in shaping our understanding of the past!
“Shown in a Lifelike Way” (or “No Great Art Therein”):
Ottoman Costume Albums and the Art of Self-Representation
Date: Monday, March 3, 2025
Time: 1 p.m.
Location: 122 Center of the Arts
Join us for a lecture by Ünver Rüstem Associate Professor of Islamic Art and Architecture at Johns Hopkins University.
How one dressed was a deeply political air in the Ottoman Empire. It was used to express (and transgress) the hierarchical, religious, and communal distinctions of Ottoman society, much to the fascination of foreign visitors. This talk focuses on costume albums made by Ottoman painters for European buyers during the seventeenth century and considers why dress became such a charged site of cross-cultural interaction in the empire’s dealings with the West. It pushes against the view that Western interest in “Turkish” garb was driven by a taste for the exotic “Other” and highlights the Ottomans’ conscious utilization of their dress codes to engage, shape, and correct outside perceptions of their society.
Scholars@Hallwalls: Hal Langfur
Fashioning Racial Enmity in Colonial Brazil
Date: Friday, February 28, 2025
Time: 4 p.m.
Location: Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center (341 Delaware Avenue, Buffalo, NY 14202)
Admission: Free and open to the public
Join us for an engaging talk featuring Hal Langfur, a professor at the Department of History. Langfur will delve into the origins of racialization in colonial Brazil, exploring how the Portuguese colonizers developed a transatlantic “coercive pedagogy” to impose racial hierarchies at a time when race was an uncommon construct. Brazil, as the site of the Americas’ largest African slave system and significant Indigenous interactions, provides crucial insights into the early modern formation of racial enmity.
Don’t miss this opportunity to explore the deep historical roots of racial dynamics in Brazil and beyond!
The Power of the Dead: Funerals in Munich and London, 1550-1870
Antique Mezzotint - "The Disturbers of the Dead put to Flight."
Martin Christ, University of Erfurt
Date: Friday, February 21, 2025
Time: 3–4:30 p.m.
Location: 532 Park Hall, North Campus
Join us for an engaging lecture by Dr. Martin Christ, Post-Doctoral Researcher at the University of Erfurt, and Visiting Scholar in the Department of History for Spring 2025. Dr. Christ is the award-winning author of "Biographies of a Reformation: Religious Change and Confessional Coexistence in Upper Lusatia, c. 1520-1635" (Oxford UP, 2022), and recently defended his Habilitation, "The Power of the Dead: Burials and Cemeteries in London and Munich, c. 1550-1870."
This talk explores the social, political and religious significance of funerals and cemeteries in early modern Europe, revealing how the dead continued to shape urban life long after burial.
- Discover how burials influenced religious and social identity
- Explore funeral practices in two major European cities
- Engage in discussion on the lasting power of the dead
Don’t miss this fascinating look at how funerary traditions shaped history!
True Justice: Bryan Stevenson's Fight for Equality
Documentary Screening
Date: February 13, 2025
Time: 6–9 p.m.
Location: 112 Center for Arts - Screening Room
Join us for a screening of HBO's award-winning 2019 documentary, "True Justice: Bryan Stevenson's Fight for Equality." This powerful film highlights the life and work of Bryan Stevenson, founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, who has spent over four decades fighting for the rights of the poor, the incarcerated, and the condemned while challenging racial injustice in the criminal justice system.
The screening will be followed by a thought-provoking discussion moderated by Dr. Veronica Horowitz, from the Department of Sociology and Criminology. Panelists include:
- Dr. Carole Emberton | Department of History
- Dr. Joshua Coene | School of Law
- Dr. Jarrett Drake | Department of African American Studies
Scholars@Hallwalls: Kellen Hoxworth
Overlapping Africas on the African Stage
Date: Friday, January 31, 2025
Time: 4 p.m.
Location: Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center (341 Delaware Avenue, Buffalo, NY 14202)
Admission: Free and open to the public
Join us for an engaging talk by Kellen Hoxworth, exploring the complex ways African American theatremakers have dramatized Africa and Africans in contemporary theatre. From depictions of "authentic ancestors" to cautionary figures, these portrayals offer key insights into the formation of African American identity and its political and cultural affiliations with Africa and the global diaspora.
Don’t miss this thought-provoking exploration of identity, performance, and cross-cultural connections.
The Largest Sociological Convergence of the Atlantic in West Africa and the Making of Global Popular Music Culture: WWII’s Legacy
Date: December 4, 2024
Time: 10–10:50 a.m.
Place: 114 Hochstetter Hall
Join Chijioke Ngobili as he draws on the most transformative conflict in human history-the Second World War-to explores the roots and rise of Africa's global legacy in the evolution of modern popular music heritage and culture that include today's trendy and topical "Afrobeats."
Il Moro -- The Moor
Live screening and discussion with Director Daphne Di Cinto
Date: Thursday, November 21, 2024
Time: 5 p.m.
Place: TBD
A short film about the untold story of Alessandro de’Medici, the first man of African descent to become a head of state in Renaissance Europe. The film aims to speak of the situations that Black Europeans are still experiencing today and to celebrate today's Afro-European community in the history of the continent.
Assailed at Home; Champions Abroad: The ACNM’s Push for Maternal Healthcare Advancements in Nigeria
The 8th Annual NLM Michael E. DeBakey Lecture in the History of Medicine.
Date: Thursday, November 21, 2024
Time: 2–3:30 p.m.
Place: Online
An online lecture with Associate Professor Ogechukwu Williams, PhD, Department of History, that examines the American College of Nurse Midwives’ maternal and reproductive health advocacy work in Nigeria during the 1980s and 1990s while fighting for autonomy, recognition, and better maternal welfare policies at home in the U.S.
Harnessing the Power: Black Women and Progressive Reform in the West
Date: November 1, 2024
Time: 3 p.m.
Place: 532 Park Hall
The History department presents a talk by Elizabeth Garner Masarik, UB alumna and Assistant Professor at SUNY Brockport and author of "The Sentimental State."
How to Live in a Van and Trespass Across America
Ken Ilgunas
A talk with author and UB alum Ken Ilginas on writing, advocacy and adventure.
Date: October 30, 2024
Time: 1 p.m.
Place: 107 Capen Hall
Ken Ilgunas has been an indebted college grad, a trend-setting van dweller, an Alaskan park ranger, a long-distance trespasser and an America's foremost advocate for "the right to roam." He will talk about his years at UB and how they inspired him to live a life of advocacy and adventure.
Muslim Women and the Black Freedom Movement
Dr. Jamillah Karim
Date: October 23, 2024
Time: 2–3:30 p.m.
Place: 210 Student Union, North Campus
Join Dr. Jamillah Karim for an eye-opening exploration of Muslim women's powerful role in the Black Freedom Movement, blending storytelling, academic insight and family history. Discover how American Muslim women shaped the movement and how Islam emerged as a Black liberation faith in America.
History of Lily Dale
Spiritualism's Place
Date: October 18, 2024
Time: 4 p.m.
Place: Fitz Books and Waffles | 433 Ellicott St, Buffalo, NY 14203
In Spiritualism's Place, four friends and scholars who produce the acclaimed Dig: A History Podcast, share their curiosity and enthusiasm for uncovering stories from the past as they explore the history of Lily Dale. Located in western New York State, the world's largest center for Spiritualism was founded in 1879. Lily Dale has been a home for Spiritualists attempting to make contact with the dead, as well as a gathering place for reformers, a refuge for seekers looking for alternatives to established paths of knowledge, and a target for skeptics.
This intimate history of Lily Dale reveals the role that this fascinating place has played within the history of Spiritualism, as well as within the development of the women's suffrage and temperance movements, and the world of New Age religion. As an intentional community devoted to Spiritualist beliefs and practices, Lily Dale brings together multiple strands in the social and religious history of New York and the United States over the past 150 years: feminism, social reform, utopianism, new religious movements, and cultural appropriation.
Phi Alpha Theta (PAT) History Honor Society Fall Mixer
Date: October 11, 2024
Time: 2-4 p.m.
Place: Paula T. Agrusa Plaza (firepit outside Park Hall)
Phi Alpha Theta (PAT): The History Honor Society invites undergraduate and graduate students to join the Fall Mixer at the firepit in Paula’s Plaza. Come and meet fellow history majors, minors, and graduate students for a fall afternoon social gathering. Bring your history curious friends. There will be snacks—and fire!
For more information about the Fall Mixer, please contact PAT faculty advisor Dr. Cari Casteel (caricast@buffalo.edu).
To learn more about Phi Alpha Theta, please visit the UB Phi Alpha Theta webpage.
Alumni Lifelong Learning Program: “U.S. and International Security in an Age of Uncertainty"
UB History alumnus Vice-Admiral Robert B. Murrett, BA '75
Date: September 25, 2024
Time: 12-1 p.m.
Place: Zoom
Join in for a review of U.S., NATO and other allies' security challenges around the world, with emphasis on Eastern Europe, the Middle East and East Asia/Pacific.
This session will include assessment of current diplomatic, military, humanitarian and economic implications of engagement overseas. Strategic considerations will be evaluated, as well as discussion of likely outcomes in the year ahead.
Robert recommends reviewing his four key references ahead of this webinar if you so choose:
About Robert B. Murrett
Robert B. Murrett, BA '75, is a Professor of Practice on the faculty of the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, and serves as the Deputy Director of the Institute for Security Policy and Law at the University. He is also on the adjunct staff of the RAND Corporation and the Institute for Defense Analyses, and chairs the MITRE Intelligence Advisory Committee. He serves as a member of the Advisory Board for the Institute for Veterans and Military Families at SU, the Board of the National Intelligence University Foundation, and is responsible for a series of ongoing research projects between the University and the Syracuse Veterans Administration Medical Center.
Previously, Murrett was a career intelligence officer in the U.S. Navy, serving in assignments throughout the Pacific, Europe, and the Middle East through his thirty-four years of duty, retiring in the grade of Vice Admiral. His duty stations included service as Operational Intelligence Officer for the U.S. Pacific Fleet, Assistant Naval Attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Oslo, Norway, senior intelligence officer for the U.S. Second Fleet and NATO Striking Fleet Atlantic, and Director for Intelligence, U.S. Joint Forces Command. For his last ten years on active duty, he served as Vice Director for Intelligence, U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Director of Naval Intelligence, and Director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA).
The Buffalo Humanities Festival
Date: September 20-21, 2024
Time: 7 p.m. on Friday, 9:30 a.m. on Saturday
Place: Asbury Hall on Friday, The Central Library (1 Lafayette Square) on Saturday
This year, the theme of the Festival is “Hauntings” and will be launched at Asbury Hall with a reading and talk by Pulitzer Prize Finalist Percival Everett about his novel “James” (a reframing of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn from “Jim’s” point of view). Percival Everett’s novel Erasure is the basis for the 2024 Oscar award winning film American Fiction.
For more information visit the UB Humanities Institute website.
There is a free shuttle from the CFA on Friday for students, and to the Festival on Saturday. Please register for a free ticket and/or a seat on the shuttle on the Buffalo Humanities Festival website.
Welcome Back Movie Night
Date: September 18, 2024
Time: 7 p.m.
Place: 532 Park Hall
Come out and meet other History students, enjoy some free snacks, and watch a classic film.
This event is open to all History students. The Department of History will provide drinks and light refreshments, but students can bring their own.
"Managing Rivers and Traversing Oceans: New Perspectives on International Exchange and Environmental Change in Asia"
UB PhD Alumni Panel
Date: September 13, 2024
Time: 12-1 p.m.
Place: 280 Park Hall
The Asia Research Institute and Asian Studies Program, along with the Department of History, are pleased to welcome back to campus two UB alumni to discuss their recently published monographs.
Dr. Phillip Guingona will present his work on “China and the Philippines: A Connected History, c. 1900–50” (Cambridge University Press 2023), and Dr. Xiangli Ding will discuss his recent book, “Hydropower Nation: Dams, Energy, and Political Changes in Twentieth-Century China” (Cambridge University Press 2024).
Phillip Guingona (UB PhD 2015) is an assistant professor in the Department of History, Politics, and Law at Nazareth University. Xiangli Ding (UB PhD 2018) is an associate professor in the Department of History, Philosophy and the Social Sciences at Rhode Island School of Design.
Dr. Philip K. Stern, "Empire, Incorporated: The Corporations That Built British Colonialism"
Date: September 6, 2024
Time: 3-5 p.m.
Place: 509 O'Brian Hall
More information and registration TBA soon!
Dr. Antoine Johnson, “More than Pushing Pills: Black AIDS Activism in the Bay Area”
Date: April 24, 2024
Time: 12:00 - 1:30 PM
Place: Park 545
More information and registration TBA soon!
Inaugural Francis J. and Shirley A. Wozniak Lecture
Professor David Nirenberg, the Director and Leon Levy Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University
Date: April 5, 2024
Time: 3:00-5:00
Place: Capen Hall 107
Prof. David Nirenberg will lecture in April 2024. The Institute he directs is a renowned center of historical research and intellectual inquiry, where some UB faculty have spent productive research leaves. Further, Professor Nirenberg is a gifted and prolific historian of the relations of Jews, Christians, and Muslims in medieval Europe and the Mediterranean region. Through his historical inquiry, he engages topics that resonate in our contemporary times, such as racism, anti-Semitism, and Christian-Muslim relations.
More information TBA soon!
Feminist Research Alliance Workshop: Robin Mitchell, "Suzanne Simon Baptiste Louverture: Microbiography and Black Women's Lves"
Sponsored by UB Gender Institute
Date: March 14, 2024
Time: 12:00 PM
Place: Zoom
For more information and registration visit the Feminist Research Alliance Workshop webpage.
Feminist Research Alliance Workshop: Pablo Mitchell, "Our Dimness Brightened in Her Smile: Sex, Race, and Latinidad in US Higher Education, 1900-1920"
Sponsored by the UB Gender Institute
Date: February 21, 2024
Time: 12:00 PM
Place: Zoom
For more information and registration visit the Feminist Research Alliance Workshop webpage.
32nd Annual Milton Plesur Graduate History Conference
Date: March 9, 2023
Place: O'Brian Hall, UB North Campus
The Graduate History Association (GHA) of the University at Buffalo is hosting the 32nd Annual Milton Plesur Graduate History Conference, to be held at the University at Buffalo on Saturday, March 9, 2024. Co-sponsored by the History Department, the Center for Disability Studies, and the Mellon foundation, this conference provides a forum for graduate students from across North America to share their research with fellow students and faculty members from a variety of fields, including
- History, Political Science, Anthropology, Classics, English, Comparative Literature,
- American Studies, Caribbean Studies, Africana Studies, Geography, Gender Studies,
- Disability Studies, Religious Studies, and Urban Studies.
More information TBA soon!
Events Calendar
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