Sally A. Miller Lecture
The Sally A. Miller Lecture features a distinguished scholar of the humanities each year and is the Center's flagship outreach progam. Visiting scholars speak on European or Global topics in history and related disciplines. Joseph G. and Sally A. Miller endowed the lecture series in 1998 as part of the Sally A. Miller Humanities Center within the Department of History.
2025 Miller Lecture
How to Tame an Empire: Diamonds, Love Songs, and Misinformation in the Brazilian Backlands
April 10, 2025 at 5:30 pm in Simmons Hall Auditorium
Past Miller Lectures
Prof. Kira Thurman, University of Michigan (2024)
“Singing like Germans: Black Musicians in the Land of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms”
Prof. Karen Spierling, Denison University (2023)
“Scandal in the Reformation: How to Shock your Neighbor in 16th-century Geneva”
Prof. Gregg Mitman, University of Wisconsin (2022)
“Empire of Rubber: Scenes from Firestone’s Scramble for Land and Power in Liberia”
Prof. Rachel Chrastil, Xavier University (2020)
"How to Be Childless: A History and Philosophy of Life Without Children"
Prof. Molly Warsh, University of Pittsburgh (2019)
"Empire Beneath the Waves: Pearls and the Violence and Beauty of the Early America”
Prof. Ethan Katz, University of Cincinnati (2018)
"Empathy, Coexistence, and Identity Politics in Trump's America: What Can We Learn from the Shared History of Jews and Muslims in France?"
Prof. Geoff Eley, University of Michigan (2017)
“Fascism Then and Now”
Prof. Lester Tomé, Smith College (2016)
”Black-and-White Pas de Deux: Performances of Racial Democracy and Spectacles of Interracial Eros in the National Ballet of Cuba”
Prof. Abosede George, Barnard College (2015)
“Girl Saving Projects and the Conditions of Universalism in Colonial Nigeria and the Present”
Prof. Alice Conklin, Ohio State University (2014)
“French Colonial Racism and the Display of ‘Primitive’ Artifacts in Interwar Paris”
Prof. Leonard Smith, Oberlin College (2013)
“Rethinking Sovereignty at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919”
Prof. Ali Ahmida, University of New England (2012)
”Libya from Dictatorship to Revolution: A Historical and Comparative View”
Prof. Frances Hasso, Duke University (2011)
“The Governance Bargain between Women and States in the Middle East”
Prof. Roger T. Ames, University of Hawai'i (2010)
“Confucian China in a Changing World Order”
Mary Louise Pratt, New York University (2009)
“Language and Globalization: Toward a Geolinguistic Imagination”
Prof. Geoffrey Parker, Ohio State University (2008)
“Climate and Catastrophe: The World Crisis of the 17th Century”
Prof. Juan Cole, University of Michigan (2007)
“Napoleon in Egypt, Bush in Iraq: The Sorrows of Liberal Empire"
Prof. J.R. McNeill, Georgetown University (2006)
“Empires of Energy”
Prof. Erik Midelfort, University of Virginia (2005)
“Witchcraft”
Prof. Ilan Pappe, University of Haifa (2004)
“Myths of Israel”
Prof. Marianna Torgovnick, Duke University (2003)
“Memory and the Holocaust in Mass Culture”
David Denby, The New Yorker (2002)
“The Western Canon in a Time of Terror
Prof. Edward Muir, Northwestern University (2001)
“Manners and Civility”
Prof. Robert Darnton, Princeton University (2000)
“Poetry and Police”
Prof. William McNeill, University of Chicago (1999)
“The West and the World”