Research Colloquia

The Medical and Healthcare Humanities Colloquium brings together faculty from across campus to discuss their original research at the intersection of medicine and the humanities/arts. Medical humanities aims to provide a deeper understanding of the human experience of health and illness, enhance empathy and compassion in healthcare professionals, and promote critical thinking about ethical issues in medicine. It also seeks to bridge the gap between the scientific and humanistic aspects of healthcare, fostering a more holistic approach to patient care.

Exciting research from a kaleidoscope of perspectives and methods relating to the American West is underway across the humanities at OU. The rich interdisciplinary work is one of the University’s strengths, bolstered by a wealth of collections and centers across campus and the press. Many OU faculty and graduate students focusing on cultural production, histories of dispossession, and multi-cultural identities in the American West are pushing new conversations in the field, whether analyzing historical or contemporary material. This colloquium enables contributors to share work in progress for that project in addition to their own ongoing scholarship. Through an array of presentations crossing the Dodge Family College of Arts and Sciences and the Weitzenhoffer College of the Fine Arts and disciplines from history, English, anthropology, film and media studies along with art history, a deeper and broader sense of the methodological approaches and stakes of writing about the American West today will become clarified.

Colloquium Schedule

Wed 9/17 – Session 1 – Welcome Reception

Wed 9/24 – Session 2 - Anne Hyde (History), “Hunters, Citizens, and Soldiers: Biographies of Indian Killers in North America, 1740-1940”

Wed 10/1 – Session 3 – Emily C. Burns (Art History), “Trade Networks and Embedded Epistemologies: Northern Plains Beadwork in Paintings of the Pueblos by the Taos Society of Artists”

Wed 10/22 – Session 4 – Ben Folger (History), “A great mass of incompetent men...": Native Health and Settler Physician 'Expertise' in Oklahoma, 1869-1955”

Wed 11/5 – Session 5 – Jonathan Hacker (Art History), “Western Figures”

Wed 11/12 – Session 6 - Kimberly Marshall (Anthropology) “The Expressive Culture of Erasure at the New Idaho State Historical Museum”

Wed 11/19 – Session 7 – Jennifer L. Holland (History), “Making Gods and Special Rights: Anti-Gay Activism and the Mormon Problem, 1993-1994”

Wed 12/3 – Session 8 – Sawyer Young (History), “Mark Makers and Infamous Rascals: Indigenous Women and the Inter-Colonial Invasion of Fur Trade Workscapes in the Trans-Mississippi West, 1764-1847” *winner of 2024 Caroline Schimmel Grant for Women and Gender Non-Conforming Individuals in the American West

Wed 1/28 – Session 9 – Claire Nicholas (Anthropology), “Collections Related to the American West at Sam Noble Museum”

Wed 2/4 – Session 10 – Kathleen Brosnan (History), “Napa Nature: Prohibition, Consumption and Shoddy Wine”

Wed 2/11 – Session 11 – Anthony Gomez III (English), “Fade Into You: Mazzy Star, Chicanx, Surrealism, and Imagined Homelands”

Wed 2/25 – Session 12 - Michael Yebisu (History), “Cultures in Context: Small Chinatowns Across the West Since the 1940s”

Wed 3/4 – Session 13 – Andrew Berzanskis (OU Press), “Book Publishing and the American West, Then and Now”

Wed 3/25 – Session 14 – Kathryn Florence (Art History), “Making the World: Trade and Indigenous Materialities”

Wed 4/1 – Session 15 – Lina Ortega (Western History Collection), “Ribbons and Dirt: Appliqué Patterns and Erosion Control, Two Indian New Deal Programs in Oklahoma”

Wed 4/15 – Session 16 - Joanna Hearne (Film and Media Studies), “Indigenous Timekeeping and Immersive Technologies”

Wed 4/22 – Session 17 – Alison Fields (Art History), “Expanding Borders in John Sayles' Lone Star”

Wed 4/29 – Session 18 - Closing Reception: Celebratory Lunch meeting 12 PM

Creative and Critical Dialogues on the Body is a year-long colloquium series that brings together diverse perspectives to explore the body as a site of inquiry, expression, and resistance. Rooted in the belief that embodiment connects disciplines across the arts, humanities, and sciences, this series invites critical and creative dialogue around the ways bodies are shaped by, and push back against, cultural, social, institutional, and historical scores and scripts. Throughout the year, our events will bring together faculty, students, and community members to engage the body from multiple angles, such as a site of physical performance, as a subject of representation, as a vessel of memory and emotion, and as a politicized terrain. This series fosters collective inquiry into how we live in and through our bodies by engaging areas such as athletics and the performance of race and nationhood, American literature and the construction of the citizen-body, music and sound as forms of artistic composition, and the poetics of expression, voice, and survival.

Colloquium Schedule

Fall 2025

Wed 9/10 - Session 1 - Fall Opening Reception - Copeland Hall, Native Nations Event Center 

Wed 10/8 - Session 2 -  Mel Filmore [NAS], Kristin Bennett [English], Maxwell Yamane [Music], Melle van Duijin [Philosophy]

Wed 11/5 - Session 3 - Anthony Gomez [English], Melinda Chen [WGS], Jermaine Thibodeaux [AAAS], Kaitlin Pericak [ELPS]

Wed 12/3 - Session 4 - Kate Busselle [Drama], Melissa Baughman [Music Education], Alice Fanari [Communication], Queen Djassi [ELPS] 

Spring 2026

Wed 1/28 - Session 5 - Spring Opening Reception - Copeland Hall,  Native Nations Event Center 

Wed 2/25 - Session 6 - Lewis Borck [NAS], Steven Ha [Dance], Amelia Manas [MLLL], Cesar Villatoro [Philosophy]

Wed 3/25 - Session 7 - Ananda Keator [Drama], Alicia Harris [Art History], Schon Duncan [NAS], Molly Leach [Music]

Wed 4/10 - Session 8 - Jake Skeets [English], Maria Kaoutzani [Music], 

Colloquium Schedule

Fall 2025

Wed 9/24 - Dustin Tahmahkera - Performance & Visual Futurities - Copeland Hall Room 342

Wed 10/15 - Kelly Berry - Leveling Up: Indigenous Gaming & Esports Futures - Copeland Hall Room 233

Wed 11/5 - Dane Poolaw - Speaking Futures: Kiowa Tonal Language, sign system & power of knowing more than one way.

Wed 11/12 - Freddie Lewis & Schon Duncan - Film Futures: Choctaw & Cherokee Stories on Screen

Wed 11/19 - Melanie Frye - Planting, Processing, Preparing: Muscogee language & everyday futures.

Mon 11/24 - Josh Clough - Oklahoma Tribal Histories: Teaching futures through place

Spring 2026

Wed 1/21 - Farina King - Boarding School futures: Community driven practices of indigenous wellbeing & sovereignty.

Wed 2/18- Raina Heaton, Racquel Sapien & Robin Minthorne - Nengiokalhma Ihennenga: Mapping enenlhet ancestral places.

Wed 3/18 - Laura Harjo - Mvskoke Futurity: Emergence geographies & the politics of return.

Wed 4/15 - Lewis Borck, Yve Chavez, Alicia Harris & Brian Burkhart - Archaeologies of resistance & philosophical futures.

The Francophone World Workshop is an intellectual community and colloquium series that unties faculty and staff from across campus through the shared study of the Francophone World. Anyone with interest in these topics is welcome to attend!

Colloquium Schedule Comming Soon