Events and Ongoing Activities
Undergraduate Research Symposium
Registration Closes April 11, 2022
UO Common Reading is offering a $500 prize to one student who focuses on Braiding Sweetgrass in their research or presentation! The Undergraduate Research Symposium is celebrating 12 years of supporting students presenting their research and creative work, thus helping them achieve their academic and career goals. Research is for students from every major.
Participation in the Undergraduate Research Symposium empowers undergraduates to share their ideas, discoveries, and artistic work with the campus and the local community. The event traditionally takes place in the EMU in the style of an academic conference and includes all types of academic research, allowing you to present your work through a poster, oral presentation, data story, or in a performance.
Visit the website to learn more: https://undergradsymposium.uoregon.edu
Lummi Nation Totem Pole Journey: May 5-8
The University of Oregon welcomes the Totem Pole Journey, the intertribal nonprofit organization Se’Si’Le, and The Natural History Museum’s Whale People exhibit to campus for a series of events May 5th through 8th, 2022.
The Totem Pole Journey is led by members of Lummi Nation and the House of Tears Carvers. The 2022 totem pole journey is the latest in a dozen journeys conducted over the past 20 years. The 2022 journey builds upon, strengthens, and reaffirms the growing, Indigenous-led environmental movement across the Pacific Northwest that began with a successful campaign to oppose proposed fossil fuels projects in the region.
Black Lives Celebration & Justice
The “Black Lives: Celebration and Justice” gallery presents some of the research occurring on campus of various topics surrounding Black lives.
Exploring the intersection of racism and transportation, its legacy, and what it means moving forward as future transportation planners and community members.
Past Events
Author's Talk With Robin Wall Kimmerer
January 24, 2022
Join Common Reading and author Robin Wall Kimmerer as she gives a virtual talk on the 2021/22 AY selection, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants.
As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a citizen of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces plants and animals as our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants, Kimmerer brings these two lenses of knowledge together through her memoir of living in the natural world and practicing heart-centered science.
Drawing on her life as an Indigenous scientist, a mother, and a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings offer us gifts and lessons, even if we’ve forgotten how to hear their voices. In a rich braid of reflections that range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that threaten its flourishing today, she circles toward a central argument: that the awakening of a wider ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world.
Watch the event: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eo8DDqP0C5U
A Conversation with Author Kimberly Johnson
Thursday, February 11 at 4:00pm to 5:20pm
Virtual Event Zoom Link: https://uoregon.zoom.us/j/92912096755
You will be asked to sign in with your Zoom ID.
Author Kimberly Johnson discusses favorite characters, themes, and writing process for her debut novel, THIS IS MY AMERICA, an unflinching yet uplifting story that explores the racist injustices in the American justice system. Session includes Q/A opportunity from the audience to engage with the author.
Kimberly Johnson is currently the UO Assistant Vice Provost for Academic Advising as well as a UO alum. Her book, This is My America is the featured selection of UO Common Reading during Winter 2021.
Facilitator: Doneka Scott, Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education and Student Success.
Nikole Hannah-Jones on "1619 and the Legacy That Built a Nation"
Friday, February 19 at 4:30pm to 6:00pm Virtual Event
REGISTER NOW: https://sojc.link/1619project
As the lead writer for New York Times Magazine’s “The 1619 Project,” a major viral multimedia initiative observing the 400th anniversary of the first African slaves arriving in America, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones explores the lasting legacy of Black enslavement on the nation—specifically, how Black Americans pushed for the democracy we have today.
About the Event
This event is co-sponsored by the University of Oregon’s School of Journalism and Communication, the Office of the President, Office of the Provost, Division of Equity and Inclusion, the UO Common Reading, the UO Student Services and Enrollment Management, and the Lyllye Reynolds-Parker Black Cultural Center. The annual UO School of Journalism and Communication Ruhl Lecture brings the most influential voices in mass communication to campus.
In Conversation with Michelle Obama
Tuesday, November 9, 2021
Through its Common Reading Program, the University of Oregon has been invited to attend Michelle Obama’s only higher education appearance of the year where she will discuss her memoir, “Becoming.”
The discussion will focus on themes from Obama’s book and include topics about owning your story, finding your voice, unseen history, support systems, and challenges of first-generation and minority students.
With the support of UO President Michael H. Schill, the Division of Undergraduate Education and Student Success, and the Oregon Humanities Center’s Endowment for Public Outreach in the Arts, Sciences, and Humanities, the Common Reading Program will send one student representative to attend the event in Washington, D.C. The student also will have the unique opportunity to ask the former first lady a question, on behalf of the UO.
Registration details can be found in the UO Events calendar listing.