Surveying the visual iconography of mental illness throughout the history of art often reveals a number of reoccurring and prevalent stereotypes, replete with stigma, shame, and misunderstanding. Looking to key examples from contemporary art, such as Anna Schuleit Haber’s installation Bloom (2003) and the Faces of Mental Health Recovery public art project (2014), shows that art has the power to reclaim traumatic and harmful pictorial narratives of mental illness, transforming past portrayals or sites of pain into powerful spaces of hope and belonging. Haber’s installation in a mental health ho ..read more

This will be an online discussion with Dr. Alexandra Kelly for her new book "Consuming Ivory: Mercantile Legacies of East Africa & New England." She will be joined by Dr. Adam Blackler and Dr. Melissa Morris to answer questions and discuss her book.   The economic prosperity of two nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century New England towns rested on factories that manufactured piano keys, billiard balls, combs, and other items made of ivory imported from East Africa. Yet while towns like Ivoryton and Deep River, Connecticut, thrived, the African ivory trade left in its wake massive hum ..read more

There is a sense that WWII represented a seminal moment in racial thought and that the realization of the Holocaust was transformative in the role of race-thinking by state agencies and popular institutions, particularly in the U.S. Dr. Patton's research challenges this assumption, particularly since Black American soldiers went back to a country that held steadfastly to Jim Crow, which included anti-miscegenation laws. Separating race and racism in Germany and in the United States becomes impossible to untangle because they are braided together, and while many biracial German children remaine ..read more

Each year, WIHR welcomes a new cohort of Research Fellows. Chosen through a competitive process, these researchers have demonstrated that they are working on compelling projects that speak to both academic and broader public audiences. In this Think & Drink, we welcome back Research Fellows who participated in the first three cohorts to talk about their ongoing writing and knowledge-making activities. All four panelists are from the Spanish faculty in UW's Modern and Classical Languages Department, which should inspire some interesting conversations and crossovers. Please join us for an en ..read more

If you’ve ever been enthralled by a park ranger’s story during a national historic site guided tour, listened to a docent bring the objects in a museum exhibit to life, watched the excitement on a child’s face as a zoo employee explained the care and feeding of a rare primate, or stopped to read an interpretive sign explaining the natural wonders of a spectacular state park, you have experienced heritage interpretation. This installment in the Think and Drink series will look at this uniquely compelling communicative art form. Our panelists will explain the role of interpretation in how we exp ..read more

The Wyoming Institute for Humanities Research strives to be an engine for producing interdisciplinary research in the humanities; a community for faculty, students, and the public; and a model of democratic education fit for our land-grant university. This podcast is part of our Think & Drink series of talks, which are informal conversations by humanities faculty, researchers, and practitioners on a range of topics. 13 May 2021: “Writing Lives: Two Biographers Discuss Their Art and Craft.” Ann McCutchan, who is the author of the newly-published book The Life She Wished to Live: A Biography ..read more

This panel looks at the field of Early American Environmental History. Although Environmental History is a flourishing subfield, the use of an environmental lens has been somewhat reluctantly applied to the Colonial Americas—North, South, and Caribbean. This is despite the fact that the colonization of the New World had monumental environmental consequences which continue to resonate in the present day. Panelists will address trends in the field, how Environmental History can transform our understanding of the Colonial Americas, and why it matters today. Our panelists: Keith Pluymers, PhD, His ..read more

The Wyoming Institute for Humanities Research strives to be an engine for producing interdisciplinary research in the humanities; a community for faculty, students, and the public; and a model of democratic education fit for our land-grant university. This podcast is part of our Think & Drink series of talks, which are informal conversations by humanities faculty, researchers, and practitioners on a range of topics. 08 April 2021: “Three Assassinations of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.” This presentation examines the layered nuances regarding the events, federal intelligence agencies, an ..read more

The Wyoming Institute for Humanities Research strives to be an engine for producing interdisciplinary research in the humanities; a community for faculty, students, and the public; and a model of democratic education fit for our land-grant university. This podcast is part of our Think & Drink series of talks, which are informal conversations by humanities faculty, researchers, and practitioners on a range of topics. 25 March 2021: “Women at Work” This panel considers how women’s labor has been historically devalued and how they have fought to make it more visible; women’s campaigns for imp ..read more

The Wyoming Institute for Humanities Research strives to be an engine for producing interdisciplinary research in the humanities; a community for faculty, students, and the public; and a model of democratic education fit for our land-grant university. This podcast is part of our Think & Drink series of talks, which are informal conversations by humanities faculty, researchers, and practitioners on a range of topics. 11 March 2021: “Women and Politics” This panel is co-sponsored by the UW Program in Gender and Women's Studies, and it will bring together experts on women’s political involvem ..read more