
Recent History Department Events
This page highlights some of our previous events in the Department of History. To see our upcoming events, please visit this page.
Recent Events
2025 College of Liberal Arts Outstanding Senior Awards
Department of History graduating senior Grace Evanoski (above) was recently presented with the 2025 College of Liberal Arts Outstanding Senior Award. The Awards event was held in the East & West Lounges at the Purdue Memorial Union on April 11, 2025. Congratulations, Grace!
Grace Evanoski (right), pictured with Executive Associate Dean Joel Ebarb and Department of History Director of Undergraduate Studies Yvonne Pitts.
See all of the CLA Outstanding Seniors at this link.
History on Tap
April 29, 2025
Thieme and Wagner Brewery
652 Main St, Lafayette, IN 47901
The History on Tap event for April will be held at Thieme and Wagner Brewery on Tuesday, April 29th, at 7:00 PM. This is the final History on Tap of the semester.
Secret Permenter, a first year PhD student, will deliver a presentation titled "Athleticism and Activism: The Life and Legacy of Albert Berg."
History Honors Forum
April 22, 2025
LWSN 1142
5:00-7:00 PM
The culminating event in the History Honors Program is the annual Forum held every April. At the Forum, Honors students present their original research to an audience of faculty, family and friends, and other guests.
Join us at the 2025 History Honors Forum. The event is free and open to the public. You can download the event flyer at this link. The following students will be giving presentations:
Elijah Ahrens
“Buccaneers and Slavery: Port Royal and Piracy Acting as a Space of Freedom”
Becka Bash
“The Church Committee: How the CIA responded to Congressional Investigation in the Post-Watergate Era”
Jael Brown
“Global Perception and Interpretation of the 1876-1878 Bulgarian Independence Movement”
Jiahui Chen
“Interpreting Hitler: Nazism Perceived by British Union of Fascists, 1932-1939”
Allyson Dinwiddie
“The Role of 12th Century Greek Voices in Legitimizing Norman Sicilian Kingship”
Grace Evanoski
“Natural Life vs. Legal Life: An Examination of Abortion & Perceptions of Life in the Womb in the Nineteenth Century”
Elizabeth Lazar
“Dancing Towards Demise: Working-Class Leisure and Middle-Class Reform in Early 20th Century American Dance Halls”
Michael Strunk
“Cum Terraemotus Essent: Holy Men and the Development of Imperial Earthquake Response”
Johari Tello
“Resistance and Influence: Black Eugenics and Public Health Education in the Early to Mid-20th”
Nah'Shon Williams
“Echoes of Resilience: The Evolution of Soul and R&B as Social Consciousness during the Civil Rights and Black Power Eras”
CAPT Seminar Series
Dr. Andrew Bellisari is an assistant professor in the Department of History at Purdue University. He specializes in the history of decolonization in North Africa and Southeast Asia and his research addresses questions related to warfare, post-colonial state- and nation-building, and civil society. Previously, he was a founding faculty member at Fulbright University Vietnam in Ho Chi Minh City and a Vietnam Program Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School.
Purdue Human Rights Program
Via Zoom
3:00-4:15 PM
Dr. Chielo Eze
Presented as part of the Purdue Human Rights Program
The Human Rights Lab welcomes Dr. Chielo Eze (PhD from Purdue University; MFA). Dr. Eze will present, “Justice as a Spiritual Quest: Human Rights in the African Imagination” on Thursday , March 27th, at 3pm on Zoom.
Dr. Eze is Director and Professor of Africana Studies at Carleton College, author of Justice and Human Rights in the African Imagination: We, Too, Are Humans.
About the talk: Resting on Walter Benjamin’s conception of the spiritual elements of class struggle, and inspired by Nelson Mandela’s philosophy, Dr. Eze will suggest alternative ways of engaging human rights today. Equally important is Michael Ignatieff’s notion of ordinary virtues of tolerance, forgiveness, resilience, and trust.
History on Tap

10th Biennial Purdue History Graduate Student Association Conference
at Purdue University in West Lafayette

This conference is open to interested attendees, with content focused on topics of interest to graduate students and history majors, including those in the undergraduate History Honors program. Graduate students from universities outside of Purdue are welcome to attend!
Learn more and register for the 2025 HGSA Conference at this link.
Download the complete Conference Schedule as a PDF.
Guest Speaker: Too Black

What does it mean to conquer a people and then call said conquest a society? How does a fabricated society built upon conquest legitimise its actions? It must launder as a means to make its “grimey” activity appear clean. When opposition inevitably arises within the conquered, their rage must be subsumed by the State to further clean the oppression. Laundering Black Rage chronicles the rise of the capitalist State while examining the historical dillution of Black Rage. It demonstrates how the maintenance of capitalism increasingly requires the manufactured consent of the conquered.
Much has been made in international headlines about scandals of high-profile Black Lives Matter leaders following the George Floyd protests but what if the scandals were just gross expressions of a much more ingrained process of counterinsurgency? How was the contagious Black Rage provoked by the police officer's knee on a poor Black man's neck converted into a benign commodity that could be massively marketed by Disney? How does the Black Rage embroiled in the global south become justification for death making sanctions and regime change? Laundering Black Rage reaches behind the front to trace the criminal origins.
The spaces we occupy, the cities we breathe all bribe us with a lifestyle that compels us to carry on the laundering of conquest. For many, survival is dependent upon it. By examining how the state-fabricated formations of labour (race, class, gender) remain organised even when the conquered populations are clearly enraged, we hope to arrive at an analysis to help reverse the process.
Too Black is a poet, scholar, organizer and filmmaker who blends critical analysis with biting sarcasm. He has headlined various stages and events including the historic Nuyorican Poets Café in New York City, Princeton University, and Johannesburg Theater in South Africa. His words have been published in online publications such as Black Agenda Report, Left Voice, Hammer and Hope and Hood Communist. He is currently the host of the Black Myths Podcast, a podcast debunking the BS said about Black people. Lastly, he the co-director of the award-winning documentary film The Pendleton 2: They Stood Up.
Guest Speaker: Dr. Holly A. Crocker
February 26, 2025
4:30 PM, WALC 2051
Feminist Subjectivity, Women's Mastery, and Chaucer's Wife of Bath
Join us for snacks and a lecture with Dr. Holly A. Crocker, Carolina Distinguished Professor of English at the University of South Carolina. Series supported by: Department of English, Department of History, School of Languages and Cultures, School of Interdisciplinary Studies, and Purdue Libraries.
Download the event flyer at this link.
History on Tap

Fighting for Freedom Within the U.S. Army

Learning to Code: From Information Theory to French Theory (2023)
Time: 5:30 - 7:00 PM
Krannert Auditorium, Room 140

American Political History Conference (2022)
The Past, Present, and Future of American Democracy
At a moment when democracy is under assault in the U.S. and abroad, and when grassroots activism is rapidly and radically altering the terms of political debate, U.S. political history has been thriving, both inside the academy and in the wider world of activism, journalism, and politics. This conference aimed to bring together cutting-edge scholarship with new forms of public engagement to use historical research and thinking to understand and address twenty-first century political challenges. This event brought political historians into conversation with one another and the broader public and grapple with the idea of what it means to study American political history. It created opportunities to build networks, share new research, debate ideas, think about the implications of this research in our contemporary setting, and discuss strategies for public engagement. This conference aimed to encourage expansive reassessments of the parameters of American political history and the ways in which we disseminate historical scholarship within and outside the academy.
This conference was held in person, but there were options to participate virtually, including a Saturday Keynote Lunch Conversation on “Reproductive Rights and Politics,” with Gillian Frank, Jennifer Holland, Amrita Chakrabarti Myers, and Mary Ziegler.
A copy of the program can be found here.
Women in the White House (2018)
Former First Lady Laura Bush and daughters Barbara and Jenna visited Purdue University's Elliott Hall of Music on Oct. 18, 2018 for the Sears Lecture Series event, "Women in the White House and Beyond." The Bush women discussed life in politics and their advocacy since President George W. Bush left the White House with associate professor of history Kathryn Brownell. Presented by College of Liberal Arts and Department of History.