History

Dr. H. Nicholas Hamner Lecture

The Department of History at Western Michigan University annually invites an esteemed senior scholar to give a public lecture, named for, and generously endowed by the late Professor Emeritus Dr. H. Nicholas Hamner. The event is an opportunity to make visible the discipline of history within the campus and the larger community by having a distinguished scholar address a theme of broad interest.

2023 Hamner Lecture

October 12, 2023 - Dr. Benjamin Carp (Brooklyn College)

"American Creation, American Destruction: The 250th Anniversary of the Boston Tea Party and 1776"

Past Hamner Lectures

Dr. Edward Wang (Rowan University) "Was 1492 a turning Point in World History? An Analysis in Historiography"

Dr. Juan Cole (University of Michigan) "The Saudi Crisis in the Contemporary Middle East" October 10, 2019

Dr. Douglas D. Scott (Colorado Mesa University) "The Role of Archaeology in Human Rights and Forensic Science: Gathering Evidence of Modern War Crimes" October 4, 2018

Nicolette Hahn Niman "The Animals We Eat, from Prehistory to Modernity" October 12, 2017

Dr. John R. MacNeill (Georgetown University) "Revolutionary Mosquitoes" (Oct. 6, 2016)

Dr. Julie Buckler (Harvard University) "Post-Soviet Memorials and Ruins: A Poetics" (Dec. 7, 2015)

Dr. Ian Morris (Stanford University) "War, Peace, and Empire: A Paradoxical History?" (Oct. 23, 2014)

Dr. Peter Kolchin (University of Delaware) "U. S. Emancipation in Historical and Comparative Perspective" (March 31, 2014)

Samuel Edgerton (Williams College) "Sacred Violence: When even Artists Celebrated the Death Penalty" (Oct. 4, 2012)

Dr. Felipe Fernandez-Armesto (Notre Dame University--William P. Reynolds Professor of History) "Change: Why It Happens, Why It Accelerates, and How Change Itself May Change" (March 12, 2012)

Dr. David Blight (Yale University—Class of 1954 Professor of American History) "'Thrilling but Sad': Bruce Catton's Civil War Centennial in Retrospect" (March 22, 2011)

Dr. Carol Gluck (Columbia University—George Sansom Professor of History) "Past Obsessions: World War II in Japanese History and Memory" (March 18, 2010)

Dr. Ronnie Po-chia Hsia (Pennsylvania State University—Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of History) "Elective Affinities: The Jesuits and China" (March 16, 2009)