All events are in Levis Faculty Center Room 210 unless otherwise noted.
Thursday, March 5th, 2026
4:30-5:30 pm – Keynote by Dr. Erik McDuffie
Introduced by Dr. Antoinette Burton, Professor of History and Director of the Humanities Research Institute
5:30-7:00 pm – Opening Reception
Opening Remarks by Dr. Adrian Burgos, Professor of History and Department Chair
Friday, March 6, 2026
8:30 am – Light Breakfast for Symposium Registrants
9:30-11:00 am – Guided Tour of Spurlock Museum of World Cultures
Conveniently located next door to the Levis Faculty Center at 600 S. Gregory St.
11:15-12:20pm – Organizing Gender and Sexuality: Labor, Activism, and Collective Power
Moderated by Suzanne Basson, Musicology Ph.D. Candidate
- * Mosunmola R. Ogunolaji, University of Florida – “200 African Women Want to be Scunthorpe Nurses”: Nigerians’ Pathway to Nursing Training in Postwar Britain, 1940-1960″
- Lauren Palmieri, Rice University – “Between National and Social Oppression: Change and Continuity in West Bank Women’s Organizing, 1955-1987”
- K. Stawasz, Rutgers University – “Organizing Sexuality in Silicon Valley: Employment Activism in High Tech Gays”
- Chelsea Birchmier, University of Illinois – “Class, Race, and Gender Struggles: Revisiting Black Women’s Roles from Figbht for $15 Fast-Food Workers to Ferguson Rebels”
12:20-1:45 pm – Lunch for Symposium Registrants and Guests of the History Department
2:00-3:20 pm – Governing Gender and Sexuality: State Control of Gendered Labor
Moderated by Tabitha Cochran, History PhD. Candidate
- Cathryn Perini, University of Virginia – “State v. Mann: Enslaved Women, the Law, and Violence in Slave Hiring”
- Tobin Gold, Indiana University Bloomington, “Late Victorian London’s “Sex Workplaces”: Interpreting Contested Intimate Labor Contexts”
- Yee Ting Leong, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor – “Endangered Masculinity, and “Sexual Jealousy” Murders Among Tamil Migrant Laborers on the Plantations of British Malaya, 1900-1940
- Yunuo Li, University of Wyoming – “Parallel Powers: Gender and Environmental 3:30 – 4:30pm – Keynote by Dr. Arunima DattaGovernance in Colonial Indian Tea Plantations
3:30 – 4:30pm – Keynote by Dr. Arunima Datta
Introduced by Dr. Dana Rabin, Professor of History and Interim Head of Anthropology
4:30-6:30pm – Reception for Symposium Registrants and Guests of the History Department
Remarks by Dr. Marc Hertzman, Professor of History and Director of Graduate Studies
Saturday, March 7, 2026
8:30 am – Light Breakfast for Symposium Registrants
Scholarship Out Loud Lightning Session
Three University of Illinois graduate students will present their research in a short five minute presentation and then receive feedback from the audience. This session is sponsored by the Humanities Research Institute’s Graduate Advisory Committee.
9:30-10:40 am – The Work of Care: Reproduction, Intimacy, and Survival
Moderated by Kathleen McGowan, Musicology Ph.D. Candidate
- Courtney Weis, Florida International University – “Menses as Labor: Early Modern Medical Discourse Around Menstruation in the Spanish Atlantic”
- Wesley Sampias, Johns Hopkins University – “Only You Can Prevent Plague Infection: Women and the Labor of Household Hygiene as Public Health”
- Amisha Gopee, New York University – “Making the Post-Colonial ‘Coolie’ Woman: The Backbone of New York’s Informal Care Economy”
- Mariana Marques Pais Pinto, University of Illinois – “From Care to Commerce: Women, Labor and Leadership in Brazil-Arab Relations”
10:55 am -12:05 pm – Expertise at Work: Gendered Bodies in Transnational Contexts
Moderated by Reanne Zheng, History Ph.D. Candidate
- Esther Simon, University of Illinois – “Venus & The Lady Musician: Woman-Shaped Objects Made of and Making Knowledge and Gender in the Eighteenth Century”
- Ashley Morales, Columbia University, “Information as Power: Puerto Rican Women Librarians Rebuilding the Bronx, 1968-1979”
- Miguel Chavez, Northwestern University – “The Making of a Desirable Body: Gendered Labor, Lay Expertise, and Technologies of Embodiment in the Transnational World of Lucha Libre”
- Ritu Ghosh, University of Illinois Chicago, “After all, who will do this work for free?:” Regulating Outsourced Reproductive Labor in Contemporary India”
12:05 – Lunch for Panelists, Moderators, Keynote Speakers