LitPDX seeks to amplify marginalized voices, and welcomes all, their ideas, their events, and their words.

For details regarding specific events please contact the organizers or venues. If you are an organizer or venue and would like to reach out to us please feel free to contact us or submit an event using our submission form. We’d love to hear from you!

history

  1. Events
  2. history

Events Search and Views Navigation

Event Views Navigation

Today

Oregon Historical Society: Rethinking American Grand Strategy

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Rethinking American Grand Strategy recasts both historical and modern dimensions of U.S. grand strategy by broadening the factors, events, and figures that could be considered political, and therefore strategic. Join us for a 30-minute lecture with one of the volume’s co-editors and co-authors, Christopher McKnight Nichols, laying out some of the broad themes, major events, and transformations in U.S. grand strategy, including an explanation of how an ensemble of leading scholars approached the history of the United States’ place in the world from the framework of rethinking. Following the book talk, Derrick Olsen will facilitate a discussion between Nichols and Ambassador Mary Carlin Yates on how the historical insights provided in Rethinking American Grand Strategy could aid in reconceptualizing domestic needs and foreign policy in a post-COVID-19 world. Copies…

Continue readingOregon Historical Society: Rethinking American Grand Strategy
Free

Wild Love: An Introduction to Nature Writing

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

“I love you, love you, love you / sad as you are, O world.” — Adelia Prado This class will offer an introduction to nature writing that is celebratory, joyful, loving, even sexy. While there is much to lament or critique in our current ecological moment, there is also much to honor and embrace. When we fall in love with a place, we can be receptive to its vital complexity through that lens of love. You will receive weekly prompts, contemporary and historical readings, and the opportunity to share your own work in a supportive workshop environment. Class time will also offer guided writing exercises that will help you revel in summer’s bounty and wildness wherever you find it. Access Program We want our writing…

Continue readingWild Love: An Introduction to Nature Writing
$195

Consider This with David Treuer

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

On July 15, David Treuer, author of The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee, will join Oregon Humanities for a conversation on land, possession, and justice. The history of the Americas is inextricable from the theft of land from Native people. How should we, in the present, deal with this fact? The conversation will take place via Zoom and YouTube. Read more or RSVP now.

Free

Patrick Wyman in Conversation With Mike Duncan

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Patrick Wyman, creator of the hit podcast series Tides of History and Fall of Rome, explores the four explosive decades between 1490 and 1530, bringing to life the dramatic and deeply human story of how the West was reborn. In the bestselling tradition of The Swerve and A Distant Mirror, The Verge (Twelve) tells the story of a period that marked a decisive turning point for both European and world history. Here, Wyman examines two complementary and contradictory sides of the same historical coin: the world-altering implications of the developments of printed mass media, extreme taxation, exploitative globalization, humanistic learning, gunpowder warfare, and mass religious conflict in the long term, and their intensely disruptive consequences in the short term. As told through the lives of…

Continue readingPatrick Wyman in Conversation With Mike Duncan
Free

Lisa Wells in Conversation With Lydia Millet

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Like many of us, Lisa Wells has spent years overwhelmed by news of apocalyptic-scale climate change and a coming sixth extinction. She did not need to be convinced of the stakes. But what can be done? Wells embarked on a pilgrimage, seeking answers in dedicated communities — outcasts and visionaries — on the margins of society. Wells meets Finisia Medrano, an itinerant planter and misanthrope leading a group of nomadic activists to rewild the American desert. She finds a group of environmentalist Christians practicing "watershed discipleship" in New Mexico; another group in Philadelphia turning the tools of violence into tools of farming — guns into plowshares. She watches the world’s greatest tracker teach how to read a trail, and visits botanists who are restoring land…

Continue readingLisa Wells in Conversation With Lydia Millet
Free

PROFILES – The Banning of George Orwell

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

A virtual program series with Dr. Bill Thierfelder This ongoing series of 60-minute presentations explores the people, places, and events that shape our lives, our world, our universe. Presented by Dr. Bill Thierfelder, professor emeritus and docent at the American Museum of Natural History. This program explores Orwell’s writing, with an emphasis on Animal Farm and 1984, both of which have been banned over the years. Participants should be ages 18 and older. Sign up to receive the Zoom access code and password for the meeting. Where: Zoom (Not sure what that is? Call us and we'll help you! 503-682-2744) When : Wednesday, September 1, 2021, 11:00 am-12:30 pm Hosts: Dr. Bill Thierfelder & Andrea Erickson Topic: The Banning of George Orwell To sign up,…

Continue readingPROFILES – The Banning of George Orwell
Free

Historians and the News: Kathleen Belew

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

A Historical Perspective on the White Power Movement, the January 6 Insurrection, and the Domestic Legacies of Overseas Wars OHS is excited to re-launch the popular “Historians and the News” series with a conversation between Dr. Kathleen Belew and Dr. Christopher McKnight Nichols. This free virtual event promises to offer valuable insights, informed by years of scholarly analysis of the past, into the news stories that fill our screens and newspaper pages. As the House select committee investigating the deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6 has begun to hold hearings and new reporting reveals the seriousness of the attempt to overturn the 2020 election, militaristic white-supremacist organizations such as the Proud Boys continue to hold rallies in cities including Portland, Salem, and…

Continue readingHistorians and the News: Kathleen Belew
Free

Black Abolitionists and Mercantile Frontiers: A. H. Francis and His Circle, 1835–1864

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Join us for a presentation with Dr. Kenneth Hawkins on the life and achievements of Black abolitionist and merchant Abner Hunt Francis, with remarks from Kimberly Stowers Moreland on the significance of Francis's accomplishments today. Francis operated a prosperous mercantile store on Front Street in Portland until 1861. Throughout the mid-1800s, Francis used his position to fight for Black people on the frontiers from western New York to the Pacific Coast. He wrote letters to his friend Frederick Douglass about the conditions for Black people in Oregon and his successful resistance to the state’s Black exclusion laws, which Douglass published in his abolitionist newspaper. Even with these written accounts, histories of the Oregon Territory and its commercial port often ignored, ridiculed, or misrepresented Francis and…

Continue readingBlack Abolitionists and Mercantile Frontiers: A. H. Francis and His Circle, 1835–1864
Free

BitchReads: Anita Hill in Conversation with Renee Bracey Sherman

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Friends! For this month's BitchReads Book Club, we are thrilled to be hosting a conversation between Renee Bracey Sherman and the illustrious Anita Hill about her latest book, Believing: Our Thirty Year Journey to End Gender Violence. Join us for the must-watch BitchReads interview next Thursday, September 30 at 2pm PST/5pm EST. Just RSVP today to get a reminder for the live stream next week. RSVP for the BitchReads Interview>> Anita Hill is University Professor of Social Policy, Law, and Women's and Gender Studies at Brandeis University. After the 1991 Senate confirmation hearings for U.S. Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, Hill became a leading figure in the fight for women's rights and against gender-based violence. She has written for the New York Times and Newsweek, and is a sought-after speaker. Renee Bracey Sherman is a…

Continue readingBitchReads: Anita Hill in Conversation with Renee Bracey Sherman
Free

Eminent Oregonians: Abigail Scott Duniway, Richard Neuberger, Jesse Applegate

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Based largely on primary sources, authors Jane Kirkpatrick, Steven Forrester, and R. Gregory Nokes present compelling, three-dimensional views of the adventurous, consequential, and sometimes heart-breaking lives of three notable individuals in their new book, Eminent Oregonians. Renowned author Jane Kirkpatrick shares the life of suffragist Abigail Scott Duniway, a lecturer, organizer, writer, and editor who devoted over forty years to the cause of women’s rights. Oregon columnist and publisher Steven Forrester presents Richard Neuberger, whose election to the U.S. Senate changed Oregon and national politics. Acclaimed journalist R. Gregory Nokes shares the live of abolitionist Jesse Applegate, who is most remembered for his leadership role in establishing the Applegate Trail. According to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nicholas Kristoff, Eminent Oregonians is “an inspiring and moving account of three…

Continue readingEminent Oregonians: Abigail Scott Duniway, Richard Neuberger, Jesse Applegate
Free
Click a category label below to view the calendar with only events in that specific category.