What is the ORIAS Speakers Bureau?
The ORIAS Speakers Bureau is a cohort of graduate students who offer 45-minute presentations specifically geared to students from middle school to community college. Each talk models important Common Core Social Studies skills, such as analysis of texts and use of evidence to build an argument. Many talks include content that dovetails with History Social-Science Content Standards, while all talks offer opportunities for inquiry-based student engagement, as outlined in the new History-Social Science Framework. Most presentations are also appropriate for more than one grade level or subject, because they address broad questions while focusing on specific events and topics.
Presentations
Borders and the Syrian "Refugee Crisis" in Jordan
Speaker: Heba AlNajada
How do different maps provide windows onto different worldviews? And how do these worldviews affect the human experience of moving from one place to another in the real world? This talk begins with an exploration of maps, then shifts to examine two models of hosting people displaced by war, oppression, and dispossession. The first is the experience of Syrians hosted in camps set up by the UNHCR near the Syrian-Jordanian border; the second is spaces of hospitality in which Syrians are offered sanctuary in Palestinian households - households that are, themselves, in a camp on squatted land.
Students will be invited to consider the ways maps shape our views of the world, including the impact of political and national borders on people’s everyday lives. Though the talk is primarily focused on the current Syrian refugees, it introduces broad concepts that will be useful in any discussion of cross-border migration.
About the Speaker
Heba was born in Jordan and lived in multiple cities before going back to Jordan. Trained and educated as an architect and urban designer, she worked in Palestinian informal settlements before starting her PhD in Architecture History at UC Berkeley. Her family history and work played a major role in her interest in the question of migration, refugee camps, borders and the longer histories of the Middle East (most specifically the Levant). She received her undergraduate degree in Architecture at the University of Jordan and her masters degree in Urban Design from the University of Sheffield. Outside of studying and teaching, she loves cooking with her family and playing with her son.
Suggested Audiences
Age: 7th – 12th grade and community college. Some elements may be difficult for younger students, but the visual and exploratory nature of the presentation would be engaging for them.
Preparation: The speaker asks that the teacher complete a short (20-minute) school- or classroom-mapping exercise with students the day before the presentation.
Also, familiarity with the current refugee crisis and some study of the Ottoman Empire and European colonialism in the Middle East would deepen student understanding of parts of the presentation, but is not necessary. Teacher is also welcome to confer with speaker ahead of time about topics.
Courses: World History, Ethnic Studies, Psychology, Geography, Anthropology, Art & Architecture History
Remembering Jewish Eastern Europe: Yizkor books and community memory after the Holocaust
Speaker: Jordan Brown
What is lost when a community is destroyed? How do those who once called this community home cope with their loss? Can the work of memory heal wounds that might otherwise fester? Can collective remembering rescue "home" from the abyss of exile? These and other similar questions are becoming increasingly important as upheavals of all sorts—social, economic, political, climatic—alter the face of our world at an ever-quickening pace.
Nevertheless, these challenges are not entirely unprecedented. After the Holocaust, the displaced progeny of destroyed Eastern European Jewish communities stood face-to-face with the void of a vanished world. Confronted with the utter ruin of communities often hundreds of years old, these survivors chose not to abandon their history, their world, but rather to recreate it in monumental collective works of remembrance known as Yizkor books. By studying these extraordinary documents—at once scholarly and personal, journalistic and creative—we come to understand the artistic and cultural resources that these orphaned communities drew upon in order to raise continuity and renewal from the ashes of destruction.
About the Speaker
Jordan is a graduate student anthropologist at UC-Berkeley. A California native, he first encountered Eastern European Jewish civilization via its linguistic arm, in the form of Leo Rosten's unparalleled The Joys of Yiddish. Since then, the Yiddish language and the imagined commonwealth it animates have revealed themselves to be endless sources of insight into the inextricable complexities of cultural specificity and universalism, tradition and change, and the making of meaning in a shifting world. When Jordan is not studying the Eastern European cultural landscape of seven to twenty decades ago, he is usually studying the Eastern Mediterranean cultural landscape of seven to twenty millennia ago. These two explorations have more in common than you might think.
Suggested Audiences
Age: 9th – 12th grade and community college
Preparation: There is no preparation necessary, but students who have some familiarity with the events of the Holocaust will benefit more from the presentation.
Also, this presentation would be particularly meaningful to students who have recently read Night, by Elie Weisel, Maus by Art Spiegelman, or other similar literature.
Courses: World History, Ethnic Studies, Psychology, World Literature
Sourcing Digital China
Speaker: Chris Chan
Billions of us generate data through our real and virtual activities each day. But what is data, how is it used, and what impacts does it have? Where is digital data stored, and what does it mean to live and work in a digital world? And how are digital innovations and their applications unique in China?
This talk explores these questions through the lens of contemporary China, where the transformation of a digital society is happening in conjunction with rapid urban development.
About the Speaker
Chris is an anthropologist and PhD student at the University of California, Berkeley. Trained as an engineer with a background in both sciences and humanities, his research interests include the overlap of new technologies with urban transformation in contemporary China.
Suggested Audiences
Age: 10th – 12th grade and community college
Preparation: The speaker will provide a brief overview of contemporary conditions in China, but some background knowledge about modern China will make this talk more accessible. Teachers may want to ask the speaker to provide a small subset of infographics or maps to look at with students the day before the talk.
Courses: World History, Economics, Human Geography
Coping with Pressure: the consequences of losing legs for daddy long-legs
Speaker: Ignacio Escalante
Animals constantly face many pressures in their environment, including potential predators and parasites. To survive, animals have evolved some surprisingly extreme defensive strategies. For example, many animals voluntarily release body parts (legs, tails, etc.) when grabbed by predators. By doing so, they survive and escape, but are there consequences to losing body parts? How can the impacts of these survival strategies be studied?
This talk explores how scientists can measure the impacts of losing legs in the locomotion, physiology, ecology, and reproduction of daddy long-legs. By describing his experience doing fieldwork in the Costa Rican and Californian forests, and also lab work at UC Berkeley, the speaker describes how this topic can be studied.
About the Speaker
Ignacio Escalante is a Costa Rican field biologist, currently a Ph.D. candidate in Environmental Sciences, Policy and Management at UC Berkeley. He earned his BS and MS degree at the University of Costa Rica, both in biology. While exploring the tropical environments, he became interested in how animals respond to environmental pressures. His current research explores the ways animals have evolved defensive strategies to survive encounters with predators.
Suggested Audiences
Age: 6th – 12th grade and community college, though more accessible to students in high school and above. Middle school students may need preparation in terms of vocabulary.
Preparation: Students would benefit from prior learning about evolution and natural selection. The teacher may want to request a vocabulary list to help prepare students ahead of time.
Courses: Biology or AP Biology, Environmental Science, any course in which you want to teach about methods of scientific inquiry.
Note: This talk can also be presented in Spanish.
Soviet Communism and the Movies
Speaker: Dominick Lawton
Ironically, many of the techniques used in modern advertising and Hollywood films were developed in the Soviet Union as part of the broader propaganda project of politically educating the Soviet masses. Working for the newly created Soviet state in the 1920s, film-maker Sergei Eisenstein developed many of the techniques of modern filmmaking, which have now become standardized worldwide. This talk connects students' pre-existing familiarity with the vocabulary of cinema (via film, TV, or YouTube) to the particular — and, probably, unfamiliar — Soviet historical moment in which these techniques were actually developed. The historical connections between our modern media environment and early Soviet culture and politics lays the groundwork for further conversations about the power and place of art in society.
About this Speaker
Dominick was born in Australia and raised first in the United Kingdom, then in St. Louis. He learned the Russian alphabet in high school in Missouri, then started studying Russian literature, culture, and the Russian language after his first exposure to Sergei Eisenstein as a student at Yale University. He has taught English to middle and high school students in Russia, and worked in environmental advocacy in New Mexico. He is now working towards a PhD in Slavic Languages and Literatures at Berkeley. Besides Russia, his other interests include music and politics.
Suggested Audiences
Age: 7th – 12th grade and community college. The concepts presented are accessible for younger students, though chronologically the information will be unfamiliar.
Preparation: Students would benefit from background knowledge of the Russian Revolution.
Courses: Art History, Film History, Film/Video Production, 20th Century US History, World History
Wutong Art Village in Shenzhen, China
Speaker: Annie Malcolm
China has changed significantly in the last three decades, undergoing urbanization and industrialization on a scale never seen before. How do social scientists make sense of such radical changes? This talk explores creativity, art and urbanization in China through the lens of ethnography. Spaces like Wutong Art Village, on the edge of the huge city of Shenzhen, are portholes into understanding how artists work around changing conditions of life. This presentation uses examples of Chinese contemporary art, photos, prose, and accounts of interviews to show how a handful of Art Villages can be interpreted to better understand contemporary China. Students will develop a more nuanced and interesting understanding of modern China while learning how ethnographic research is conducted.
The presentation can work as a stand-alone experience, or as the introduction to an assignment in which students use what they learn to conduct an ethnographic research project within their own communities.
About the Speaker
Annie Malcolm has been learning Chinese since middle school. Having the opportunity to engage such a different language and culture from a young age formed her interest in anthropology, which she studied at Barnard College and continues to pursue as a doctoral candidate at UC Berkeley. She has been to China eight times - most recently for 18 months - and finds that, as a writer and researcher, Chinese art worlds and their relationships to Chinese cities are the most valuable muse with which to wrestle. Her ethnographic research incorporates photography, video, and interviews (which she translates from Chinese into English).
Suggested Audiences
Age: 7th – 12th grade and community college. Some of the more abstract ideas may be difficult for 7th graders, but the imagery and exploratory nature of the presentation would be interesting for engaged younger students.
Preparation: An introduction to Daoism and Buddhism in China would deepen student understanding of parts of the presentation, but is not necessary. Teachers should discuss with the speaker whether or not they plan to follow this talk with an ethnographic research project.
Courses: World History, Visual Arts or Art History, Mandarin, Geography, Anthropology
Note: This talk is suitable for a Mandarin classroom and can be presented in Mandarin or a mix of Mandarin and English (depending on the proficiency of the class).
Tibet, China, and the United States: An LGBTQ lens
Speaker: Tenzin Paldron
In 2011, LGBT experiences were spotlighted on the highest global stage, in remarks delivered from the United States to the UN on World Human Rights Day. Movements for equity around sexual orientation and gender expression have been in sharp focus ever since. This talk invites consideration of how growth takes place in different communities through three sets of stories. Audiences may learn of particular skills, obstacles, and conditions that shape the people in these stories, and how even solitary choices of interpretation and language can reshape broader forces.
About the Speaker
Born to Tibetan parents in New Delhi, India, Tenzin immigrated to the United States and attended public schools in Colorado and Washington State. His higher ed studies began in community college, and he is currently a PhD candidate at UC Berkeley's Rhetoric Department. He writes on the limits of ethics and understanding and questions of speech, silence, and social change, with regional emphasis on the United States, China, and Tibet.
Suggested Audiences
Age: 7th-12th grade and community college. Concepts are accessible for younger students, with increasing complexity provided to older students.
Preparation: No background knowledge necessary, though teacher is welcome to confer with speaker ahead of time about topics.
Courses: US History, Ethnic Studies, World History, Sociology, Psychology, Media Studies
Race in Brazil: A Brief History
Speaker: Maria Reis
Brazil was the site of the largest slave-based economy in the Americas and the last country in the hemisphere to abolish the institution, in 1889. Today, some describe Brazil as a “racial democracy” – a place where clear racial categories and race-based discrimination do not exist. This presentation explores how and why ideas about race developed differently in Brazil than in the United states and ultimately challenges the idea that Brazil is a racial democracy. Through historical comparison, students will come to a deeper understanding of how ideas of race are constructed in different societies and they will consider the varied ways racial (in)equality can be described.
About the Speaker
Maria Reis is a graduate student in Berkeley’s Department of History, focusing on late colonial Latin American history. She was born in Brazil but moved to the Washington DC at the age of 11, so her personal background has played a large role in shaping her historical interest in comparing military conflicts and the institution of slavery in Brazil and the US. She received her undergraduate degree at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, where she focused on modern Spanish and Portuguese history. In her spare time, she loves listening to Brazilian music, practicing yoga, and cooking for others.
Suggested Audiences
Age: 8th – 12th grade and community college.
Preparation: This talk would be most beneficial to students who have already studied the American Civil War and Reconstruction periods.
World History, US History, Sociology, Government
Studying Primates and their World
Speaker: Gustav Steinhardt
When people think about primate societies, they often imagine a small group organized around a dominant Alpha Male and his many females. But in some species, the central figure is a dominant female with many males.
How did that system evolve, and what can it tell us about social behavior in other primates, including humans? This talk explores the differences in primate societies, with a special focus on the scientific process - how we frame questions, the differences between lab work and field work, and how researchers draw on different domains of science in their work.
About the Speaker
At age 7, Gustav Steinhardt had a close encounter with a tamarin monkey at the National Zoo. He never recovered; now, as a fourth-year PhD student in Biological Anthropology, his interests lie at the intersection of behavior, neuroscience, and ecology. Before coming to Berkeley, he earned a BA from the Johnston Center for Integrative Studies at the University of Redlands, then an MA in interdisciplinary humanities from the University of Chicago. After finishing the MA, he switched into STEM and now works on the behavior and ecology of tamarins. His 20-year-old self would be surprised by his current career; his 7-year-old self would not.
Suggested Audiences
Age: 6th – 12th grade and community college, though more accessible to students in high school and above. Middle school students will need preparation in terms of vocabulary.
Preparation: Students would benefit from prior learning about evolution and natural selection. The teacher may want to request a vocabulary list to help prepare students ahead of time.
Courses: Biology or AP Biology, Environmental Science, Psychology, Sociology
What is Nature?
Speaker: Joel Thielen
On March 11, 2011, a grove of 70,000 pine trees in a coastal Japanese city was swept away by a massive tsunami—except for one single eighty-eight-foot-tall pine tree. However, eighteen months later, salt in the soil killed this "Miracle Pine", prompting the city government go to extraordinary lengths to preserve the tree. While the Miracle Pine is understood as a symbol of hope and resilience, the response of the local government to eternalize the tree raises questions about the intersection between technology and ecology. This seemingly simple story about a tree, and the forest it was once a part of, raises an interesting question about our rapidly changing world: Are landscapes built by human activity "natural"?
This talk uses historical images of pine trees in Japanese art to show how what we think of as "nature" is often constructed by human activity.
About the Speaker
Joel was born near Denver, Colorado and studied biology in college before becoming interested in Japanese art. He moved to Japan in 2012 and stayed for three years teaching English in public elementary and junior high schools while learning the Japanese language. It was during his time living in Japan that Joel became fascinated with depictions of nature in Japanese art. Now, he is working toward a PhD in the History of Art Department at UC Berkeley where he uses both ecology and art history to examine how landscape paintings and memorials produced in Japan help us to understand human-altered landscapes as "natural."
Suggested Audiences
Age: 9th – 12th grade and community college
Preparation: No preparation is necessary for this talk.
Courses: World History, Visual Arts or Art History, Geography, Ecology or Environmental Science
'The Undiscovered Country': the 1923 Population Exchange between Greece and Turkey
Speaker: Christin Zurbach
In 1923, Greece and Turkey engaged in a population exchange. Orthodox Christians from the newly-founded Turkish Republic were forcibly deported to Greece and Muslims from Greece were likewise forced to emigrate to Turkey. This process, which effectively created 2 million refugees, was legally sanctioned by both states, written out in the Lausanne Treaty, and supervised by international law. This talk showcases the effects of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the rise of nationalist thinking. Students will be invited to consider the impact of nationalism – usually a huge, impersonal concept - on individual people’s day-to-day lives. At the same time, the talk is an opportunity to explore the dynamics of refugee crises and draw parallels with the Syrian refugee crisis today.
About the Speaker
Christin is a second year graduate student in Berkeley's History Department in the field of Middle East history, in particular late Ottoman/Modern Greco-Turkish minority history and the press. She received her undergraduate degree in Middle Eastern Studies from Columbia in 2014 and then spent the following year in Ioannina, Greece, learning Modern Greek. She first became interested in this topic as a high school student, when she won a scholarship at 17 to study Turkish in Ankara for a summer. She grew up with Greek neighbors who had family from Turkey, and then stayed with a host mother in Turkey whose Muslim grandparents had been forcibly exchanged in 1923. She wanted to understand how the narratives from her neighbors in Philadelphia and her new friends in Turkey fit together. She wrote her undergraduate thesis on a newspaper written by Turkish-speaking Orthodox Christians during the exchange and later presenting that at an academic conference in Cyprus - another space of Greco-Turkish encounter and conflict.
Suggested Audiences
Age: 9th – 12th grade and community college
Preparation: Students should have already studied, or be in the process of studying, World War I.
Courses: Ethnic Studies, Government, US History, World History