**VIDEO ONLY 2026 - 2027 academic year because Speaker is studying abroad**
How did people, goods, and ideas move across the Sahara in the period from approximately 700 - 1600 CE?
When describing West Africa in this period, textbook accounts often focus on the trans-Sahara trade in gold and salt, but the reality is much more complex! This presentation explores the interconnected geographies that stretched from the Mediterranean deep into the West...
**VIDEO ONLY 2026 - 2027 academic year because Speaker is studying abroad**
What do primary documents reveal about the deep interconnections between West Africa, the Maghreb, and other world regions in the period from approximately 700 - 1600 CE?
When describing West Africa in this period, textbook accounts often focus on the trans-Sahara trade in gold and salt, but the reality is much more complex! This presentation for teachers uses up-to-date scholarship...
What are the component parts of the internet and how do they fit together?
The internet is an integral part of our day-to-day lives, but how much do we actually know about this crucial global infrastructure? What are its component parts and how do they fit together? This interactive presentation introduces students to the physical backbone of global communications, providing them with the foundational knowledge to better understand modern issues related to social media, AI,...
How does our digital world affect our physical environment?
Our day-to-day experience of the digital world often leaves the impression that the internet is immaterial. The reality, however, is very different. Our digital worksites, social spaces, entertainment sites, and cloud storage rely on very real physical infrastructure. This physical infrastructure stretches across the globe and uses significant resources, including both energy and water. How environmentally costly is this...
When should we tell the truth? When should we believe someone?
Citizens today are subject to a wide variety of misinformation. But despite the risks, we can't get by without trusting other people. How can we deal with misinformation? In whom should we place our trust?
This lesson will introduce some basic concepts from epistemology (the theory of knowledge), with a focus on feminist epistemology, in an effort to give students some...
What are some of the ways that street art makes me feel that I belong in the city I live in?
This talk looks at the geo-political landscape of two cities through the critical lens of public art: the border city Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico where the speaker grew up and Oakland, CA, where the speaker (and perhaps the student audience) live together. By focusing on how local artists utilize images, words, color, lines and shapes to to express...
How can different kinds of text analysis help us understand a complex social issue?
This talk looks at the experiences of transnational labor migrants in Southeast Asia through the lens of contemporary poetry written by domestic workers in Singapore. Students will use two primary texts to explore a critical question in the history of Singapore’s migration policy: whether it is necessary, reasonable, or ethical to require that domestic workers pass a test to prove English proficiency. First, we will read an excerpted...
How can we explore our feelings about climate change through creative writing?
As environmental crisis escalates, creative writers across genres are increasingly centering feelings related to climate change in their work. Reading this literature can help us access our feelings of grief or anxiety related to the climate crisis, and can illuminate the ways in which poets guide the way for us to reshape our relationship with the natural world to be one of...
How can we make the world a better place through food?
Agriculture is over 12,000 years old and forms the foundation of modern civilization. It is not one singular advancement, but rather many technological innovations built on top of each other. Yet while many of these technologies have helped humans produce staggering amounts of food, they have also brought new issues with them, such as soil degradation, excessive fossil fuel use, unhealthy diets, water...
In 1966, German-Jewish journalist Charlotte Beradt released her magnum opus "The Third Reich of Dreams," a slim book containing over a hundred nightmares she had collected from ordinary Germans who lived in Berlin during the first six years of the Nazi dictatorship (1933-1939). What they demonstrate is a persistent political climate of anxiety and fear that could follow city residents under threat of...
