History Comes Alive Series

Speaker: Thomas Madden, Saint Louis University
Date: 7 p.m. Tuesday, September 16
Location: Banquet Room b, Oakland Center

In 1786 the American Ambassador to England, John Adams, wrote a "handbook for lawgivers," which examined most of history's fallen republics and the seeds of their destruction. This work, the Defence of the Constitutions, was in the hands of the framers of the U.S. Constitution when they met the following year in Independence Hall. This lecture, drawn from the author's new book, “The Fall of Republics: A History” (forthcoming from Princeton University Press, Spring 2026), will explore the factors that led to the collapse of some of history's most important republics, and the lessons that the American framers drew from those cautionary tales.

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Speaker: George Milne, Oakland University
Date: 7 p.m. Tuesday, October 14
Location: Banquet Room B, Oakland Center

“Matilda’s World" investigates the land that eventually became the campus of our university. This world began to take form in 1908, when Matilda Dodge and her husband John, who founded the automobile companies that bear his name, purchased a 308-acre farm in Oakland County, Michigan. The couple was seeking refuge from the bustling industrial city of Detroit. Over the following few years, they expanded their holdings. John’s death in 1920 did not stop Matilda from developing the estate even further to eventually encompass more than 1,400 acres. On that land, she created a world of charm and grace with the help of her second husband, Alfred Wilson, a lumber magnate, when they constructed Meadow Brook Hall, a 110-room neo-Tudor mansion, developed Meadow Brook Farms into a sprawling agricultural experiment and created housing for her extensive staff, including workers’ homes as well as servants’ quarters in her mansion.

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Speaker: James Naus, Oakland University
Date: 7 p.m. Wednesday, November 12
Location: Banquet Room B, Oakland Center

Medieval texts are filled with stories of miraculous healing—so many, in fact, that it becomes difficult not to believe something real was happening. These healing miracles were not merely tales of divine intervention, but deeply embodied experiences shaped by faith, ritual, and cultural expectation. Drawing on new research in neuroscience and the history of medicine, along with fresh interpretations of well-known (and not so well-known) medieval sources, this lecture explores the beliefs and science behind what made healing "work" in medieval Europe and offers a new framework for understanding how belief, authority and the body came together to make the impossible not only plausible, but real.

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Speaker: Alex Noonan, SNA International
Date: 7 p.m. Tuesday, January 13
Location: Banquet Room B, Oakland Center

During the administrations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, New England conservatives became convinced that French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte controlled the federal government. This lecture will explore how this conspiracy theory took hold in New England and nearly broke apart the early American republic.

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Speaker: Erin Brightwell, University of Michigan    
Date: 7 p.m. Tuesday, February 17
Location: Banquet Room B, Oakland Center

Even today, the question of “resistance versus collaboration” continues to haunt appraisals of Japanese-language writing by Taiwanese authors during the period of Japan’s colonial occupation of Taiwan. Rather than focusing on questions of identity or authorial political allegiance, however, this lecture examines Japanese-language short stories by Taiwanese authors between 1937-1945 to try to understand how the experience of colonialism was refracted through literature. Examining selected works of Wang Changxiong 王昶雄 (1916-2000) and Long Yingzong 龍瑛宗(1911-1999), the lecture asks what motivates their respective fictional characters: how they understand the world(s) and options around them. Within the context of empire, these options are per force limited, but the rationalizing rhetoric characters employ or the compromises they make to survive—if survival is what they aspire to—tell us something about empire and control itself.

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Speaker: Todd Estes, Oakland University 
Date: 7 p.m. Wednesday, March 11
Location: Banquet Room A, Oakland Center

The year 2026 represents the Semiquincentennial of the American Revolution, an event which is nearly as controversial today as it was in 1776. We will explore the Revolution’s promises and how much it achieved and Americans' understanding of the meaning and significance over time. Additionally, this lecture will analyze the interpretations and the memories of the Revolution seen in school textbooks, at historical sites, in popular culture, in our politics and in the public imagination — and why these views spark such strong feelings. With these themes and other questions, this lecture will provide historical context during this 250th anniversary year.

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