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Uncles Sam Wants Who? Women, Men, and the Meaning of American Selective Service
8:00 PM – Great Hall, Memorial Union - Fall 2021 Liberal Arts and Sciences Dean's Lecture Why is the question of whether women, just like men, should register with Selective Service controversial? Amy J. Rutenberg will discuss the current push for women to register in the context of the different meanings Americans have attributed to military service and the draft, over time. Amy J. Rutenberg is an Associate Professor of History and the author of Rough Draft: Cold War Military Manpower Policy and the Origins of Vietnam-Era Draft Resistance. She is currently working on a book on peace activism and military service between the 1970s and the 1990s. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and The Conversation. She is a Trustee of the Society of Military History, the k-12 editor of www.teachingmilitaryhistory.com, the coordinator for ISU’s secondary social studies education program, and the Equity Advisor for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. She received her B.A. from Tufts University, her Ed.M. from Harvard University, and her Ph.D. from the University of Maryland.

Minorities Report: Indigenous Peoples in Socialist and Post-Socialist China
6:00 PM – Sun Room, Memorial Union - 2021 Phi Beta Kappa Lecture What are “indigenous peoples” in China, and what are their worlds like? How did the Ming and Qing states manage non-Han indigenous peoples through the native hereditary chieftain system (known as the tusi system)? How did the socialist state create a nation of 56 “nationalities,” and what were its policies towards so-called “minority nationalities”? What is the current state’s stance towards minority ethnic groups, and how is it transforming? This talk attempts to answer these questions. Dr. Erik Mueggler is a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Michigan, affiliated with the University’s Center for Chinese Studies and the Interdepartmental Doctoral Program in Anthropology and History. His research covers a variety of topics in social and cultural theory, focusing on the politics of ghosts, the history of natural history, and the ritualization of death in the border regions of China.

A Pilgrim's Passport to Pandemics Past: Mecca and the Hajj under Quarantine from Cholera to COVID-19
6:00 PM – Great Hall, Memorial Union - Between 1831 and 1914, cholera spread from India to Mecca and the Ottoman Hijaz on at least forty separate occasions. This talk traces the development of Ottoman and international quarantine and public health controls in the Hijaz, Red Sea, and Persian Gulf between 1865 and World War I. Pandemic cholera and the inter-imperial public health and travel regulations that its reign of terror spawned were foundational to the creation of the modern system of mass pilgrimage that we know today. In light of our current global crisis with the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and its role in Saudi Arabia’s difficult decision to dramatically restrict hajj, umrah, and tourism travel in 2020 and 2021, the relevance of Mecca’s pandemic past raises urgent new questions for understanding the present and future of pilgrimage management and even wider questions of mass mobility, tourism, travel restrictions, and border management. Michael Christopher Low received his PhD in International and Global History from Columbia University in 2015. Low is an Assistant Professor of History at Iowa State University. He also serves as Co-Director of ISU’s Middle Eastern Studies Minor. In 2020-2021, he was a Senior Humanities Research Fellow for the Study of the Arab World at NYU Abu Dhabi. He is the author of Imperial Mecca: Ottoman Arabia and the Indian Ocean Hajj (Columbia University Press, 2020) and co-editor of The Subjects of Ottoman International Law (Indiana University Press, 2020). He also sits on the editorial boards of the Journal of Global History and the Journal of Tourism History.

Surprise, Pivot, Scale
12:00 PM – ISU Student Innovation Center - Laura Rowley is an empathetic and strategic storyteller with wide-ranging experience building content that drives business goals. An award-winning journalist and author, Laura held editorial and executive roles at CNN, The Huffington Post, Yahoo! and Meredith Corporation. She is currently Director of Content for SitusAMC, a New York-based global technology and services firm, focused on real estate finance. This is part of the Iowa State University Student Innovation Center noon talks. Attend @ SICTR or via Zoom. For details, go to https://sictr.iastate.edu/

Trumpism and the Republican Party: What's Next?
8:00 PM – Great Hall, Memorial Union - Michael Steele is an attorney, political commentator, and former legislator. He was the first African American elected to state office in 2003 as lieutenant governor, and he was the first African American to be the chair of the national Republican Party (2009-2011). Mr. Steele will discuss how President Trump's loss in 2020 and continued influence are affecting the state and national Republican parties. 2021 Manatt-Phelps Lecture in Political Science

Navigating Differences Training
5:30 PM – ISU Student Innovation Center - Gayle Coon, ISU Extension, will lead a condensed training on navigating differences in the workplace and on campus. This training is part of the Student Innovation Center's Innovator Readiness "Hardest Skills" training series, and is open to the entire ISU community. https://sictr.iastate.edu/innovation-programs/innovation-circuits/innovator-readiness/

The Bee Squad: Understanding and Improving Pollinator Health in Iowa
2:30 PM – 360 Heady Hall - The 2021 Rossmann Manatt Seminar will highlight some of the research work done on bee health/pollinator conservation and will include short video contributions about student projects funded by through this program. The Rossmann Manatt Faculty Development Award is available to tenured faculty in the colleges of Human Sciences and Agriculture and Life Sciences who show exceptional creativity and productivity in scholarship, teaching and service, as well as great promise for continuing such achievement. Amy Toth is a Professor in the Departments of Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology and Entomology at Iowa State University. Amy is interested in the mechanisms and evolution of insect sociality, using paper wasps and honey bees as model systems. Current research projects involve de novo sequencing of paper wasp genomes and transcriptomes, comparative genomic analysis of Hymenoptera, genomic and epigenetic mechanisms regulating caste evolution, and the influences of nutrition and viruses on honey bee behavior and health. Amy received her PhD from the University of Illinois with Gene Robinson, and did postdoctoral work with Christina Grozinger at Pennsylvania State University.​ Note: This event will not be available for extra credit, and it will not be livestreamed.

Massacres, Trains, and Iowa: Connecting the 1912 Villisca Axe Murders to a Cross-Country Serial Killer
7:00 PM – Great Hall, Memorial Union - The Man From the Train is a recent true-crime book written by Bill James and his daughter Rachel McCarthy James. In the book, they document a lengthy list of serial axe murders in the early part of the 20th-century that they believe were committed by one man. Their list includes two mass killings in Iowa; the most famous of which is the 1912 murders in Villisca. Eight people, including six children, were killed, and the murders were never solved. But maybe there is an answer. Join us for the story of the incredible historical research Bill and Rachel did to document and connect a cross-country killing spree that happened more than 100 years ago. Bill James is most known for coining "sabermetrics," which is the scientific analyzing of baseball usually with statistics. He worked for more than a decade for the Boston Red Sox.

Preprints and the Evolution of Scholarly Publishing
6:00 PM – Online - Open Access Week 2021 with Dr. Richard Sever WebEx Link:: https://iastate.webex.com/iastate/onstage/g.php?MTID=e48959b103375a4aba8066c8f8ae69f47 Richard Sever is Assistant Director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York and Co-Founder of the preprint servers bioRxiv and medRxiv. He also serves as Executive Editor for the Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives and Cold Spring Harbor Protocols journals, and launched the precision medicine journal Cold Spring Harbor Molecular Case Studies. After receiving a degree in Biochemistry from Oxford University, Richard obtained his PhD at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK. He then moved into editorial work, first as an editor at Current Opinion in Cell Biology and later Trends in Biochemical Sciences. He subsequently served as Executive Editor of Journal of Cell Science, before moving to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in 2008.

When Life Gives You a Wheelchair, Make Lemonade!
6:00 PM – Online - 2021 Disability Awareness Week Keynote WebEx Link: https://iastate.webex.com/iastate/onstage/g.php?MTID=e38a3c80d504bbf4c3e04405a7f867e0c This year's speaker is Zach Anner, who is an award-winning comedian, show host, TV writer, viral sensation, disability advocate, and public speaker. In 2011, he won his own travel show on the Oprah Winfrey Network, Rollin’ With Zach. He worked with Rainn Wilson’s media company SoulPancake, hosting the shows Have A Little Faith (which explored world religions), Earth Your While (which started a conversation on climate change), and Top of the Monday (which introduced good news stories). He tried his hand at sports and fitness on his YouTube series Workout Wednesdays, and he journeyed across the country with the help of Reddit in his travel program, Riding Shotgun. His videos have over 100 million views over social media platforms. Zach was a guest star and a full-time writer on ABC’s hit family sitcom Speechless. He’s an Ambassador for the Cerebral Palsy Foundation and has worked with UCPLA Wheels for Humanity, which supplies wheelchairs to people in developing countries. Zach’s memoir, If at Birth You Don’t Succeed: My Adventures with Disaster and Destiny, is a hilariously irreverent and heartfelt memoir about finding your passion and your path even when it’s paved with epic misadventure.