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Immigration and Sino-U.S. Foreign Relations
6:00 PM – Great Hall, Memorial Union - Through the lens of Chinese immigration and its regulation, this lecture explores key values and approaches applied by the U.S. government in managing racial and cultural diversity in its population and how immigration policy interacts with economic and international relations priorities.  As a racial minority associated with a major world power and economy, Chinese American and immigrant experiences reveal major shifts in U.S. conceptions of democracy and its place in the world.   Madeline Y. Hsu is Professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin and served as Director of the Center for Asian American Studies eight years (2006-2014). She was president of the Immigration and Ethnic History Society and is presently representative-at-large for the International Society for the Study of Chinese Overseas. She was born in Columbia, Missouri but grew up in Taiwan and Hong Kong between visits with her grandparents at their store in Altheimer, Arkansas. She received her undergraduate degrees in History from Pomona College and PhD from Yale University. Her first book was Dreaming of Gold, Dreaming of Home: Transnationalism and Migration between the United States and South China, 1882-1943 (Stanford University Press, 2000). Her most recent monograph, The Good Immigrants: How the Yellow Peril Became the Model Minority (Princeton University Press, 2015), received awards from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, the Immigration and Ethnic History Society, the Asian Pacific American Librarians Association, and the Association for Asian American Studies.

Cracks in Your Character
12:00 PM – Student Innovation Center - Anthony Sardella is the Founder and Vice-Chairman of evolve24, a company he founded in 2004. He guides the company’s advancements in artificial intelligence, data, and decision sciences. evolve24 is a leader in predictive analytics and decision sciences that drives greater certainty in strategic decision making. This is part of the ISU Student Innovation Center noon talks. Attend @ SICTR or via Zoom. For details, go to https://sictr.iastate.edu/

What Race Is, What It Is Not, and Why It Matters
7:00 PM – Webex - Fall 2021 Sigma Xi Lecture "Race" as we use it is not a biological category, not a way in which the forces of biology and evolution have divided up our species. There is no inherently biological reason that most starting running backs in the NFL are black or most CEOs of Fortune 500 companies are white. Nor is there a “natural” explanation for why race relations are often difficult, but there are lots of interesting social, political, psychological, and historical ones. Race and Racism are completely intertwined making Race a tangible reality in our society. But Race is not what most think it is. Racism pervades the very structures of daily life in the USA, and most of us are afraid to talk about race or racism in any depth or with any detail. Fear and ignorance surround the concepts and realities of Race and Racism. In an effort to tackle that this lecture engages what race is, what it is not, and why that matters. Agustín Fuentes is a Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University researching human evolution, multispecies anthropology, and structures of race and racism. Fuentes’ books include Race, Monogamy, and Other Lies They Told You: Busting Myths about Human Nature, The Creative Spark: How Imagination Made Humans Exceptional, and Why We Believe: Evolution and the Human Way of Being.

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.