Cosponsored by the Religious Studies Initiative, the Department of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies, the Jewish Studies Program, the Richards Civil War Era Center, and the Humanities Institute.

The Harshbarger Lecture in Religious Studies is an annual lectureship made possible by a generous donation in honor of Luther H. Harshbarger, former professor and head of the Religious Studies Department at Penn State. This event is generously cosponsored by the Department of Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies, the Richards Civil War Era Center, and the Humanities Institute.

Professor Katrina Jagodinsky will talk with the group about the uses of digital history. All projects start with a hunch and some grit, and this one is no different. Dr. Jagodinsky will summarize the premise and promise of Petitioning for Freedom while also sharing some insights about staging research projects from pilot phase to big data launch. Guests are encouraged to browse the website before attending at petitioningforfreedom.unl.edu.

Dr. Jagodinsky will be sharing the introduction and chapter two, which focuses on Native petitioners, from her manuscript, “In the Hands of Many: Habeas Corpus in the American West, 1812-1924.”  She is preparing both for a book proposal that she aims to submit at the beginning of April.

Dr. Katrina Jagodinsky is a legal historian examining marginalized peoples’ engagement with nineteenth-century legal regimes and competing jurisdictions throughout the North American West.

Jagodinsky’s first book Legal Codes & Talking Trees: Indigenous Women’s Sovereignty in the Sonoran and Puget Sound Borderlands, 1854-1946 explains the strategies of six women seeking to protect their bodies, lands, and progeny from the whims of settler-colonists in the tumultuous process of westward expansion and conquest. It is the first book in the prestigious Lamar Series in Western History from Yale University Press to make women its primary focus and it received the Armitage-Jameson Prize for Best Book in Women’s and Gender History of the North American West from the Coalition for Western Women’s History. The study expands the chronology of Indigenous women’s critique of colonial and exploitative legal regimes, illustrating both the longevity of laws making Indian women economically and sexually vulnerable, and the persistence of Native women’s innovative arguments against such oppressive legal systems.

Richards Center Community Zoom Wiring Group, Mondays, 1:00-3:00 pm. If you’d like to be part of it this semester, please register here: https://psu.zoom.us/meeting/register/tpbC7bQ0RrmAoWI8tmb88Q. You’re welcome to join us once, every week, or any number of Mondays in between. All we do is sign on, say hi, and write for two hours.

Richards Center Community Zoom Writing Group, Mondays, 1:00-3:00 pm. If you’d like to be part of it this semester, please register here: https://psu.zoom.us/meeting/register/tpbC7bQ0RrmAoWI8tmb88Q. You’re welcome to join us once, every week, or any number of Mondays in between. All we do is sign on, say hi, and write for two hours.

As we celebrate 250 years of American democracy in 2026, join us for a lecture from one of the country’s leading democracy scholars and practitioners, Danielle Allen. In this talk, Allen draws an arc from the American founding to the present to explore how the original vision of the Declaration of Independence can serve us still, even as we also recognize and remedy its imperfections. She will also discuss reforms that can strengthen American democracy moving forward.

Danielle Allen is James Bryant Conant University Professor at Harvard University. She is also Director of the Allen Lab for Democracy Renovation at the Harvard Kennedy School and Director of the Democratic Knowledge Project, a research lab focused on civic education. She chairs the board of FairVote, the nation’s leading advocate for ranked choice voting, and is a co-chair of the Our Common Purpose Commission at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, where she is a member. Her books include Justice by Means of Democracy, Our Declaration: A Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Defense of Equality, and Democracy in the Time of Coronavirus.

This event is co-sponsored by the Africana Research Center, Humanities Institute, and the Richards Civil War Era Center.

Richards Center Community Zoom Writing Group, Mondays, 1:00-3:00 pm. If you’d like to be part of it this semester, please register here: https://psu.zoom.us/meeting/register/tpbC7bQ0RrmAoWI8tmb88Q. You’re welcome to join us once, every week, or any number of Mondays in between. All we do is sign on, say hi, and write for two hours.

Richards Center Community Zoom Writing Group, Mondays, 1:00-3:00 pm. If you’d like to be part of it this semester, please register here: https://psu.zoom.us/meeting/register/tpbC7bQ0RrmAoWI8tmb88Q. You’re welcome to join us once, every week, or any number of Mondays in between. All we do is sign on, say hi, and write for two hours.

Richards Center Community Zoom Writing Group, Mondays, 1:00-3:00 pm. If you’d like to be part of it this semester, please register here: https://psu.zoom.us/meeting/register/tpbC7bQ0RrmAoWI8tmb88Q. You’re welcome to join us once, every week, or any number of Mondays in between. All we do is sign on, say hi, and write for two hours.

Richards Center Community Zoom Writing Group, Mondays, 1:00-3:00 pm. If you’d like to be part of it this semester, please register here: https://psu.zoom.us/meeting/register/tpbC7bQ0RrmAoWI8tmb88Q. You’re welcome to join us once, every week, or any number of Mondays in between. All we do is sign on, say hi, and write for two hours.

Richards Center Community Zoom Writing Group, Mondays, 1:00-3:00 pm. If you’d like to be part of it this semester, please register here: https://psu.zoom.us/meeting/register/tpbC7bQ0RrmAoWI8tmb88Q. You’re welcome to join us once, every week, or any number of Mondays in between. All we do is sign on, say hi, and write for two hours.

Richards Center Community Zoom Writing Group, Mondays, 1:00-3:00 pm. If you’d like to be part of it this semester, please register here: https://psu.zoom.us/meeting/register/tpbC7bQ0RrmAoWI8tmb88Q. You’re welcome to join us once, every week, or any number of Mondays in between. All we do is sign on, say hi, and write for two hours.

Richards Center Community Zoom Writing Group, Mondays, 1:00-3:00 pm. If you’d like to be part of it this semester, please register here: https://psu.zoom.us/meeting/register/tpbC7bQ0RrmAoWI8tmb88Q. You’re welcome to join us once, every week, or any number of Mondays in between. All we do is sign on, say hi, and write for two hours.