/ History Department

Colloquium Series

Faculty, guests and students support a lively process of research and exchange of ideas that makes history a vibrant discipline. This series features several such speakers each semester.

FALL 2025 Schedule 

How Michigan Became Michigan

Presented by John L. Daly
Tuesday, September 23, at 4:30 p.m. in Winants Auditorium, Graves Hall

Michigan’s shape is unusual. Anyone working with a modern map is unlikely to have put these two peninsulas together. It happened due to some strange twists of history. Come learn how an inaccurate 1755 map led to Michigan’s boundaries, gave us Isle Royale National Park and started the Toledo War. 

John L. Daly spent much of his career training corporate financial professionals. He is the author of Pricing for Profitability, published by Wiley and Sons; a novel, Tool & Die; eight one-act plays; and numerous professional articles. He performs a one-man show called Mark Twain's American West. He has had a lifelong interest in history and is the author of ,The Misleading Mitchell Map: Isle Royale and the Toledo War, which appeared in Michigan History Magazine.  

Religion, Science and Culture Wars: The 100th Anniversary of the Scopes Trial

Panel: Jeanne Petit (history), Jared McBrady (education), Jimena Golcher-Benavides (biology), Josh Wright (religion)
Wednesday, October 29, at 6:30 p.m. in Winants Auditorium, Graves Hall

100 years ago, a high school biology teacher in the small town of Dayton, Tennessee, went on trial for breaking a new state law forbidding the teaching of evolution. This case garnered national attention and sparked debates about science, religion, education and the changing social landscape of the 1920s. The prosecutor, three-time presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan, used the trial to argue for the upholding of Christian values in schools. The defense team was led by famous agnostic Clarence Darrow, who saw the trial as a way to promote modern science and free speech. This panel will explore how the trial sat at the nexus of 1920s culture wars and how the issues of the trial still reverberate today.

Adventures in History: Student Journeys Beyond the Classroom

Panel: Kelly Rosenau, Anna Stowe, Nicholas Brunink and Rachel Kuiper 
Monday, November 10, at 4:30 p.m. in Martha Miller Fried Hemenway Auditorium