Online Talks
Every now and then I am invited to present my research in online talks.
Some of these
presentations are later shared on YouTube, where they remain available as a snapshot of my understanding at that
time. While I have refined certain details in subsequent publications, these videos still offer a clear overview
of my key findings and arguments. If you prefer audio-visual presentations over footnoted texts, these talks may
be an engaging way to learn about my work.
For the most current versions of my research, however, I
recommend consulting my published articles and books. Alternatively—you could always invite me for an updated
talk.
On November 14, 2023, the German Society of Pennsylvania's Horner Library hosted me to talk about my research on Carl Schurz (1829-1906)—the German revolutionary in 1848/49 and Civil War Era US abolitionist and Republican Politician. Present-day commemorators in Germany—and to a smaller extent the United States—have reimagined Schurz as an icon human equality. The talk presents some of the limitations of Schurz's Republicanism. In the 1870s, Schurz led a Republican revolt turned against Reconstruction and African American Civil Rights and sought to implement brutal policies of forced assimilation against Indigenous peoples as U.S. Secretary of the Interior (1877-1881). As I show, Schurz not only inaugurated the federal off-reservation boarding schools and called for the privatization of communal reservation lands. At the same time, he had no qualms about authorizing the use of extreme force against Indigenous peoples—even going so far as to starve the White River Utes in Colorado.
On November 2, 2022, I presented as part of the "Legacies & Lunch" series at the CALS Roberts Library in Little Rock. My talk examined free land as an imaginary and as a policy in Arkansas from the 1830s to the 1920s and its impact on the state's history. While homesteading is far more often associated with the Great Plains than with the Deep South, and with the federal Homestead Act of 1862, Arkansas had already enacted its own land donation law in 1840. This state-level program remained active at least through the Reconstruction era and, following the passage of the 1862 act, (federal) homesteading also became a defining feature of rural Arkansas well into the 1920s.