Miami Presents: Objects that Changed the World - Earthworks with Sandra Garner

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Objects that Changed the World is a collaboration between the Miami University Humanities Center and the Alumni Association. Featuring Miami’s nationally recognized faculty in the humanities, each lecture is inspired by an object of such prevalence today it might be easily overlooked and develops original insights and novel lessons about the object in question. We invite all alumni to reconnect with faculty and to show their support for the Humanities Center’s mission to advocate for the central place of the humanities in both the university and wider society. If you are interested in financially supporting the Humanities Center and programs like these, please visit: www.givetomiamioh.org/HumanitiesCenter.

Earthworks with Sandra Garner

More than 2,000 years ago the Indigenous inhabitants of this land undertook a project of ambitious proportions; the construction of monumental architecture made from the earth.  Remnants of these endeavors scatter the U.S. east of the Mississippi River from the Gulf to the Great Lakes.  But the focus of this talk will center on the Newark Earthworks, one of the largest, best preserved, and most precise geometrical earthwork complexes in the world.  The enduring legacy of this achievement puts the Newark Earthworks on the short list of contenders for UNESCO World Heritage designation as a site of universal value.

Sandra Garner is an Associate Professor of Global and Intercultural Studies at Miami University and the Coordinator of American Studies. She has developed an interactive and long-term research partnership with the Eastern Shawnee Tribe of Oklahoma (ESTOO).  Dr. Garner is a past Heanon Wilkins fellow at Miami University (2010-2012), a recipient of the National Endowment of the Humanities Summer Stipend Award (2013), and was was an Altman Scholar in 2013-2014 ("Globalization and Belonging") and 2020-2021.

The presentation is free to watch online, but registration is required.  Please reach out to J.J. Slager, slagerjj@miamioh.edu, with questions.