Nathan and Jeanette Miller Center for Historical Studies
The Miller Center brings together faculty, graduate students, undergraduates, and staff within the University of Maryland as well as scholars and teachers throughout the state of Maryland and the larger region to discuss important historical issues.
The Center's Goals
The Center was established in 1999 to create a flourishing environment for the study of history at the University of Maryland. In 2006, the Center was renamed the Nathan and Jeanette Miller Center for Historical Studies to honor the generous endowment of two Maryland alumni who took a special interest in history.
The Miller Center brings together faculty, graduate students, undergraduates, and staff within the University as well as scholars and teachers throughout the state of Maryland and the larger region to discuss important historical issues, both old and new, from ancient times to the present, and pertinent to all areas of the world, from the US and Europe to Latin America, Africa, and Asia. Through such discussions, the Miller Center hopes to increase an appreciation of the importance of historical knowledge in the education of citizens, to underline the significance of universities in producing and disseminating new ways of exploring the world, and to generate excitement about the processes of intellectual inquiry, exchange, and debate.
Every year the Miller Center runs a seminar series on its annual theme. It sponsors scholarly conferences and works-in-progress seminars with faculty members and it also awards research grants.
For more information or to join our email list, email millercenter@umd.edu.
Events View All Miller Center and History Department Events
Schedule of Events 2025-26
Forthcoming.
Past Events
Spring 2025
Priya Satia
History and Modern Conscience: Evidence from the British Empire
Tuesday, February 4, 2025
Sylwia Kuźma-Markowska
Benevolent Western Sponsors? Transnational Exchanges of the Polish Anti-Abortion Movement (1970s – 1990s)
Thursday, February 27, 2025
Francis Scott Key Hall, 2120
Simone Paoli
European Integration and Internation Migration: A Historical Perspective
Wednesday, March 12, 2025
Bernard Cooperman, Serena Di Nepi, and Germano Maifreda
Jews and State Building: Early Modern Italy and Beyond
Monday, March 24, 2025
Francis Scott Key Hall, 1117 and over Zoom
Omer Bartov and Shibley Telhami
Making Sense of Mass Atrocities: The Meanings of Genocide in Historical and Contemporary Contexts
Monday, April 7, 2025
Shoemaker Building, 2102
Jeremy Simmons and Peter Wien
Reckoning with Time: A Conversation
Wednesday, April 23, 2025
Fall 2024:
Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky
Empire of Refugees: North Caucasian Muslims and the Late Ottoman Empire
Taliaferro Hall, 2110
Wednesday, September 18, 2024
François Hartog, Dana Sajdi, Marek Tamm
Time of the Anthropocene: A Roundtable Discussion
Wednesday, October 2, 2024
Tiffany Nichols
The Search for Stillness: Attempts to Transform Environments Laboratories and the Early History of Site Selection of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory
Taliaferro Hall, 2110
Wednesday, October 30, 2024
Developing Assignments in History: A Roundtable Conversation
Monday, November 18. 2024
Yuachong Wang
Realigning Modernity: Calendars, Competing Regimes, and State-Building Blueprints in Republican China, 1912-49
Tuesday, December 3, 2024
Spring 2024:
Sarah Cameron and Jayson Porter
"Environmental History Beyond Academia: Cotton, Storytelling, Environmental Justice"
University of Maryland
Tuesday, March 26, 2024
12:15 PM
Patrick Chung
"Ending the Korean War: Political Education and Permanent War"
University of Maryland
Thursday, April 4, 2024
4:00 PM
Maren Poitras
"Finding the Money"
University of Maryland
Tuesday, April 16, 2024
4:00 PM\
Fall 2023:
Antoine Borrut and Michele Lamprakos
University of Maryland
Thursday, October 19, 2023
12:30 PM
Taliaferro 2110
"History, Memory, and Oblivion in Medieval Islam"
Katrina Keane and Mircea Raianu
University of Maryland
Wednesday, October 25, 2023
4:00 PM
Paul Landau and André Odendaal
University of Maryland
Thursday, November 9th, 2023
12:30 PM
Taliaferro 2110
David Mwambari
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium
Thursday, December 7th, 2023
12:30 PM
Online on Zoom
"The Politics of Vernacular Memory in Post-Colonial African Contexts"
Spring 2023:
László Jakab Orsós
Vice President of Arts & Culture,
Brooklyn Public Library
Friday, February 10, 2023
12:00 PM
on Zoom only
Christen Mucher
Associate Professor of American Studies,
Smith College
Thursday, February 23, 2023
4:00 PM
Taliaferro 2110 and on Zoom (hybrid)
"Before American History: Unsettling Indigeneity in the Early US and Mexico"
Areej Sabbagh-Khoury
Senior Lecturer of Sociology and Anthropology,
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Thursday, March 2, 2023
12:00 PM
on Zoom only
"Citizenship as Accumulation by Dispossession: The Case of Palestinian Indigenous"
Elizabeth Rule
Assistant Professor of Critical Race, Gender, and Cultural Studies,
American University
Monday, March 13, 2023
4:00 PM
Taliaferro 2110 and on Zoom (hybrid)
Krista Goff
Associate Professor of History,
University of Miami
Monday, April 17, 2023
4:00 PM
Taliaferro 2110 and on Zoom (hybrid)
"Indigeneity, Ethnogenesis, and Power Politics in the Soviet Caucasus"
Fall 2022:
Michael Zakim
Tel-Aviv University
September 19, 2022 @ 12 noon
Taliaferro 2110 and on Zoom (hybrid)
"Paper and Power: On the Phenomenology of Accounting Books, Statistical Tables, and Photographs"
Fei-Hsien Wang
Indiana University, Bloomington
October 7, 2022 @ 12 noon
Taliaferro 2110 and on Zoom (hybrid)
"Why Alternative Histories Are More Popular: China's Post-Imperial Fantasies"
Corinna Zeltsman
Princeton University
October 21, 2022 @ 12 noon
Taliaferro 2110 and on Zoom (hybrid)
Jessica Ratcliff
Princeton University
October 28, 2022 @ 12 noon
on Zoom
Spring 2022:
Alexander Rehding
Harvard University
February 18, 2022 @ 12 noon
2110 Taliaferro Hall
"In the Ears of the Beholder: From Grooves to Music on the Voyager Golden Record"
Jennifer Morgan
New York University
March 11, 2022 @ 12 noon
On Zoom
Reckoning with Slavery: Gender, Kinship, and Capitalism in the Early Black Atlantic
Jeffrey Herf
University of Maryland
April 12, 2022 @ 12 noon
On Zoom
"Israel's Moment: International Support for and Opposition to Establishing the Jewish State, 1945–1949"; book link HERE
Mircea Raianu
University of Maryland
April 28, 2022 @ 12 noon
On Zoom
"Tata: The Global Corporation that Built Indian Capitalism"; book link HERE
Christine Kirschner
University of Maryland
May 6, 2022 @ 12 noon
2110 Taliaferro
"The Archives on the Moon: A Reflection on Digital Historical Research during the COVID-19 Pandemic"
Academic Year 2020-21:
Director
Christopher Bonner
Associate Professor, History
2122 Taliaferro Hall
College Park
MD,
20742