"Pressing Matters" Lecture Series - Fall 2026 Events
Monday, September 14, 2026 from 12:30-1:50pm in 1008 Humanities.
Presentation by Molly Todd, Managing Editor of the Oral History Review
Oral History Work In & With Communities: Essential Tools for Documenting Long Island Perspectives on 9-11.
Part of "In the Shadows of the Twin Towers" A yearlong commemoration marking the 25th anniversary of 9/11.
Molly Todd draws on her experience as an oral historian and community-based researcher in conflict zones to share some tools relevant for SBU's "In the Shadows of the Twin Towers" project. Among the topics she discusses are trauma-informed oral history and the ethics of community engagement after violence.
Molly Todd is a historian specializing in Central American refugee experiences, human rights, and historical memory. Her books and articles feature oral history, public history, and community-based research methods. She is currently an editor at The Oral History Review.
Tuesday, September 22, 2026 from 2:00-3:30pm in 1008 Humanities.
Presentation by Floridalma Boj López/UCLA
Indigenous Archives: The Maya Diaspora and Mobile Cultural Production
Floridalma Boj López will talk about her new book Indigenous Archives, where she discusses how young Guatemalan Mayas in Los Angeles and Guatemala make sense of and respond to transnational structures of settler colonialism. Drawing on in-depth analysis of cultural production and interviews with Guatemalan Maya youth and young adults, Floridalma Boj Lopez examines how Mayas in diaspora craft and circulate narratives about their experiences across borders. Boj López invites her audience to consider Indigeneity as a process, lived experience, and historical perspective, rather than as a static identity, and shows how extending analysis across borders is critical to understanding Latinidad and Indigeneity.
Floridalma Boj López is Assistant Professor in the Department of Chicana/o and Central American Studies at the University of California, Los Ángeles. In January 2026, she published her first book Indigenous Archives: The Maya Diaspora and Mobile Cultural Production with Duke University Press. Originally from Guatemala City, she grew up in Los Angeles, where she also received her Ph.D. in American Studies and Ethnicity from the University of Southern California. Her research interests include Indigenous Studies, Central American Studies, Transborder Indigenous Studies, and Critical Ethnic Studies.
Monday, November 9, 2026 from 5:00-6:30pm in 1008 Humanities
Presentation by Emily Winderman /University of Minnesota
Back-Alley Abortion: A Rhetorical History
In this presentation, Emily Winderman traces the emergence and surprising transformations of the phrase “back-alley abortion” in US popular, medical, and legal discourse. Through rigorous archival research and cunning rhetorical analysis, Winderman reveals how the term back-alley, which was initially associated with Progressive Era anxieties about sanitation, urban reform, and racial categorization, has endured as a powerful symbolic and affective weapon in contemporary struggles over women’s health care access and reproductive justice.
Emily Winderman is an Assistant Professor of Rhetoric at University of Minnesota. She specializes in the rhetorical study of health and medicine. Her research is attentive to a wide range of historical and contemporary topics surrounding reproductive healthcare and infectious disease. Her topics of study include birth control, family planning, abortion care, and birthing practices. She generally approaches these topical areas through the theoretical affordances of feminist theory, affect theory, rhetorical history, public address, and reproductive justice frameworks. Along with being the author of Back-Alley Abortion: A Rhetorical History, Winderman is also the co-editor (with Allison L. Rowland and Jennifer Malkowski) of Covid and…How to Do Rhetoric in a Pandemic (University of Michigan Press, 2023). Her essays and research articles can be found in Quarterly Journal of Speech, Women’s Studies in Communication, Rhetoric of Health and Medicine, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, and other venues.