The professor of history's public lecture was in conjunction with Marshall University's Graduate Humanties Program, which brings nationally prominent scholars to campus to work with graduate students and deliver a public lecture.
Clyde Ellis, professor of history, delivered the third annual Major Scholar Lecture at Marshall UIniversity on March 10. Ellis, a nationally renowned scholar whose research focuses on contemporary American Indian culture and identity, delivered a lecture titled “Powwow as Ethnohistory: Traditions of Change and Adaptation.”
As part of the lecture, Ellis used two current research projects — one on gendered space in Oklahoma powwow culture, and one on the incorporation of tribally and regionally specific practices into the powwow — to examine how and with what consequnces Native communities use the powwow as a form of gathering that speaks to the tensions between tradition and innovation.
The lecture was delivered in conjunction with a graduate seminar on contemporary Native identities, and was sponsored by the Marshall University Graduate Humanities Program, the Marshall University Department of History, and the Glenwood Center fror Scholarship in the Humanities.