Tea Talks: No Man's Land

Dr. Jane Simonsen, professor of history, will present the Tea Talk "No Man's Land."

Abstract: An 1824 federal treaty set aside land in what is now southern Iowa for mixed-race individuals — those with a Sauk or Meskwaki mother and a Euro-American father. Scholars have looked at the convoluted history of this tract of land, but none have attended to the role of gender and intimate relations as they intersect with changing perceptions of race.

This presentation will recover the stories of some of the mixed-race women who laid claim to this land, and whose stories have been overwritten by laws that subsume women’s identities in their husbands’, by sentimental notions of "half-breed" sexuality or romance that cover up financial motives, by a public mythology of the "Vanishing Indian," and by histories that privilege men’s public and legal transactions over women’s private and intimate ones.

Now entering its 12th year, the Tea Talks lecture series features speakers on a range of topics. The series is sponsored by the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program.

All lectures are held from 4:15 p.m.-5:15 p.m.

Lectures are free and open to the public as well as the campus community.