Troubling Intimacies: Sacajawea & York as National Subjects 

headshot of white woman with long dark hair and silver hoop earrings
October 27, 2021 - 4:30 PM

Clark Hall Room 206
11130 Bellflower Road

Troubling Intimacies focuses on the unique subjects of Sacajawea and York, an Indigenous woman and a Black man, indentured and enslaved participants in the 1804-1806 Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery expedition. The Corps expedition is revered as an iconic example of American identity. Yet the presence of Sacajawea and York have been problematic for how the expedition is narrated, understood, taught, and marketed. Is the Corps a site of remorse or celebration? What happens when we retrace the expedition alongside complex relations of gender, slavery and conquest?  And how do we do intersectional scholarship that is intersectional?  Pillow, chair and professor, Gender Studies, University of Utah,  discusses these challenges offering some theoretical and methodological possibilities that occur when looking at the imbrications of colonial gender and racialized governmentality in U.S. identity, policy, and culture.  Dr. Pillow is a 2022 Hildegarde and Elbert Baker Visiting Scholar in the Humanities.

Registration requested.  Click HERE to register.

This lecture will also be live-streamed at www.case.edu/livestream/s2.



Increasing COVID-19 cases within Northeast Ohio have prompted Case Western Reserve to resume its requirement that masks be worn indoors. In addition, only those who are fully vaccinated (two weeks past their final dose) should attend any campus event. Leaders continue to monitor pandemic developments and may need to adjust health protocols further as circumstances warrant. In-person is subject to change based on COVID-19 guidelines.