Earth and Mineral Sciences

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — Shannon Speed, Paula Gunn Allen Chair and professor of American Indian studies, gender studies and anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), will deliver the Penn State Department of Geography’s annual E. Willard and Ruby S. Miller Endowed Lecture at noon on Friday, Oct. 23, in the Foster Auditorium at Penn State University Park and via Zoom.

Her talk, “Indigenous Women and Violence: Thinking Beyond Settler Capitalism,” will examine the persistent nature of violence against Native women and discuss how combining a human rights framework with strengthened tribal sovereignty may help combat that violence and hold settler states accountable.

Drawing on ethnographic and archival research across projects spanning two decades, Speed will share insights from her work on human rights, violence against Indigenous women and Chickasaw sovereignty in the context of settler capitalism.

Speed also serves as director of UCLA’s American Indian Studies Center and special adviser to the chancellor on Native American and Indigenous affairs. Her research spans three decades in Mexico and the United States and focuses on Indigenous rights, gender, neoliberalism, violence, migration and activist research.

Her books include the 2020 award-winning “Incarcerated Stories: Indigenous Women Migrants and Violence in the Settler Capitalist State” and the 2021 co-edited volume “Heightened States of Injustice: Activist Research on Indigenous Women and Violence” She is currently working on a book, “Chickasaw Spring: Law and Resurgent Sovereignty in a Native Nation”.

The Department of Geography Miller Lecture Series is designed to bring eminent geographers to Penn State and is a gift to the department from the late E. Willard and Ruby S. Miller. E. W. Miller was a professor of geography, department head and associate dean emeritus in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences. Ruby Miller, his wife, significantly contributed as a teacher, artist and geographer, especially in establishing the department’s map collection that was foundational to the Hamer Maps Library.

The Miller Lecture is typically held during the spring semester. Speed’s lecture, originally scheduled for March 27, was postponed and rescheduled for this fall.