Follett Lecture

Lecture date and time to be announced.

Cutcha Risling Baldy is an associate professor and department chair of Native American Studies at Cal Poly Humboldt.

Dr. Risling Baldy researches Indigenous feminisms, California Indians, Traditional Ecological Knowledge and decolonization. She is the co-director of the NAS Food Sovereignty Lab & Traditional Ecological Knowledges Institute and co-investigator on an NSF INCLUDES Planning Grant for inclusive STEM pedagogy for Native American Students at Humboldt. She is also the Local Evaluator for a California Department of Public Health Reducing Health Disparities Project: the ACORN Youth Wellness Program with Two Feathers Native American Family Services.

Dr. Risling Baldy’s book We Are Dancing For You: Native feminisms and the revitalization of women's coming-of-age ceremonies received "Best First Book in Native American and Indigenous Studies" at the 2019 Native American Indigenous Studies Association Conference. She received her PhD in Native American Studies at UC Davis; her MFA in Creative Writing from San Diego State University; and her BA in Psychology with a Specialization in Health and Development from Stanford University. She is also the volunteer executive Ddrector for the Native Women’s Collective, a nonprofit organization that focuses on the continued revitalization of Native American arts and culture.

Dr. Risling Baldy is Hupa, Karuk, and Yurok and enrolled in the Hoopa Valley Tribe. She lives in Northern California with her family and a puppy named Buffy.

• The 2020–2022 Follett Chair Ebony Elizabeth Thomas presented "The Shadow Book: Reading Slavery, Fugitivity, and Freedom in Children’s Books and Media"
  • Watch the 2022 Lecture
• The 2020–2021 Follett Chair, Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, and author Renée Watson presented “Fantastic Black Girlhoods: A Conversation with Ebony Elizabeth Thomas and Renée Watson” on March 29, 2021.
• The 2019–2020 Follett Chair, Bernard Reilly, presented "Money, Technology, Politics and the Future of Memory Institutions" on April 20, 2020. Reilly also presented a spring 2020 lecture series: "Memory Institutions and Digital Evidence in a Civil Society."
  • Watch the 2020 Follett Lecture with Bernard Reilly
  • Watch the Spring 2020 Lecture Series with Bernard Reilly
• The 2018–2019 Follett Chair, Verne Harris, presented "A Time to Remember, A Time to Forget: Fred Hampton, Nelson Mandela and the Work of Memory" on April 16, 2019.
• The 2017–18 Follett Chair, Andrew Dillon, presented “Shaping a Better Information Space: Putting Humans at the Center of Our World” on April 26, 2018.
• The 2016–2017 Follet Chair is David Lankes, who delivered 2017 Lecture, "The Social Responsibility of the Library and the Librarian in a Post-Factual World" on April 12, 2017 with a respondent panel of Nicole A. Cooke, Miguel Figueroa, and Scott Walter.
• The 2014–2016 Follett Chair is Dr. Janice M. Del Negro, who presented "A 'Belligerent Profession:' Telling the Library Story" on April 8, 2015 and "The All-White World of Children's Librarianship: Baker, Rollins, and the Quest for Diversity" on April 13, 2016.
• Mary Minow, Follett Chair from 2012 through 2014, presented "Copyright in the Digital Age" on April 15, 2013, "Ebooks and the Reader" on March 13, 2012, and "The Right to Control? Writing and Publishing Religious Works" with special insights from Sr. Janet Welsh on April 29, 2014.