Join us for discussion with Professor de la Cruz about the historical relationship between the University of Michigan and the Philippines in the first decades of the American colonial period, out of which came some of the most extensive collections of Philippine material (historical, cultural, and natural scientific) in North America. Professor de la Cruz will introduce two collaborative projects by U of M faculty and students being carried out to recognize and repair the harm caused by these collections at all levels, including in their acquisition, representation, contextualization, stewardship, and use. The event will be followed by tours of the historic Detroit Observatory, with observing if weather permits.

Deirdre de la Cruz is Associate Professor of History and Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Michigan. She is an historian and cultural anthropologist of the Philippines, with an interest in the transformation of religious sensibilities, beliefs, and phenomena in modernity. She is the author of the book Mother Figured: Marian Apparitions and the Making of a Filipino Universal (University of Chicago Press, 2015), and several articles on religion in the Philippines. Her current projects include a scholarly book on the history of faith healing in the Philippines, an edited volume on religious diversity in the Philippines, and two plays, one on the legacies of Filipinos who fought in WWII, and another that tells the history of Christianity through the eyes of its apostates. In the last few years, Deirdre has turned her attention to the vast collections of Philippine materials at the University of Michigan and an exploration of related questions and concerns, including affect as archival object and archival method, translingualism in the imperial archives, and how to decenter the US in US empire studies.