Robert G. Bone Lecture Series

The Department of History is excited to announce the next Robert G. Bone Distinguished Lecturer, Dr. Peter Fritzsche! Dr. Fritsche is the W.D. and Sara E. Trowbridge Professor in History at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Please save the date for this engaging lecture on Thursday, April 17, 2025 at 6:00 pm in Schroeder Hall 130. Stay tuned for more information!

The Robert G. Bone Distinguished Lecturer Series was established by the late Illinois State University President Robert G. Bone (1956-1967). Shared by the Departments of History, Politics and Government, and Sociology & Anthropology, it enables these departments to bring distinguished scholars to Illinois State University to deliver a public lecture and to meet with faculty and students. This year’s event will be funded by ISU Foundation on behalf of the Department of History.

2023-2024 Bone Lecture to offer postcolonial historical sociology of militarized policing in Britain and the U.S.

Dr. Julian Go, professor and director of Graduate Studies and faculty affiliate in the Center for the Study of Race, Politics & Culture at the University of Chicago, will be giving a public talk on his new book, Policing Empires: Militarization, Race, and the Imperial Boomerang in Britain and the U.S., 1829-present, as the Robert G. Bone Distinguished Lecturer for 2024 on March 28, at 6 p.m. at the Bone Student Center, Old Main Room. The event is free and open to the public.
2022-2023 Stranger in the Shogun’s City: Dr. Amy Stanley to present Bone Distinguished Lecture, April 13

Pulitzer Prize-nominated author and scholar Dr. Amy Stanley will deliver Illinois State University’s Robert G. Bone Distinguished Lecture. Stanley, professor of history at Northwestern University, will present Stranger in the Shogun’s City: Modern History from the Archive to the Page.
2019-2020 Bone Lecture to feature Pulitzer Prize-nominated historian W. Fitzhugh Brundage

W. Fitzhugh Brundage, an eminent U.S. historian and author of Civilizing Torture: An American Tradition, will present the Robert G. Bone Distinguished Lecture at 7 p.m. Thursday, November 14, in...
2018-2019 Migrant deaths in the desert topic of Robert G. Bone lecture, February 20

Jason De León, scholar and author of The Land of Open Graves: Living and Dying on the Migrant Trail, will focus his talk on a United States border enforcement strategy.

Robert G. Bone Lecture Series

Previous Bone Lecture Series events

2023-2024 Bone Lecture to offer postcolonial historical sociology of militarized policing in Britain and the U.S.

2022-2023 Stranger in the Shogun’s City: Dr. Amy Stanley to present Bone Distinguished Lecture, April 13

2019-2020 Bone Lecture to feature Pulitzer Prize-nominated historian W. Fitzhugh Brundage

2018-2019 Migrant deaths in the desert topic of Robert G. Bone lecture, February 20