The Kaplan Lecture Committee (Abby Chabitnoy, Laura Furlan, Ruth Jennison, Jimmy Worthy, and Asha Nadkarni, Chair) is delighted to announce our 25^th Annual Kaplan Lecture in American Studies. This year’s lecture, “The Night the Stars Fell” will be given by Professor Philip Deloria (Harvard) on November 13, 2025 at 4:30 in the Bromery Fine Arts Center Lobby. Professor Deloria will also be doing a workshop for graduate students on 11/13 from 1:00-2:30 in E370 – stay tuned for more information about that. 

Professor Deloria’s talk will be given 192 years to the date of the 1833 annual Leonid meteor showers, when, in the early morning between November 12 and 13, meteors fell in such abundance, frequency, and size that people across North America ran from their homes to contemplate the celestial light show. As Professor Deloria reveals in this talk, the event appears in a diverse array of memory and writing from across the continent, calling into question epistemological assumptions about faith, reason, and nature.

Philip J. Deloria is the Leverett Saltonstall Professor of History at Harvard University. He is the author of Playing Indian(1998), Indians in Unexpected Places (2004), and Becoming Mary Sully: Toward an American Indian Abstract(2019). He is also co-author (with Alexander Olson) of American Studies: A User’s Guide (2017). Professor Deloria is the former president of the American Studies Association, the Organization of American Historians, and the Society of American Historians, and an elected member of the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.