Unboxing the Unexpected: The Notable and the Infamous in U-M’s Archives

May 15, 2025

Many think they know the stories of the famous and the infamous who have called U-M home, but campus archives reveal their hidden sides. And now writers are sharing insights into some of U-M’s most notable figures. Ted Kaczynski’s letters from prison. Dr. Jack Kevorkian’s private papers. Robben Fleming’s traumatizing wartime trials.

The 1817 Project: U-M’s Origins and Indigenous Lands

April 10, 2025

Signed on September, 1817, the Treaty of Fort Meigs ceded 4.6 million acres of Indigenous land to the United States, setting aside 1,920 acres for “the corporation of the college at Detroit”–the fledgling University of Michigan. This was just the beginning of U-M’s complex history with Michigan’s Native American communities.The 1817 Project research team will present four snapshots of their research into this history, spanning over 200 years, from a re-examination of U-M’s origins to Native American student organizing and activism, and a study of broader patterns of Native American student enrollment.

Stories We Tell: Race, Space, and Historical Memory at Michigan Medicine

March 27, 2025

Michigan Medicine is one of the University of Michigan’s oldest schools, educating future physicians since 1850. But institutional narratives have often erased the experiences of Black medical students—particularly those from its early years. CREATE Center postdoctoral research fellow Tonya Kneff-Chang will reveal how power has influenced the making and remaking of these historical accounts over time and explore through a series of walking tours she’s developed how those hidden stories are embedded in everyday spaces and how past struggles over race, class, and gender continue to influence U-M’s campus.