Dayo Mitchell

Assistant Professor of History

Dayo Mitchell Hometown: Sacramento, California.

Education: B.A. from Williams College, M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Virginia.

Book in progress: The Ambiguous Distinctions of Descent: Free People of Color and Citizenship in Trinidad and Dominica, 1800-1838.

Why history: I think I read too many historical novels as a child. That's my theory. And then I just kept with it and really liked it. I mean, I actually really love the archives, looking at the old pieces of paper and reading the old handwriting. I love the stories and the characters that you can bring out of all those old pieces of paper.

On teaching in the Robert Donald Clark Honors College: I can push the students. They all come in with the basics. . . . I can throw out questions and be confident that my students are going to take this broad question in different directions. They will actually open us up to new insights that we wouldn't have gotten just from reading the text ourselves.

Dream courses to teach: A wish list for the future includes: The Colonizer's Children: Race-Mixing in Empires; Shakespeare in Historical Context; Why the French Hate the British and Vice Versa; and The History of Sugar.

What every UO student needs to know: It's okay to take risks. Students seem very conflicted about having to do everything right and a lot of the stuff that we are trying to do at the honors college is to push them out on a limb and experiment a little bit more.

Hobbies: I try to take dance classes: African and belly dance. I cheer for the Trinidad World Cup soccer team.

Why the UO: It's a really good fit for me. I came out of a small liberal arts college and that was what I was envisioning as a professor. The honors college has this colloquium structure where the upper-division courses are pretty unregimented, so there is a lot of freedom in teaching. It's an impressive job for me.


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