Lissa Wadewitz, associate professor of history at Linfield College, will present “A Whale of a Story: Sex, Lies and Testimony in the Nineteenth-Century Pacific World,” on Wednesday, Feb. 15, at 7 p.m. in 201 Riley Hall at Linfield.
Wadewitz will discuss the 1860 Enos v. Sowle case in which two islander cabin boys, Manuel Enos and Manuel Vierra, charged Captain Nathaniel Sowle of the American whaleship, the Montreal, with repeated counts of sodomy. The court found Captain Sowle guilty, but Sowle proclaimed it was simply a conspiracy by his crew. Wadewitz will explore what historians do when archival evidence equally supports completely different version of past events and how they decipher the worst handwriting from sources that may reveal the truth.
Wadewitz has been on the faculty at Linfield College since 2006. She received a bachelor of arts in Asian studies from Pomona College, a master of arts and Ph.D. in history from the University of California and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University. Her book, “The Nature of Borders: Salmon and Boundaries in the Salish Sea,” was published in 2012 and received the Albert B. Core Prize in 2014.
The lecture is free and open to the public. The Linfield College faculty lecture series offers one presentation each month. For more information, call 503-883-2409.
Learn more from this interview with Prof. Wadewitz.
