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Making Michigan: A Lecture Series

Join us for the next free talk, and learn what U-M’s history means for its future!

Making Michigan explores the history of the University of Michigan from its origins in 1817 to the present.

These talks are offered from September-May by the Bentley Historical Library and hosted by the Judy and Stanley Frankel Detroit Observatory.

Audiences can attend in-person or online. Advance registration is encouraged.

Upcoming Lecture

Making Michigan

The Lost Campus: The University of Michigan’s Vanished but not Forgotten Spaces

  • Wednesday, December 30, 2026
  • 6:00 – 8:00 pm
  • Judy & Stanley Frankel Detroit Observatory
  • In-Person & Virtual

Join us for the next Making Michigan to learn about these stories and to explore a number of questions around writing about the University's history:

Go to Event

Watch Previous Lectures

Staff from the Bentley Historical Library and a group of Chinese archivists in Nanking, China.

Archiving the World: The Bentley Library and U-M’s International Aspirations

Watch Video
The 1962 U-M Baseball Team leaving a plane after returning from Japan.

Go, Blue: A History of Michigan Athletics and International Travel

Watch Video
African American U-M students picketing in support of the Black Action Movement in front of Hill Auditorium.

A Place for Politics, Protest, & Performance: Exploring the Hidden Histories of Hill Auditorium

Watch Video
Angell Hall seen from the southwest.

The Children’s Psychiatric Hospital at the University of Michigan, 1955 – 1990

Watch Video
Angell Hall seen from the southwest.

The Edmund Fitzgerald Investigations

Watch Video
Professor David Gerdes performs a physics demonstration using a plastic ball on a string.

Saturday Morning Physics: Thirty Years of Engaging, Educating, and Entertaining the Public

Watch Video
A yellow typewriter superimposed over a map of the U-M campus.

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

Watch Video
A map of Michigan showing its counties in 1842.

The 1817 Project: U-M’s Origins, Indigenous Lands, and Institutional (In)Action

Watch Video
Male and female medical students of the class of 1880 outside the U-M Hospital.

History, Power, and the Stories We Tell: Making Race, Space, and Memory at Michigan

Watch Video
Older lectures