2006-2007 Speakers Bureau Catalog
DEBBIE KMETZ (No longer available)
Debbie Kmetz has spent 26 years working with local historians thoughout the state on cooperative exhibits, historical bus tours, and oral history projects, first as local history specialist with the Wisconsin Historical Society and now as an independent scholar. She also served as co-host of "Wisconsin Stories" for two seasons on Wisconsin Public Television. In 1992, Kmetz was awarded a Smithsonian Institution Fellowship to study the nature of visual communication in history exhibits.
Address: 606 W. Olin Ave., Madison, WI 53715
E-mail: kmetz@ireland.com
Almost Beyond Description
"Almost beyond description ..." These are words written by Lucy Hastings in 1855 as she described her first encounter with a broad expanse of prairie on her way from Massachusetts to her new home in Wisconsin. Others, too, have left a record of their experiences in Wisconsin, from nineteenth-century Ojibwe elders to twentieth-century African American industrial workers, from a British surveyor to Croatian settlers. Using diaries, letters, surveyors' accounts, oral histories, speeches, and television scripts, this presentation will look at episodes in Wisconsin history through the firsthand accounts of people who have lived in and traveled through the state.
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