Talking History

Talking History aims to bridge the gap between professional historians and the public through accessible, interesting, and even entertaining interviews and commentaries from the best people working in the field. It also brings past and present into focus with a regular segment on the history behind the news. The Organization of American Historians sponsors Talking History with a grant from The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.

Whether highlighting the construction of the first transcontinental railroad or considering the American romance with a horse called Seabiscuit, OAH/Talking History invites everyone to understand and enjoy history.

Executive Producer and Host: Bryan Le Beau
Producer: Fiona Beattie
Studio Engineer: Alex Smith

The Interviewers: Eileen Dugan

Eileen Dugan grew up in Houston, Texas. She received her BS in History from Texas Tech University and her MA and Ph.D. in Reformation History from Ohio State University. As a graduate student, Dugan was a Summer Fellow at the Center for Reformation Research Institute and a Fulbright Scholar to Germany.

After serving as Visiting Assistant Professor at Miami University (Ohio) for one year, Dugan came to Creighton in 1988. She has taught a wide range of courses, including those on the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Crusades, the Roman Republic, the Roman Empire, the history of Western Science, Tudor and Stuart England, and biography. Besides receiving several college grants for summer research and course development, Dugan was a Fellow to the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute at Duke University in 1995. Her research is primarily concerned with the development of religious ideals and societal attitudes in the early modern era.

John Herron:

John Herron is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Missouri in Kansas City. A native of Montana, he earned his Ph.D in history at the University of New Mexico. He an American social historian with a research and teaching emphasis in politics, a forthcoming book on environmental science, and is co-author of Human/Nature: Biology, Culture, and Environmental History.

James Madison:

James H. Madison is the Thomas and Kathryn Miller Professor of History and former chair of the Department of History, Indiana University, Bloomington. Among his publications are The Indiana Way: A State History and Eli Lilly: A Life. His new book, A Lynching in the Heartland: Race and Memory in America, was published by St. Martin's Press in fall, 2001.

At Indiana University Bloomington, Jim Madison teaches the freshman introductory course in United States history, a course in Indiana history, and two courses on World War II. In 1994, the University awarded Professor Madison its Sylvia E. Bowmen Distinguished Teaching Award. He has also taught, as a Fulbright Professor, at Hiroshima University, Japan, and at the University of Kent, Canterbury, England. In 2001 the Organization of American Historians named Professor Madison a Distinguished Lecturer. He is the recipient also of the Indiana Historical Society's Hoosier Historian Award and has been a fellow at Harvard University, the Newberry Library, and the Huntington Library.

Fred Nielsen

Fred Nielsen has been a member of the history department at the University of Nebraska at Omaha since 1992. He earned his M.Phil. and Ph.D. at the University of Kansas. He specializes in the nineteenth and twentieth century U.S., especially its cultural, intellectual, and environmental history. He has offered a wide variety of courses at UNO, including American Cultural and Intellectual history, American Environmental History, The Civil War and Reconstruction, The United States since 1945, America in the Sixties, and U.S. History Viewed Right and Left.

Nielsen is a member of the American Historical Association, the Organization of American Historians, the American Studies Association, the American Society for Environmental History, and the Thoreau Society. He is also a member of the Nebraska Humanities Council's Speakers' Bureau and the executive board of the Nebraska State Council for the Social Studies. He has served on several advisory groups for the Omaha Public Schools, including one that recently reviewed the K-12 social studies curriculum. His works in progress include Doubters in the Land of Plenty, an intellectual and environmental history of the limits to growth movement in the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and Emily, his school-age daughter.

Linna Place

Linna Place is a Research Associate Professor of History at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and directs the external competitive fellowship application process at UMKC. She earned her Masterâ??s degree in American Folklife at Cooperstown Graduate Programs, a program that prepares students to work as professionals in historical agencies and institutions. She earned her Ph.D. in American Studies at the University of Kansas in 1989.
Her teaching and research interests include material culture, American social and cultural history, and museum studies. She has published in the area of social gerontology as well as curatorial essays in the field of American folk art. In addition to teaching, she continues to work as an educational and programming consultant with museums

If you are interested in carrying OAH/Talking History on a regular basis, please let us know, and contact either the host, Bryan Le Beau, or producer, Fiona Beattie at talkinghistory@umkc.edu or call 816-235-2975. To find out more visit: http://talkinghistory.oah.org/