“Mark your memory of tired empty faces”: Doing History from the Bottom-up with the Down and Out
Dr. Nathan Tye
Assistant Professor of History
University of Nebraska at Kearney
Wednesday, October 16, 2019
7pm – Main Floor, C.T. Ryan Library
FREE and open to the public
Hobos, tramps and bums – men and women who hopped trains and lived on the road from the 1870s to 1930s – are notoriously difficult to pin down, as railroad police officers and the historians that followed can attest. Records are scant and fragmentary. Letters or diaries are few and far between. How then do historians study this marginalized community? Dr. Nathan Tye will discuss his research and methods and share rare and one-of-a-kind material from his private collection of hobo letters, diaries, and newspapers.
Flood on the Tracks: Living, Dying, and the Nature of Disaster in the Elkhorn River Basin
TODD M. KERSTETTER earned his Ph.D. in History at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln and is Professor of History at Texas Christian University. Kerstetter specializes in the history of the American West. His books include Inspiration and Innovation: Religion in the American West and God’s Country, Uncle Sam’s Land: Faith and Conflict in the American West. The latter examines religion’s role in conflicts between the United States and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Lakota Ghost Dancers, and the Branch Davidians. His most recent book, Flood on the Tracks: Living, Dying, and the Nature of Disaster in the Elkhorn River Basin was published earlier this year by Texas Tech University Press. He is currently writing an environmental history of water in Fort Worth and Dallas.
