Daily Jefferson County Union – Posted: Tuesday, February 16, 2016

The Fort Atkinson Club community center has announced the topics and speakers for its 2016 spring lecture series.

Ranging from exploring Yellowstone Park and country music during World War II to a new history of the Black Hawk War, the lectures will take place at 7:30 p.m. on six Tuesdays from March through May at the Fort Atkinson Club, 211 S. Water St. East.

Organizing the talks are Ben Knowles and Holly Robinson. The lectures are free of charge, although donations always are welcomed.

Kicking off the lecture series on Tuesday, March 1, will be Dr. George Clokey speaking on “Exploring Yellowstone: Fire, Ice and Buffalo Chips.”

Clokey is a neurobiologist and molecular cell biologist at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. His research interests include a wide range of field and lab sciences ranging from molecular biology to animal behavior to climate change.

Dr. Clokey has been conducting university level classes in geology, ecology and natural history in Yellowstone National Park since 1990. He will discuss many of the features of the park, discuss some of the ecological and environmental problems it currently faces, and show the sites his classes visit between Wisconsin and Wyoming, including the Black Hills and Devils Tower.

Attendees will have ample opportunity to quiz him about the park and examine plaster track casts and other artifacts from these trips.

Future talks include:

• March 15, 7:00 PM: “Country Music and World War II,” presented by Bill and Bobbie Malone.

The post-World War II years marked an important era in the development of country music, during which time bluegrass was born, honky-tonk music entered a golden age, and popular and commercial interest surged. The war itself also profoundly affected country musicians and informed the music of the time.

In this combined lecture and musical performance, Bill Malone, one of the first and foremost scholars of American country music, and his wife, Bobbie Malone, will present songs and commentary dealing with country musicians’ reactions to World War II.

This lecture/performance will begin early at 7 p.m. (this week only) and then be followed by a country/oldtime jam session at 8 p.m. Bring an acoustic instrument and a tune to share!

Bill C. Malone is a renowned historian and scholar specializing in country music and other forms of traditional American music. He is the author of the 1968 book “Country Music, U.S.A.,” widely considered to be the first definitive academic history of country music. Malone is professor emeritus of history at Tulane University and now resides in Madison, where he hosts “Back to the Country,” a popular weekly radio show on WORT 89.9 FM.

• March 29, 7:30 PM: “Parenting Styles and Children’s Health Behavior Development,” presented by Brandi Niemeier.

Research studies from across the globe suggest that individuals’ dietary and physical activity habits are related to their parents’ habits. Therefore, it seems prudent that health promotion professionals target parents’ dietary and physical activity habits in order to help improve health for entire families.

However, the relationships of parents’ and their children’s life-long behavior patterns depend much more on parenting styles and discipline techniques than once was realized. Furthermore, parents are not the only influences in children’s lives.

In this session, Brandi Niemeier will share findings from her recent studies of parental behaviors and will demonstrate how some pa­rental factors could contribute to the development of children’s life-long dietary and physical activity patterns. In addition, she will provide a sneak preview of a new line of research that adds cultural influences to the mix in a way that has not been explored before.

Niemeier is an assistant professor of health promotion at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. Her expertise is in community health promotion and health programming, and her research includes studies of health behavior development, especially related to the influences of cultures and parenting styles.

She teaches students in the Health, Human Performance and Recreation major program and Health Promotion minor program at UW-Whitewater.

• April 12, 7:30 PM: “First Past the Post and Public Opinion: Do Early Primaries Matter?” presented by Jolly Emrey.

It’s a Presidential Election year and common wisdom states that winning early primaries matters for candidates in many ways, especially when it comes to public perception and public opinion. This talk will explore how much of the common wisdom is true, according to political scientists, and whether or not this election is really all that different from past
primary races.

Jolly Emrey is an Associate Professor and Chair of the Political Science Department at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, as well as the Director of the Center for Political Science and Public Policy Research there. Her primary research and teaching interests include U.S. law, courts, and public policy, and state and local government.

April 26, 7:30 PM: “The Rock River Ho-Chunk Indians and the Black Hawk War: A New History,” presented by Libby Tronnes.

Many in Fort Atkinson know something about the so-called Black Hawk War. Perhaps you know that Black Hawk did not know this place nor did he call it home; this area was home to the Ho-Chunk people (formerly known as Winnebago) until the Rock River band was forced to cede it to the United States immediately after the war.

But do you know why the Rock River Ho-Chunk lost their lands as a result of the 1832 conflict? Do you know the role this band played in the conflict between Black Hawk’s band and the Americans? Are the names White Crow or Whirling Thunder as familiar to you as Black Hawk, Henry Dodge or Henry Atkinson?

Traditional histories of the Black Hawk War all but ignore Ho-Chunk Indians as central actors in shaping this conflict, or portray them as villains, treacherous enemies planning a secret pan-Indian war against the Americans.

This commonplace interpretation justifies Ho-Chunk land loss and their forced removals from the region just months after Black Hawk’s surrender. And for 184 years, this narrative has obscured a far more compelling and entertaining story about what the Ho-Chunk Indians were really up to during this well-armed chase through their homelands.

Come learn a new history of the Black Hawk War, one where heroes are not the likes of Henry Dodge, but Indians such as White Crow, a Rock River Ho-Chunk orator who once lived in a populous village on the northwest shore of Koshkonong.

Libby Tronnes teaches courses on American Indian history and Wisconsin history, as well as U.S. and world history at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. She is completing her Ph.D. in history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her research focuses on Ho-Chunk removals from and returns to their ancestral homelands in Wisconsin during the nineteenth century.

May 10, 7:30 PM: “Moneypocalypse 2016: Dissecting the Local Economy Against the Backdrop of the National Election,” presented by Genevieve Coady.

With election season in full swing and issues of economic policy once again in the forefront of public consciousness, it as an opportune time to reflect on how these policies impact the economy at the local level.

Concentrating on prominent economic themes in the current presidential race, including tax policy, wealth creation, job creation, and minimum and living wages, Coady, executive director of the Jefferson County Economic Development Consortium, will provide a useful pre-election primer, in which Jefferson County will serve as a test case for economic policy changes at the national level.

Coady, PhD, AICP, has built her career aiming to merge community planning with data by bridging real world experience with research expertise. Prior to joining the Jefferson County Economic Development Consortium in Wisconsin, Coady’s included founding Snap­Sense in 2011 to help communities measure and track data with the aim to empower community leaders be more effective at what they do.

As CEO, she co-managed the Rockford Region Vital Signs initiative to develop a regional sustainability plan built on community indicators.

She also served as executive director of the Rockford Region Economic Development District, the quasi-governmental agency charged with overseeing economic development planning for the region. Before that, Coady was director of research for the Rockford Area Economic Development Council in Rockford, Ill.

She has a doctorate in regional planning from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana.