Tom Isern, NDSU

Coming up at 7:30pm Thursday 8 March, in Beckwith Recital Hall: "Cold War in a Cold Land: Fighting Communism in North Dakota," a Remele Fellowship lecture by David Mills, PhD student in History, NDSU. Here's a poster for the event. I heard Mills give this lecture in Bismarck, and it's a great one.

We made the drive to Bismarck yesterday to attend the Remele fellowship lecture by Dave Mills, "Cold War in a Cold Land: Fighting Communism in North Dakota," sponsored by the North Dakota Humanities Council and convened in the Heritage Center auditorium. It was a splendid lecture, content-rich but audience-accessible, just the way a Remele lecture is supposed to be. (Well done, Dave.) As a sample of dissertation research in progress, it augurs well for the larger project. After the lecture, too, over soup and pie at the Wood House, I recorded a maxim from Dave, in response to a question about whether his argument questioning traditional conceptions of isolationism in North Dakota is "revisionist." In answer to the question, "What is a revisionist?", Dave replied, "A revisionist is someone who doesn't know any better, and so he looks at the evidence."

Last Friday the 16th Jessica Clark was the featured guest on the Prairie Public radio talk show, Here It Now. She was there to plug Growing Up German-Russian, a radio series that will debut on March 5. This series, partially funded by the North Dakota Humanities Council, draws on the Dakota Memories Oral History Project to explore the experience of childhood on the northern plains for the Germans from Russia. Jess coordinated the series, working with Prairie Public and drawing on the contributions of scholars including Gordon Iseminger and Kim Porter of UND. Jess not only visited with with show host Merrill Piepkorn but also presented some samples from the program series. Her interview from the 16th is archived by Prairie Public, here: http://www.prairiepublic.org/programs/hearitnow/