• Page to Stage Frozen the Musical: Hastings

    Hastings Public Library

    Page to Stage focuses on taking a well-known storybook and bringing it to life, allowing children the opportunity to see characters jump from the page to the stage.  Nationally-acclaimed actors from Crane River Theater’s upcoming production of “Disney’s Frozen the Musical” will read, perform, and interact with students.

  • Nebraska: Weaving a State

    Hastings Public Library

    Speaker: Sara Crook, professor emerita of political science and history, Peru State College This session will discuss the history and politics of Nebraska’s admittance as the 37th state in the Union. As the first state admitted after the Civil War, Nebraska not only faced the politics within the state, but Reconstruction politics as well. (Concurrent […]

  • “We ought to go back to the place we came from in the end”: Nebraska’s Literary History

    Hastings Public Library

    Speaker: Dr. Nathan Tye is the Associate Professor of Nebraska and American West History at the University of Nebraska at Kearney Writers, like sandhill cranes, return to Nebraska for inspiration and sustenance. From the poetry of Don Welch, Nancy Westerfield, and James Emanuel to novels of Willa Cather, Mari Sandoz, and Wright Morris, Nebraskans found […]

  • Lewis and Clark: What Was Their Value Worth? – Seaman, York, Sacagawea, & Pomp Stories

    Hastings Public Library

    Speaker: Renae Hunt, scholar/educator The Corps of Discovery was a fascinating group of individuals. But there were four members of the corps that were “valuable” but not paid. Hunt discusses these four members and tells stories of their adventures. She also dispels a few myths about these members. This program is appropriate for all ages. […]

  • But, Who Lived Here in 1491? Indigenous Archaeology in Nebraska

    Hastings Public Library

    Speaker: Rob Bozell, Retired State Archeologist Rob Bozell takes viewers back to the 15th Century, when Nebraska was populated only by Indigenous peoples. Learn their stories from their perspectives.  (Concurrent session with "Lewis and Clark: What Was Their Value Worth? – Seaman, York, Sacagawea, & Pomp Stories")

  • Japanese-Americans in Nebraska

    Hastings Public Library

    Speaker: Vickie Schaepler, Coordinator of the Japanese Hall and History Project at Legacy of the Plains Museum in Gering, Nebraska Faced by laws targeting only Asians, Japanese Immigrants began to settle in Nebraska in the early 1900’s. Many came following the railroads but stayed due to opportunities in business and agriculture. They overcame adversity, brought […]

  • “Do Good Women Want This Kind of Freedom?” Nebraska and the Fight for Women’s Suffrage

    Hastings Public Library

    Speaker: Dr. Catherine Biba, Associate Professor of History at Hastings College When the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920 granting women the right to vote across the country, it marked a momentous expansion of American participatory democracy. But the battle to get to this point was long, contentious, and complicated; and it looked different in […]

  • Picture Cave: Finding the Divine Within

    Hastings Public Library

    Speaker: Taylor Keen Picture Cave is a 1,300 year old rock art site approximately 60 miles south of present day St. Louis and the former city of Cahokia. Picture Cave was inhabited by the ancestors of the Omaha, Ponca, Kansa/Kaw, Osage and Quapaw tribes, otherwise known as the Dhegiha. The stories entombed in the rock […]

  • Women’s Rights and the Saucy Mrs. Adams

    Hastings Public Library

    Speaker: Jessica Downing-Ford, Chautauqua Scholar Five years after Abigail Smith married John Adams, the American colonies adopted the British law of coverture. This law held that no female person had a legal identity. Married women owned nothing—not even the clothes on their backs. More importantly, they had no rights over their own bodies, or custody […]

  • A Chicano Ancestral Perspective of 485 Years of Great Plains History

    Hastings Public Library

    Speakers: José Garcia and Linda Garcia Linda and Jose were each raised by Mexican American parents who grew up in both urban and rural settings, and who themselves were children of Mexican immigrants.Their deep understanding of the Spanish American experience—from the historical beginnings with the 1541 Coronado Expedition to the Fabled Land of Cibola (a […]

  • Giving Voice to the Silenced Stories

    Hastings Public Library

    Speaker: Beth Dotan, Research Assistant Professor at the Norman and Bernice Harris Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln This program will take a glimpse into the collections of Holocaust survivors who settled in Nebraska and Nebraska WWII servicemen who liberated individuals interned in Nazi concentration camps, existing under inconceivable conditions. A […]

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