Professor Pascale Manning, University of Wisconsin Oshkosh
This talk explores a public history project in which Professor Pascale Manning partnered with Menominee experts to install five informational plaques around the 1911 Chief Oshkosh Monument (Menominee Park, Oshkosh, Wisconsin) to recognize and address the monument’s misrepresentation of both the appearance and achievements of a signal chief of the Menominee Nation. Situating the plaque project and its challenges as well as the monument itself within wider historical contexts, Professor Manning will discuss what the memorialization of Chief Oshkosh can reveal about acts of remembrance that in fact constitute forms of erasure. Reflecting on the five plaques installed by the City of Oshkosh around the 1911 monument in a rededication ceremony in 2023, Professor Manning will consider how this instance of public history in practice can illuminate the transformative potential of the public humanities.
Biography
An associate professor of English literature and culture at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, Professor Manning’s research and teaching center on Indigenous studies, nineteenth-century British literature and science, and ecocriticism. As a co-author and advocate of the five informational plaques now installed around the 1911 Chief Oshkosh monument in Menominee Park, Oshkosh, Wisconsin, Professor Manning (of non-Indigenous descent) engaged in the presentation and exchange of historical knowledge across the project’s five years, both in co-producing the plaques in partnership with experts and knowledge keepers of the Menominee Nation and in collaborating with municipal stakeholders to bring the project to fruition.
About Colloquium
Colloquium is a weekly series of talks featuring staff, fellows, and scholars who are working with the library’s vast collections. These events bring together experts from various fields to share their research on a wide range of topics, followed by an opportunity for the audience to ask questions and engage in conversation.
Colloquium is open to the public and offers a chance to explore fascinating ideas and new discoveries. No advance registration is required.