Crossroads of Confilct: Contested Visions of Freedom & the Missouri-Kansas Border Wars
Diane Mutti Burke, the academic director of Contested Visions of Freedom, was the recipient of the 2005 Atherton Award for the best doctoral dissertation on Missouri history from the Missouri Historical Society for “On Slavery’s Borders: Slavery and Slaveholding on Missouri’s Farms, 1821-1865.” She is Assistant Professor of History at UMKC and has lectured broadly on gender issues and slavery and slave holding in western Missouri. She is currently completing two book projects: the editing and annotation of a 19th Century Missouri woman’s diary and a monograph entitled On Slavery’s Borders: Small Slaveholding in Antebellum Missouri. She graduated from Dartmouth College and received her Ph.D. from Emory University.
Nicole Etcheson, the keynote scholar, is the Alexander M. Bracken Professor of History at Ball State University. She received her Ph. D. in history from Indiana University, Bloomington. Etchenson's recent book, Bleeding Kansas: Contested Liberty in the Civil War Period, is the definitive work on the clash of values that gave rise to the Civil War on the Missouri/Kansas border.
Margaret Conrads is Morton Sosland Curator of American Art at the Nelson-Atkins Museum. She received her doctorate in art history from the City University of New York. She will introduce workshop participants to the museum’s collection of work by George Caleb Bingham and other artists who portrayed mid 19th Century Missouri. She will also introduce workshop participants to the museum’s new Ford Resource Center for Teachers that provides help for teachers in applying the Nelson’s collections to a variety of subjects.
LeeAnn Whites is professor of History at the University of Missouri-Columbia. She has lectured widely on the Civil War in Missouri and is currently on the faculty of the History Department and the Women’s and Gender Studies Program at MU. She received her PhD from the University of California, Irvine. She is co-editor of Women in Missouri History: In Search of Power and Influence. Her latest book is Gender Matters: Civil War, Reconstruction, and the Making of the New South.
Ethan Rafuse is Associate Professor of Military History at the U.S. Army’s Command and General Staff College in Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas. Rafuse received his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri-Kansas City where his research interest was in Civil War military history especially on the Missouri-Kansas border. He has also taught at the United States Military Academy at West Point. He has deep experience in interpreting Civil War battlefields.
Jeremy Neely received the University of Missouri Distinguished Dissertation award in 2005. Neely's first book, based on his dissertation, is entitled The Border between Them: Violence and Reconciliation on the Kansas-Missouri Line and was published by the University of Missouri Press in May of 2007.
Virgil Dean is Director of Publications at the Kansas Historical Society and adjunct assistant professor of history at Washburn University. He co-edited the Kansas History: A Journal of the Central Plains volume on Bleeding Kansas which will be used as a text for the workshop. He also developed the Kansas Territorial website.
Mary Ann Wynkoop is Director of the UMKC American Studies Program. She will be in charge of daily briefings and will provide input especially in the areas of women and gender. She will also provide support for teacher participants and on-going contextualization as requested.
Linna Place is Associate Research Professor of History at UMKC. She teaches history and material culture courses in the Department of History. Her career long focus has been on the use of historic sites and landmarks as teaching tools. She began site related programming in regional history ot UMKC in 1975 when she offered the first course in Living History at Missouri Town 1855. She and Dr. Potts have developed the current site-based experience in regional history at Watkins Mill.
Louis Potts is Director of the Center for Regional Studies at UMKC. He has taught regional history and artifact reading courses at Watkins Mill for the past 15 years and produced the orientation film and National Landmarks registration (NPS) for the site. In addition, Dr. Potts co-authored Watkins Mill: The Factory on the Farm, the definitive work on the subject.
Edeen Martin, Program Director, has designed and directed numerous programs in the arts and humanities. She has worked with the University of Missouri-Kansas City to develop humanities-based programming in cooperation with the Truman Library and other historical resources throughout the region.
For more information on each person please click on name to view Vitae.