Academics
Attendees will include faculty members, professionals, and undergraduate and graduate students from other Kansas Board of Regents institutions, as well as private colleges, the University of Oklahoma, and museums.
The event is being organized by Associate Professor Kris Lawson, who is serving this year as president of the KAH.
At Friday night’s banquet, the keynote address will be given by History Department Chair Amahia Mallea from Drake University, author of “A River in the City of Fountains.”
In her address, called “The Jaw-dropping Flood of 1903: What Historic Disaster Reveals,” she’ll speak about Kansas City’s century-long obsession with managing the river for flood control, which benefitted a minority but wrought social and ecological costs for the majority. Her presentation will explore how to bring environmental history into K-12 and higher education classrooms.
Poster sessions Friday afternoon will include such topics as “The Effects of the Great Depression on College Attendance: Kansas State Teachers College” by Isha Michael Hill, a senior History major, and “Treatment of Germans at Kansas State Manual Training Normal School by Cord Ritter, a junior History major.
Panel sessions that afternoon will include such topics as “Unionizing the Kansas State College Pittsburg Faculty, 1974-1978,” by Professor John Daley; “African American History is American History” by Megan Wade of Fort Hays State University; and “Penetrating the Kansas Plains: The Army and the Kansas Pacific Railroad, 1865-1870,” by Matthew Dale of Kansas State University.
Panel sessions Saturday will include such topics as “The Anti-war Movement and Counterculture in Lawrence, Kansas in the 1960s and 1970s,” by Madi Norris of the University of Kansas, and “A Salt on the State: Kansan Resistance to the Lyons Nuclear Waste Repository,” by Greta Hayden of the University of Kansas.
Attendees will also take a walking tour of Pittsburg’s historic downtown, which has been researched, mapped, and documented at https://bit.ly/4iggIqV
Founded in 1876 along a rail line and an old cattle and military trail, Pittsburg became the regional hub during its coal mining era. Nearly 150 years later – Pittsburg will celebrate its sesquicentennial in 2026 – the traditional downtown thrives as old buildings are repurposed for modern uses.
Highlights of the downtown tour are Block22 at Fourth and Broadway, which has been preserved and is on the National Register of Historic Places; Hotel Besse, which is undergoing restoration and is on the register; and Hotel Stilwell, which was preserved in the 1990s and is on the register.
“All the Pitt State historians are so excited to finally be able to bring the KAH back to our campus,” Lawson said. “Southeast Kansas has such an interesting history, and it's great to be able to showcase that to professional and academic historians throughout the state — and in fact throughout the region.”
