Presenting the Past at Locust Grove
Part of the new Meet the Professor P.M. Series - presented by the UofL College of Arts and Sciences, especially for A&S Alumni and Friends.
At Locust Grove, the 1790s house of William and Lucy Croghan and the final home of Lucy’s famous brother, Gen. George Rogers Clark, you will meet costumed re-enactors trained to portray members of the Croghan household. Using techniques of museum theater, they will talk with you in character about the events of the day – 1816. Then join Dr. Daniel Vivian, Assistant Professor of History and Director of the Public History Program at UofL and Carol Ely, Locust Grove’s Executive Director and adjunct faculty member in the Department of History, to discuss the possibilities and problems of re-enacting the past using costumed interpreters to represent real people in situations that are necessarily fictionalized for presentation. Meet the “cast” and learn more about how they travel back in time to 1816.
After the program, have a beverage and light refreshments while you chat with fellow history buffs and with the experts.
Daniel Vivian is a historian of the American South. He earned his PhD at the Johns Hopkins University and has taught at the University of Louisville since 2010. He is currently completing a book entitled It A New Plantation World: The Leisure Plantations of the Carolina Lowcountry, 1900-1940. It examines the material, spatial, and cultural evolution of former slave plantations on the South Carolina coast during the early twentieth century. At the University of Louisville he teaches courses on nineteenth and twentieth-century American history and directs the university’s graduate program in public history, which trains students for careers in museums, historical interpretation, and historic preservation. Before obtaining pursuing an academic career, Vivian worked as a historic preservation specialist with the South Carolina Department of Archives and History and the U.S. Department of the Interior. As part of his duties with the latter organization, he oversaw the National Register of Historic Places program for Kentucky.
Carol Ely is the Executive Director of Historic Locust Grove, Inc., which operates Locust Grove as a historic site. She holds a Ph.D. in American History from Brandeis University. As an adjunct professor in the Public History Program at the University of Louisville, she teaches “Historic Site Administration” and “History Museums for the 21st Century”, and is planning a course on Museum Theater to explore many of the ideas from tonight’s program.