What Do You Mean, History Changes? How Can That Be?

The Eighth Annual Terry Dilley Symposium will take place at the Mower County Historical Society on Saturday, October 12, 2024 with the presentation What Do You Mean, History Changes? How Can That Be? The View From Minnesota with Annette Atkins.

The issue of “what history” ought to be taught is confounding many communities.  What do we want our children to know and why does it seem that the teaching and study of history have turned political. Isn’t history an objective subject?  These are the questions that Annette with take up by talking about the Minnesota History that has been dominated by William Watts Folwell’s A History of Minnesota  (1921), Theodore Blegen’s Minnesota: A History of the State (1975) , and then Annette’s own Creating Minnesota: A History From the Inside Out (St. Paul: MNHS Press, 2008; 2018).

Starting at 10:30am in the Pioneer Building, this talk is FREE and open to the public. Doors open at 9:30am with coffee & donuts.

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Annette Atkins, Professor Emerita of History at Saint John’s University and the College of Saint Benedict, taught Minnesota and American history for over three decades.  She’s been active as well with projects at the Minnesota Historical Society and the Western History Association.  In addition to creating, she has written three other books and several articles.  For several years she talked history with Cathy Wurzer on Morning Edition on Minnesota Public Radio.  She’s a distinguished lecturer for the Organization of American Historians.  She has made it her life’s work to engage with history (and with audiences) as an exercise in time and imagination, more than dates and memorization, recognizing that we live in our histories and that we ourselves are historical actors.