WHAT: Brown Bag Lecture Series
HOSTED BY: UNK Department of History
TITLE: “Death and Dying in Buffalo County”
TOPIC: We all die, but how people die changes over time. Victorians once donned black clothing and cultivated strict mourning culture. Embalming ended rapid burial and allowed for more elaborate funerals. Rural residents once maintained family plots, now replaced by larger municipal cemeteries. These changes, among others, altered the ways Nebraskans confronted death and dying. Drawing on death certificates, obituaries, cemetery records and other surviving material, UNK associate history professor Nathan Tye will highlight local histories of death and dying in central Nebraska from the 1860s forward.
PRESENTER: Tye is the associate professor of Nebraska and American West history at UNK, where he’s taught since 2019. He received his doctorate from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and his research focuses on the lives of migrant laborers, better known as hobos, and their efforts to survive on society’s margins. Tye serves on the boards of several local community museums and cultural organizations, and his research is published in Nebraska History, Annals of Iowa and Willa Cather Review. He also appeared on NBC’s celebrity genealogy program “Who Do You Think You Are?”
TIME: Noon
DATE: Wednesday, Oct. 9
PLACE: Kearney Public Library, 2020 First Ave.
VIDEO: Available on the Kearney Public Library YouTube channel
CONTACT: Nathan Tye, associate history professor, 308.865.8860, tyen@unk.edu
