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Speakers Bureau Presenters and Talks

The following AHC speakers are available for public programs sponsored by eligible organizations. Click on the speaker's name for a photo, biography, and detailed information about the talks listed.

Akua Duku Anokye, Glendale
• African American Life and Culture in El Mirage
• Other People’s Children: African American Community Mothers, Community Activists
• A Story, A Story: African/African American Oral Tradition and Storytelling

Elena Díaz Björkquist, Tucson
• Chicano Art: Resistance and Affirmation
• Growing Up Chicana in Morenci
• In the Shadow of the Smokestack

Peter MacMillan Booth, Tucson
• From the Trickster to the Braggart: Arizona Folktales
• Native Borders: Arizona’s American Indian Reservations
• Territorial Kids

Holly R. Cashman, Tempe
• Arizona Spanish
• What Is Spanglish? Crossing Linguistic Fences, Building Linguistic Bridges

Albrecht Classen, Tucson
• Early History of Arizona: German Jesuits as Founders of Arizona
• History of Jews in the Middle Ages
• Mysticism in the Middle Ages
• Women in the Middle Ages

John Craft, Phoenix
• Journalism Ethics
• Mass Media and Society

Jay Craváth, Parker
• The Instrument as Time Capsule
• The Journeys of Kokopelli
• The Music and Ritual of Arizona’s Native Americans
• Song Collection: Arizona’s Wellspring of Music

Allen Dart, Tucson
• Ancient Native American Pottery of Southern Arizona
• Archaeology and Cultures of Arizona
• Arts and Culture of Ancient Southern Arizona Hohokam Indians
• Set in Stone But Not in Meaning: Southwestern Indian Rock Art

Betsy Fahlman, Tempe
• Adventurous Spirits: Arizona’s Women Artists, 1900-1950
• A Gallop Through the Art History of Arizona
• Lon Megargee: Arizona’s Cowboy Artist

Dick George, Tempe
• Charles Fletcher Lummis: "The Greatest Southwesterner"?
Descanse En Paz: Traditional Cemeteries and Handmade Grave Markers in the Southwest
• Good Fences Make Good Neighbors: Walls, Boundaries, Lines in the Sand, and a Yankee Poet
• Indispensable Memory: Photography As a Research Tool

Reba Wells Grandrud, Phoenix
• Arizona Women’s Hall of Fame
• Cora Viola Slaughter, Southern Arizona Ranchwoman
• Historic Graffiti: Arizona’s Own "Independence Rock"
• In Their Own Words: Diaries of 19th Century Women

Brian Gratton, Tempe
• Four Hundred Years of Immigration to America: Ethnicity, Public Opinion and Policy, 1607 to 2007
• Refugees in America, Refugees in Arizona

Paul T. Hietter, Gilbert
• How the Judge’s Brother Got Away with Murder: The Prosecution of Frank C. Kibbey
• How Wild Was It? An Overview of Crime and Justice in Arizona Territory
• No Better Than Murderers: The Story of the Canyon Diablo Train Robbery of 1889
• Popular Justice Run Amok: The Globe Lynchings of 1882

Barbara Jaquay, Goodyear
• The Changing Nature of Resources on Arizona’s Native American Lands
• Conflicts and Challenges for Parker, Arizona
Descansos: Marking Passages

Janice Jarrett, Tucson
• The Healing Art: How Does Music Soothe the Soul?
• Jazz and the American Identity
• Steal from the Best: Music’s Inherent Internationalism
• Your Musical Brain: Can Music Make You Smarter?

Ann Hibner Koblitz, Phoenix
• Local Healers, Proprietary Medicines, and Frontier Docs: Women’s Health in Territorial Arizona
• Male Bonding Around the Campfire: Constructing Myths of Hohokam Militarism
• Shady Women and "Respectability" in Territorial Arizona

Robert E. Kravetz, Phoenix
• Arizona Territorial Medicine: Healers, Hucksters, and Heroes
• Literature, Art, and Medicine
• Medicine’s Greatest Discoveries
• Healthseekers in Arizona

Douglas E. Kupel, Phoenix
• Fuel for Growth: Water Challenges Facing Arizona’s Urban Environment
• Not a Drop to Drink: Arizona’s Last Great Drought, 1920–1941

Adair Landborn, Tucson
• Dance, Sensuality, and Culture
• Flamenco Dance and Spanish Bullfighting: A Confluence of Movement Traditions?
• Why So Much Passion?

Elizabeth Larson-Keagy, Tempe
• Cultural and Physical Geographies of Southwest Asia and Afghanistan
• U.S. Population Beyond 300 Million
• What Is the World Growing To? Earth Beyond 6 Billion!
• Who Lives in Arizona? Arizona’s Changing Demography

Karen J. Leong, Tempe
• Asian Americans in Arizona
• Japanese Americans in Arizona
• Japanese-American Internment in Arizona
• A Present Absence: Hollywood’s History of American Diversity

Geta LeSeur, Tucson
• Beyond the Cotton Fields: Black Migrant Women Building Communities
• Eloy’s Gun and Cotton Stories: Romanticizing the Real
• Not All Okies Are White: Randolph, Arizona, 1930s–1950s



Risa Mallin, Phoenix
• Bold, Brave and Beautiful: Jewish Women Who Helped Build the West
• Lure of the West: Arizona’s Jewish Pioneers

Richard and Sherry Mangum, Flagstaff
• The Grand Canyon-Flagstaff Stagecoach Line
• The Illustrated History of Flagstaff
• Route 66 Across Arizona
• Zane Grey Brings Hollywood to Arizona

Gregory McNamee, Tucson
• Arizona for Newcomers
• Names on the Land
• The Opening of the Frontier and the Closing of the West
• River of History: A Gila Journey

Mary Melcher, Phoenix
• Arizona Women’s Heritage Trail: Marking Their Sites
• "Batter Up!" Arizona’s Women Softball Teams
• Making Do with Less: Arizona Women and the Great Depression

Dale Curtis Miles, San Carlos
• Apache Culture Kit
• The Camp Grant Massacre, 1871
• The Fight in the Salt River Canyon: Skull Cave, December 1872
• General Crook and the Sierra Madre Adventure in Mexico, 1883

Karyn Riedell, Pine
• Films of the Southwest: Myth or Reality?
• Nature Writing and Its Authors
• "Resist Much, Obey Little": Edward Abbey and the Monkey Wrench Gang
• Rip Van Winkle Finally Wakes Up: The History of Environmental Discourse in the Media

Jeremy Rowe, Mesa
• 19th Century Arizona Through the Stereoscope
• Post Card Images of Arizona, 1900–1920
• Silver Images on Glass Plates–Early Photography in Arizona

Greg Scott, Nogales
• Badger Clark, Cowboy Poet
• The Crooked Trail to Holbrook

Brooks D. Simpson, Gilbert
• Abraham Lincoln at 200
• American Presidential Elections in Historical Perspective
• Emancipation and the Destruction of Slavery, 1861–1865
• Theodore Roosevelt: A Strenuous Life

Chris Smith, Tempe
• Americans and Their Things
• The History of American Humor

Charles Tatum, Tucson
• Contemporary Chicana and Chicano Autobiography
• The Origins and Development of Chicana and Chicano Literature

Judy Nolte Temple, Tucson
• Family Secrets: The Uneasy Tradition of Diarists and Their Readers
• Wealth, Power and Prejudice on the American Mining Frontier: The Tragedy of Horace Tabor and His Beautiful "Baby Doe"

Laura Tohe, Mesa
• Armed with our Language, We Went to War: The Diné/Navajo Code Talkers
• Oral and Written Literature Among Southwestern Indigenous Writers and Storytellers

Philip VanderMeer, Mesa
• Collapse and Rebirth of Downtown Phoenix, 1945–2007
• Transforming Desert Visions: The Growth of Phoenix, 1860–2006

Jay Van Orden, Tucson
• Geronimo’s Surrender: The 1886 C. S. Fly Photographs
• Warriors and Beyond: A Closer Look at the Clothing, Equipment, and Lifestyle of the Chiricahua Apache

Santos C. Vega, Tempe
• Encountering God Through the Mexican American Experience
• The History of Mexico and Contemporary Issues
• Mexican American History and Culture in Transition
• The Repatriation of Mexican and Mexican American Citizens in the 1930s

Richard E. Wentz, Flagstaff
• Religion, Politics, and American Public Life
• Tony Hillerman, Yataalii of the Navajo Way
• Who Are the Pennsylvania Dutch?
• You Can’t Understand Your Culture Without Studying Religion

John S. Westerlund, Flagstaff
• Anchors Aweigh: The U.S. Navy’s World War II "Training Base" at Flagstaff
• Arizona’s War Town: Flagstaff, Navajo Ordinance Depot, and World War II
• Beyond Guard Towers and Barbed Wire: Austrian Prisoners of War at Navajo Ordnance Depot
• Life Behind the Fence: Indian Workers at Navajo Ordnance Depot, World War II

Matthew C. Whitaker, Mesa
• The African American Experience in Arizona: 500 Years of History
• History, Hip Hop and American Popular Culture
• Race Relations and Interracial Unity in America
• Race Work: The Rise of Civil Rights in the Urban West

Edward Williams, Prescott
• Fences and Walls: Which Side Are You On? Perspectives from the Smithsonian, Arizona and Beyond
• The Southern Connection: The Meaning of Mexico for Arizona and the U.S.
• A Third Country? Cultural and Economic Melding on the Arizona/Sonora Border

John H. Ziegler, Tombstone
• Gunfight at the OK Corral
• John Wayne: American Icon
• Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday: The Tombstone Years
• Wyatt Earp: The Man in the Movies