A little bit of everything in Brown Bag Lecture Series

The Brown Bag series gets its name from the fact it invites guest to bring their own sack lunch to the lectures. This year, with the diversity of topics on offer, the subjects discussed will likely be as varried as the food of those attending.

The Brown Bag Lecture Series is an annual program held at Iowa Wesleyan University for more than 10 years featuring a diverse set of topics with an emphasis on local history. Starting on Tuesday March 5, every Tuesday of the month at noon in the International Room at the Chadwick Library, a lecture will take place. This year there also will be a 'special evening program” to close out the series. Professor John Liepa will give his lecture 'How Iowa Met Baseball” on March 27; unlike the others, this lecture will be in the Social Hall at Iowa Wesleyan University and will not be held at noon with the hall opening at 5 p.m. and the lecture beginning at 6p.m..

For the past two years, the series has been organized by Anna Villareal, the director of the Harlan-Lincoln House at IW.

'It's quite an established program and one I was really excited to be a part of when I started the program in 2017,” she said. 'It's quickly become one of my favorite experiences and events.”

Villareal and an executive committee work through a list of names collected through the year of people whom they might be interested to invite for the year.

According to Villareal, they will sometimes create a general theme for the event, such as last year on the 100th anniversary of World War I. However, this year they wanted to keep their topics as diverse as possible, but, as is typical for the series, all lectures will relate to IW, Mt. Pleasant or Iowa history.

The first in this series, 'The Iowa Angle of Frank Lloyd Wright,” will be given by author/historian Paul Juhl and focus on the work of the architect Frank Lloyd Wright around the state of Iowa.

Villareal herself will be giving the second lecture, '611 E. Washington Street,” a week later on March 12.

She stumbled across the topic when she was doing research on the early 1900s for last year's series.

'Last year I spoke about President Edwin Shell who was the last president to work at the Harlan Lincoln House as the presidential residence,” Villareal said. 'I wanted to look into that transitioning time period of this being the presidential house to that becoming 611 E. Washington.”

What caught her attention about it was the story of Baron Hutchinson Crane who built the house, but passed away five years after its construction.

'(Crane) did not have the chance to live in that home long or see all his children grow up in it,” Villareal said. 'We have a memoir of Baron Crane and his wife Abby's youngest daughter Edith in the archives and to hear the personal stories of her growing up in the home gave such a personal aspect to it I wanted to learn more.”

The following week, March 19, Barb Duder will give her lecture, 'Between the Lines: Women Soldiers of the Civil War.”

'I think (Duder's) presentation is timely especially for Women's History Month,” said Vilareal. 'I think it's great to highlight those untold stories I think are really powerful today still.”

Duder herself is a Civil War reinactor with Co. D Iowa 3rd Cavalry where she herself portrays a female soldier in disguise. In her lecture she'll be speaking in depth on the lives of some of these soldiers and how they got caught up in the war.

Suitably, on March 26, the Chadwick Library's own Joy Conwell will give her lecture, 'Wayward West: Patronage Impacts Mt. Pleasant, Iowa,” focused the time following the Civil War where the federal government was incentivizing westward migration and the effect it had on Mt. Pleasant.

The series will conclude the next day, Wednesday, March 27, with Professor John Liepa's 'How Iowa Met Baseball.”

'Because it's almost baseball season, everyone has a preseason itch,” Villareal said. '(Liepa's) going to talk not only about the myths of how baseball came to be but specifically gear it toward how baseball developed here in Mt. Pleasant in the early 1840s.”

Liepa's presentation is unlike the others not only because it will be held after noon on a Wednesday, but because it also includes an exhibit which can be viewed the hour before his lecture, featuring memerabilia focused on the sport.

'I think with all of (the lectures) what we'll see is the personal connection and the humanistic aspect of history,” Villareal said. 'So often when we're in history class we have to look at the big picture and this gives us a chance to dive deeper and look at the specifics, whether it's why a house in Mt. Pleasant was built, why women served in the Civil War or how Frank Lloyd Wright became connected to Iowa, it gives us a deeper understand as modern historians looking back.”