Winter Lecture Series: Memory in the Woods: Inventing the Nostalgic Lumberjack

Americans know what lumberjacks look like: cheerful, kindly, manly men in plaid. But in their own time they were despised as pests to society. So where did our modern image come from? This talk will expose the forces, both local and national, that built our communal memory of the north woods jacks - and ask us to question where our ideas of the past come from.

Speaker Bio:
Willa Hammitt Brown is a writer, speaker and historian based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She holds a BA from Oxford University and a PhD from the University of Virginia and was on the faculty at Harvard University. In 2025 she published her first book, Gentlemen of the Woods: Manhood, Myth and the American Lumberjack.

Cost is $8-15

You may also like the following events from Forest History Center:

• This Saturday, 13th December, 10:00 am, Christmas in the Logging Camp in Grand Rapids
• Next Saturday, 20th December, 10:30 am, Holiday Season Sleigh Rides in Grand Rapids
• Happening on, 3rd January, 10:00 am, Saturday Snowshoeing at the Forest History Center in Grand Rapids

Also check out other Arts events in Grand Rapids, Literary Art events in Grand Rapids.