Speakers’ Biographies

Northern Kentucky Regional History Day

April 5, 2008

 

Rebecca Bailey – Dr. Bailey has been an Assistant Professor in Public History at Northern Kentucky University since August 2006.  She also specializes in Appalachian history and her book Matewan Before the Massacre will be published in 2008 by West Virginia University Press.

 

James R. Cassidy – Mr. Cassidy is the founder, as well as Music & Executive Director, of the Kentucky Symphony Orchestra (1992-present).

 

Vickie Cimprich – Ms. Cimprich is a Northern Kentucky writer, member of the Friends of the White Water Shakers, Western Shaker Singers and Northern Ky. African American Heritage Task Force.  Her published books include: A Quilted Life (with Hazel Durbin,) and Pretty Mother’s Home – A Shakeress Daybook, and her poems have appeared in The Journal of Kentucky Studies, Cincinnati Poetry Review, Poetry As Prayer: Appalachian Women Speak, Mountain Life and Work, For a Better World 2006.  She was an interviewer with Our Savior Church’s 2003 oral history project, East Covington, and an imaginative writing teacher at Holy Family School, east Covington, 2005-6.

 

Tripta Desai – Dr. Desai has been teaching since 1968 in the Department of History and Geography of Northern Kentucky University.  She has taught courses ranging from China to the United States.  Her research topics and published books include work on women in Inda and US/India Diplomatic relations.

 

Elizabeth Dzurenka – Ms. Dzurenka is an NKU senior History major. During the summer and fall of 2007, she worked as a research assistant on the "Celebrating Northern Kentucky" Collaborative Faculty Student Research grant. She has taken public history courses at NKU, is currently serving as Dr. Bailey's Public History intern, and hopes to become a public history professional.

 

Marianne Fields – Ms. Fields is a recent History graduate from NKU. During the summer and fall of 2007, she worked as a research assistant on the "Celebrating Northern Kentucky" Collaborative Faculty Student Research grant. She has taken public history courses at NKU and hopes to use her experience from them and working with Dr. Bailey in a public history career.

 

Tim Herrmann – Mr. Herrmann serves as the Kentucky History Specialist at the Kenton County Public Library.  At KCPL Tim helps conduct research, offers programming and oversees the Faces & Places NKy Photographic Archives.  He holds a Masters in History from the University of Tennessee, where his major research was the Antebellum United States.

 

Lynne Hollingsworth – Ms. Hollingsworth is the Manuscript Archivist for the Kentucky Historical Society.  She has been in that position for over 13 years, and is also a frequent speaker for the Northern Kentucky History Day events and at other forums around the Commonwealth.

 

Melissa C. Jurgensen – Ms. Jurgensen is a Louisville native and is an executive legal secretary, Ky covered bridge historian, author, photographer and world traveler.  Her interest in covered bridges started in approximately 1989 when after moving to rural Harrison County, a neighbor advised her of the nearby Colville Covered Bridge. Always loving history and architecture, she was fascinated by the bridge and began visiting and photographing Kentucky's existing covered bridges as well as researching past bridges.  Since that time she has also photographed bridges in Ohio and Indiana.

 

Melissa regularly travels around the state speaking to historical societies and other groups about Kentucky’s covered bridges.  She has written a book on Kentucky’s covered bridges and is in the process of writing a second. Her writings have also appeared in newsletters for the National Society for the Preservation of Covered Bridges, the Kentucky Covered Bridge Association, the Indiana Covered Bridge Society, the Ohio Historic Bridge Association and the Zumbrota, Minnesota Covered Bridge Society, and various newspapers in the state of Kentucky.

Two of her bridge photographs (Switzer and Goddard)  were turned into counted cross stitch designs and included in the Covered Crossings Stitchery collection.  In December of 2006 Melissa received the commission of Kentucky Colonel, the highest honor one can receive in the Commonwealth, from Governor Ernie Fletcher.

 

Elaine M. Kuhn – Ms. Kuhn, MLS, is the Kentucky History Services Coordinator for the Kenton County Public Library in Covington.  Prior to her position with KCPL, she worked as a reference librarian in the Genealogy Center of the Allen County Public Library in Fort Wayne, Indiana.  A native of Antwerp, Ohio, Elaine is a member of the Ohio Genealogical Society, its Paulding County chapter, and the Allen County Genealogical Society of Indiana.  She is also a book reviewer for Library Journal.

 

Helen LaCroix – Ms. LaCroix is a graduate student in the History Department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and is currently working on a dissertation about 19th century Kentucky.  She lives in Lexington and is a part-time U.S. History instructor at Northern Kentucky University.

 

Thomas C. Mackey – Dr. Mackey received his undergraduate training at Beloit College (1978) and his Ph.D. in United States Legal and Constitutional History at Rice University (1984).  He then became the Samuel I. Golieb Postdoctoral Fellow in United States Legal History at the New York University School of Law (1984-85).  He has taught a variety of institutions such as the Michigan State University, University of Nebraska – Lincoln,, Kansas State University and joined the faculty of the University of Louisville in 1991.  He served as Chair of the History Department from 1999 to 2004 and also serves as an Adjunct Professor of Law at the Brandeis School of Law, University of Louisville.  The author of three books, his latest publication is “’When eat the loaf think of me’: A Tennessee Woman’s Civil War Letter, December 1861,” in the Tennessee Historical Quarterly.

 

Chris Meiman – Mr. Meiman is currently the Assistant Director of the Behringer-Crawford Museum.  He is also an Adjunct Professor of History at Northern Kentucky University and a member of the Board of Directors for the Kenton County Historical Society.

 

Fred Mitchell – Dr. Mitchell is a Lecturer in Geography at Northern Kentucky University.  He has developed an expertise in historic preservation having served as a regional preservation officer for the Ohio Historic Preservation Office for southwest Ohio and the survey director for the old Miami Purchase Association of Historic Preservation (know today as the Cincinnati Preservation Association).  Among the numerous National Register nominations he has prepared are included the Over the Rhine and Village of Mariemont historic districts, the Carew Tower/Netherland Hotel Complex, and Anderson Ferry landing sites.  The Village of Mariemont and the Carew Tower/Netherland Hotel complex have subsequently been named National Historic Landmarks.  He was the survey director for the city of Cincinnati’s historic and architectural inventory.  Dr. Mitchell works with historic building owners, city planning departments, and federal agencies on a variety of historic preservation related issues.

 

J. Michael Rhyne – Dr. Rhyne holds a Ph.D. in American History from the University of Cincinnati.  His publications include three articles: “‘We Are Mobed and Beat’: Regulator Violence against Free Black Households in Kentucky’s Bluegrass Region, 1865-1867,” in Ohio Valley History (Spring 2002); “A ‘Murderous Affair in Lincoln County’: Politics, Violence, and Memory in a Civil War Era Kentucky Community,” in American Nineteenth-Century History (September 2006); and “‘Conduct…Inexcusable and Unjustifiable’: Battered Freedwomen, Bound Children, and the Limits of Emancipation in Kentucky’s Bluegrass Region,” in the Journal of Social History (forthcoming); as well as an entry, “Lynchings,” in the Encyclopedia of Northern Kentucky (forthcoming).  Currently, he is a visiting lecturer in the Department of History & Geography, NKU.

 

Don Rightmyer – Mr. Rightmyer is a Reference Librarian at the Kentucky Historical Society, and the Research Librarian and Editor of Kentucky Ancestors.

 

Evan Zimmerman – Mr. Zimmerman is a senior history major with a minor in geography.  This coming fall, he is planning on attending graduate school in historic preservation.  He is a 19th century living historian and has interned and volunteered at Carriage Hill Farm in Dayton, Ohio as an interpreter over the last two years.  He recently completed an inventory of the city of Newport for Moderne architecture.

 

 

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