Wisconsin Folklore Talk with Professor Lowell Brower

Dr. Lowell Brower of the UW-Madison Folklore Program is coming to Baraboo for a presentation on Tall Tale Tourism, Sensationalistic Storytelling, and Cryptid Currency in Wisconsin on May 15.

From 'fish tales' to hodag hunts, Wisconsin's folkloric history is rife with self-aggrandizing legendary, self-deprecatory humor, and self-conscious fabulation. Reveling in upper-midwestern folk humor, the capitalizing on the ostensive potentials of exaggeratory legend-telling — combining the arts of master tale-tellers, carnival barkers, and down-home humorists — local municipalities, businesses, institutions, advertisers, and individual storytellers have marshalled the folkloric arts throughout Wisconsin's history, in service of drawing attention, money, tourism, and notoriety to themselves, their products, and their discourses. And through these engaging, enticing, and often otherworldly stories, they've shaped both insider and outsider perspectives about what it means to be a 'Sconnie! 

Operating from the premise that legends and tall tales can't help but reveal the values, worldviews, fears, anxieties, hopes, dreams, and capabilities of their transmitters, we'll spend some time thinking about what the stories we tell can tell us about who we are. 

Dr. Brower will present at the Carnegie-Schadde Memorial Public Library in Baraboo on Thursday, May 15 at 6 pm. SCHS is proud to partner with the Wisconsin Historical Society and the library on this special presentation.