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William Woodward
William Woodward
William Woodward’s work as a cultural historian of the Pacific Northwest brings him into contact with artifacts of our everyday popular culture: sports, advertising, world’s fairs, military culture, the mythic west, and consumer technology. As professor of American History at Seattle Pacific University, Woodward explores and answers important questions about the way Americans approach their physical security. His research has led to the publication of numerous articles, chapters, and anthologies as well as many speaking engagements and interviews, including one with popular historian David McCullough for an article in Response magazine. Woodward holds a Ph.D. in American diplomatic history from Georgetown University.
Those Mysterious Seacoast Forts: Doing Homeland Defense the Old-Fashioned Way
“Homeland Security” is no recent post-9/11 phenomenon. In the midst of the Civil War, key leaders, worried about foreign threats, turned to massive fixed guns to protect America’s three coasts. The first in Washington State were soon mounted at the mouth of the Columbia River. It took another generation before Puget Sound had its own defenses. Now quaint state parks, these long silent artifacts of past fears raise fascinating questions about threats both imagined and real, and responses both psychological and tangible. Their story helps explain both America’s changing engagement with the world and its reliance on new technologies to “guarantee” security. This illustrated presentation points to the long-range effects of the past on the present, and the surprises the future promises to the present. It invites the audience into the arena of citizen understanding and moral engagement, all in the context of our own culture and landscape. (For groups especially interested in the Civil War Sesquicentennial, the presentation can focus on that part of the story.)
River, Rail and Road: How We Got Here - and Why
Washington’s history can be segmented into six epochs. In each, different folk migrated here, for different reasons, using different modes of transport. From the First Peoples to the most recent arrivals, from fur-trade pirogues to Oregon Trail wagons to minivans on the interstate, new technologies of movement have eased the typically American quest to conquer time and distance. Those successive waves of settlement were marked by both tragedy and triumph, both as individual journeys and as a whole. To illustrate the process into the 20th century, this presentation first zeroes in on one pioneer family’s trek, over several generations, from Scotland to Seattle. Then, to illuminate more recent decades, we open the floor to the audience, inviting personal narratives.
Contact William at (206) 281-2163 or by email. He currently lives in Seattle, WA.
Bill Woodward from Humanities Washington on Vimeo.
