Events Calendar

Join us for this special event in Baraboo! The evening will feature a talk by Dr. Lowell Brower, professor in the UW-Madison Folklore Program.

From 'fish tales' to hodag hunts, Wisconsin's folkloric history is rife with self-aggrandizing legendry, 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.

The event is FREE and open to the public with seating on a first-come, first-served basis. Doors open at 6pm.

Learn more: https://wihist.org/3R8C6CA

This event is sponsored by the Sauk County Historical Society and presented as part of the Wisconsin Historical Society History Makers Tour. The tour is made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services.