This UWM history professor is making Milwaukee history exciting through Twitter and polar bears

Lillian Rae Pachner is in the last year of an undergrad history major at UWM.

Pachner (who uses they/them pronouns) knew they wanted a career in history. But it wasn't until a Milwaukee history class last year with Professor Amanda Seligman that they figured out what that career could look like.

The class focused on Milwaukee history with a twist. It emphasized a specific moment — when the first weather forecast took place here — and culminated in a Twitter reenactment of that moment.

When the class concluded, Seligman asked Pachner to help out with this semester's Milwaukee history class.

"Amanda approached me and said, 'Hey, you seemed to really like this class and I know you want a career in history. Let's get you set up with a grant and you can work with me in building the next class,'" said Pachner. "So that's my role now."

Learning Milwaukee history by way of polar bears

Over the summer, Pachner worked on creating a 50-page bibliography of primary and secondary sources relating to this semester's Milwaukee history moment — the first polar bear to be born in captivity who survived to maturity in North America.

Seligman said four polar bear cubs were brought to Milwaukee's zoo — the Washington Park zoo at the time — in 1912 from Greenland. A few years later, zookeepers successfully bred one of the polar bears, Sultana, who gave birth to Zero.

"They figured out how to keep Sultana's cub alive once he was born. The Milwaukee zoo became internationally known because of that," said Seligman. "Milwaukee became a very successful site for breeding polar bears, and that was important in the movement from zoos being about entertainment to being about animal conservation."

This year's Twitter re-enactment of Zero's birth will take place on Dec. 2, coincidentally the polar bear's 102nd birthday.

Twitter re-enactments are akin to collaborative plays

Last semester, Pachner was skeptical about the Twitter portion of the class, until they realized how helpful the format was at making history more accessible to the public.

"At first, I thought we were only doing a Twitter re-enactment because of the pandemic, and I really wanted to be able to something in-person," said Pachner. But when the class started, Pachner learned from Seligman that Milwaukee history Twitter re-enactments had been going on at the Milwaukee Public Museum for a few years, organized by museum educator Jaclyn Kelly. Some previous Twitter re-enactments included the 1940 Armistice Day blizzard and the 1939 Packer championship win at State Fair Park.

"Jaclyn brought the Twitter re-enactment that she's been doing for a few years to me because she wanted a more stable way to maintain the project," said Seligman. "The idea came that I would teach a Milwaukee history class and make the Twitter re-enactment the core of the class."

Seligman describes the Twitter re-enactment as a collaborative play because her class works together to find sources, figure out how to interpret them, choose characters and then make the "pieces fit together" in the final reenactment.

Although some components are similar to other types of historical re-enactments, Pachner said the Twitter version "is super unique because it's so accessible in that people can attend it from the comfort of their Twitter feed."

And, although Pachner worried that the Twitter re-enactment would be just another virtual approximation of reality necessitated by the pandemic, it turned out to be healing for the class.

"Last fall, going to classes in person was very hard and stressful for everyone. We didn't know how to live with the virus yet, and I felt like I had to bathe after each in-person class," said Seligman. "But the students uniformly told me that it was great to have something fun to work on together during such a difficult time. I feel like they learned a lot." 

Students bring Milwaukee history to the public at the zoo and museum

It's not just the Twitter re-enactment that makes the class accessible to the public. This year's students also took part in two "tabling" activities. Students choose a primary source, such as a newspaper clipping, artifact or photograph, that relates to the subject they're studying. After researching the source, they present their findings to the public. This year, they had tabling events at the zoo and the public museum.

"My students are learning the skills they need as historians to interpret the past," Seligman said of the tabling activities. "But they're learning how to do that not to professors who already know the subject they're talking about, but to the public who might not know as much."

Samantha Lopez, an urban studies major who has always been interested in history, showed the difference between Zoological Society annual reports in the 1920s versus today, clarifying for the public the evolution from a zoo more focused on entertainment — complete with a picture of the zoo's chimpanzee, Chilo, wearing a hat — to today's animal conservation-themed zoo.

"It's a bit nerve-wracking talking to the public," Lopez said at the museum tabling. "But I do enjoy getting the perspective of people, especially the kids who think adults know everything. One asked me how many polar bears are living right now. I had to say I don't know."

Urban studies major Nathanael Hemze — who presented a document written by a former Milwaukee zoo director who tried an (unsuccessful) experiment of allowing polar bears, black bears and wolves to live together — said the Milwaukee history class seems "more applicable" to real life than other history classes by allowing students to be out and about in Milwaukee.

"We also get to do our own research to learn about events rather than just having historical events presented to us," said Hemze. "That's a good way to get people interested in history rather than having us just sit in lectures."

Journalism major and self-described history nerd James Trefry was fascinated when he discovered the stories of past Milwaukeeans who have donated animals to the zoo — including a pharmacist who raised a bald eagle in his home, a 12-year-old who found an albino robin in her backyard and restaurateur Joe Wong (whose grandsons went on to co-found Wong's Wok) who donated pheasants to the zoo.

"A lot of these stories don't get written about because they seem so minor or narrow," said Trefry. "In a class like this, it's so cool to look in the archives and discover these stories that most people didn't know about before."

A mission to 'make the past legible to people in the present'

"This class is a testament to how much we care about making history accessible," said Pachner. "We're making sure that people who don't have the chance or want to go to college, that they're valid and a welcome part of the historical community."

Pachner credits Seligman with their realization that historians don't have to "gatekeep information from the public" and their newly discovered passion to integrate public history into their own future career.

"I've ever met someone before that cares so much about what the public knows about history," Pachner said. "It really excited me to see someone so accomplished and intelligent who cares so much about getting people excited about history."

For Seligman, getting the public excited about history is part of her job; in fact, she calls it her mission as an urban historian.

Seligman credits her mission as the reason for this class, as well as the 10-year Encyclopedia of Milwaukee project that led her to become a Milwaukee history expert — a title she humbly, if reluctantly, accepts. 

In 2008, Seligman and her UWM colleague, Margo Anderson, started the project, eventually working together with an editorial board, UWM and Marquette students and freelance researchers to write a several-hundred entry online encyclopedia of Milwaukee history and institutions.

Seligman said the encyclopedia is a manageable way for people who are interested in Milwaukee to learn about their topics of interest and then to build up to a deeper knowledge of the city's history.

"When people walk around whatever city they're in, I want them to see that the current landscape has a past," said Seligman. "It's my goal to make the past legible to people in the present."

Lifelong Milwaukee residents learn the 'landscape of the past'

Seligman's mission to make people see the history of Milwaukee resonates with people who grew up here, and it's likely why her Milwaukee history class is so popular with senior auditors. Wisconsin residents who are 60 years or older can audit UWM classes for free. And, while they are interested in the central moment in Milwaukee history that is the centerpiece of Seligman's classes, they also appreciate the lectures and readings based on John Gurda's "The Making of Milwaukee" that round out the class's deeper history of Milwaukee.

Mark Voelz, who has three degrees from UWM, has audited several classes with his wife. The couple, who just celebrated 50 years of marriage, "like to keep ourselves at least a little bit intellectually active." According to Voelz, he does the reading and she takes the notes.  

Seligman has accomplished her mission in the eyes of Voelz, who "sees the landscape of the past" in the city he grew up in — from his church, St. Paul's Lutheran that just celebrated its 180th anniversary, to John Gurda's family hardware store that Voelz remembers visiting when he was a child.

Pachner, who grew up in Bay View, also feels the landscape of the past when they study Milwaukee's history.

"There's something so incredible about going to the archives and holding something in your hand that has to do with the founding of your city," said Pachner. "And it's so incredible to walk around your neighborhood and see things that are there for a reason because you know the history of it. It's like learning the context of your life."

How to follow the re-enactment

Seligman's students will be at the Milwaukee Public Museum on Thursday Dec. 2, from 9:30 a.m. to noon, portraying real and fictionalized historical figures as they Tweet the re-enactment of Zero's birth.

You can follow along on Twitter at #MKEZero.

You can also follow the students' research throughout the semester on Twitter at @HIS450MKE.

Contact Amy Schwabe at (262) 875-9488 or amy.schwabe@jrn.com. Follow her on Twitter at @WisFamilyJS, Instagram at @wisfamilyjs or Facebook at WisconsinFamily.