Linda Peavy
Ursula Smith

Friday, June 20, 2003
12:30 pm - 1:00 pm

Historical Performance: Women’s Private Lives

Linda Peavy and Ursula Smith are independent scholars from Vermont whose collaborative ventures began back in 1978 in Montana. They have been involved in a variety of women's history projects designed for audiences within and beyond academe. Coauthors of nine books – including Dreams into Deeds and Women Who Changed Things (for young adults), Women in Waiting in the Westward Movement, The Gold Rush Widows of Little Falls, and Pioneer Women – they offer an array of presentations and workshops on researching, writing, and dramatizing women's lives. Operating as P.S., A Partnership, they have been involved in the development of screenplays, dramatic scripts, and musical theater productions, most notably Eric Funk's opera, Pamelia, for which they were co-librettists, and in research for documentaries such as Doris Loeser's Pamelia: History into Art. Senior historical consultants for the PBS reality history mini-series, Frontier House, they joined producer Simon Shaw in writing the show's companion book. Their work-in-progress explores the experiences of the Fort Shaw (Montana) Government Indian Boarding School's girls' "basket ball" team of 1904. Their award-winning article on the team appeared in Montana: The Magazine of Western History (Winter 2001).

Web site:
www.pbs.org/wnet/frontierhouse/ (Frontier House)