Roots of Democracy Presenters
Adriana Brook obtained her PhD in Classics from the University of Toronto in 2014. Her first book, Tragic Rites: Narrative and Ritual in Sophoclean Tragedy, was published by the University of Wisconsin Press in 2018. Her research has two central areas of focus: 1) close philological readings of Sophocles with an emphasis on narrative and 2) the reception of Greek tragedy, especially Aeschylus, in late republican and early imperial Rome.
Brook has taught widely across the Classics curriculum with courses on ancient epic, tragedy and comedy, Greco-Roman history and culture, theories of myth and, most recently, ancient sexualities. While she continues to teach at the undergraduate level, she has recently developed an interest in the scholarship of teaching and learning. Brook is currently pursuing a Master’s of Education at Brock University and aspires to become an educational developer.
John Kaminski founded and still directs the Center for the Study of the American Constitution in the Department of History at UW-Madison, where he has co-edited thirty-five volumes of The Documentary History of the Ratification of the Constitution and has written, edited, or co-edited thirty other books on the Revolutionary era. He is deeply committed to teacher and judicial education and has regularly participated in seminars for these two groups of professionals throughout the country. Kaminski received his PhD from UW-Madison in 1972.
Richard Kyte is the endowed Professor and Director of the D.B. Reinhart Institute for Ethics in Leadership at Viterbo University in La Crosse, where he teaches a variety of ethics courses dealing with issues in business, leadership, and the environment. He received his PhD in philosophy from The Johns Hopkins University in 1994. Kyte is the author of several books and writes a regular column for the Lee Enterprises newspaper group titled “The Ethical Life.”
Richard Monette is a Professor of Law at the UW-Madison Law School and director of the Great Lakes Indian Law Center. He is a former chairman of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians and served as director of the Office of Congressional and Legislative Affairs for the Bureau of Indian Affairs during Bill Clinton's presidency. In that capacity, Monette helped redesign how federal dollars are disbursed to tribes. He is also the former director of the National Native American Bar Association and has works as a legal consultant to tribes drafting constitutions and other legal codes.
Margaret Noodin is a Head Start Director and Ojibwemowin Instructor with the Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa in Grand Portage, Minnesota. Until 2023 she was a Professor of American Indian Studies, Associate Dean of the Humanities, and Director of the Electa Quinney Institute for American Indian Education at UW-Milwaukee. She is a poet and the author of Bawaajimo: A Dialect of Dreams in Anishinaabe Language and Literature (2014), Weweni: Poems in Anishinaabemowin and English (2015), and What the Chickadee Knows (2020). In her position at UW-Milwaukee, Noodin taught American Indian Literature, Celtic Literature, Indigenous Language Revitalization and Anishinaabemowin language at UW-M and was the editor of ojibwe.net and the Papers of the Algonquian Conference. Noodin holds an MFA in Creative Writing and a PhD in English and Linguistics, both received at the University of Minnesota. Her doctoral dissertation is titled Native American Literature in tribal context: Anishinaabe Aadisokaanag Noongom (2001).
Rebecca M. Webster is an enrolled citizen of the Oneida Nation in Wisconsin and an Assistant Professor at the University of Minnesota-Duluth in their American Indian Studies Department, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in their Tribal Administration and Governance programs. Prior to this, she served the Oneida Nation as an attorney for 13 years, providing legal advice for the Nation's administration on government relations, jurisdiction concerns, and a wide variety of tribal land issues. Her research interests focus on tribal and local intergovernmental relationships, best practices in tribal administration, and indigenous food sovereignty. One of her current book projects is working with a team of Haudenosaunee people to tell the account of the formation of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy and the Great Law.
Webster currently serves as the Chairwoman of the Oneida Land Commission, an elected tribal body responsible for setting land use and acquisition priorities for the Oneida Nation. In addition to her academic interests, she grows heirloom traditional foods with her family and with Ohe·láku (among the cornstalks), a co-op of Oneida families that grow Iroquois white corn together. Her family also grows traditional varieties of Haudenosaunee corn, beans, and squash on their ten-acre farmstead, Ukwakhwa: Tsinu Niyukwayay^thoslu (Our food: Where we plant things). She received her BA, MPA, and JD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her PhD in Public Policy and Administration from Walden University.
Wisconsin Academy Offices
1922 University Avenue
Madison, Wisconsin 53726
Phone: 608.733.6633
James Watrous Gallery
3rd Floor, Overture Center for the Arts
201 State Street
Madison, WI 53703
Phone: 608.733.6633 x25