Canine Celebrity with Kelli Huggins

Kelli Huggins is the Visitor Experience Coordinator at the Catskill Center in Upstate New York. Kelli earned a Master’s Degree in History and a certificate in Museum Studies from the University of Delaware. She specializes in museum education and interpretation and likes designing non-traditional programming. She formerly worked as the Education Coordinator at the Chemung County Historical Society in Elmira, NY, where she wrote her first book, Curiosities of Elmira: The Last Labrador Duck, Professor Smokeball, The Great Female Crime Spree & More. Kelli also teaches history and public history as an adjunct at Elmira College. In her research, she prefers the historically bizarre and is working on her second book, a history of canine celebrity in the late 19th century, focusing on Railroad Jack and Owney, two real-life, famous train-riding dogs.

I love love love dogs (and cats… as you will soon understand) so I am really excited about this show. We discuss:

• Canine celebrity and the rise of mass media and the railroads

• Dogs, masculinity, and family

• Railroad Jack and Owney - two famous pups that worked as ambassadors of change

• The canine embodiment of the American dream

• Why cats get no respect (meow)

• Local history and understanding the broader narrative

You can find Kelli on Twitter and also on various spots on the inter webs including her personal blog and a blog set up especially to help locate the taxidermied body of Railroad Jack. For real…let’s help her find him!!

AND…don’t forget to subscribe to The Rogue Historian Podcast on Apple Podcasts or your favorite app so you never ever ever ever miss a show. That would be dumb.

With compliments,

Keith