Join Alaska State Historian and America250-Alaska Co-Commissioner, Katherine Ringsmuth, PhD, for this fun-filled presentation about Alaska’s Week of Dreams and other America250 activities.

This concert/lecture integrates live music and dance performance, pre-recorded popular, folk, and classical music, and video montages of archival Cold War images.

The program focuses on music directly inspired by the geopolitical struggle between western and communist ideology that played out in proxy wars, espionage, and the Space Race.

Profiling the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska, the North Pacific Studies Program at the Alaska Methodist University, and the Alaska Center for International Business at the University of Alaska Anchorage, speaker Pierce Bateman demonstrates that higher education played a pivotal role in Alaska’s promotion of global science, cultural exchange, and international trade through research and teaching during the Cold War. 

From lost bombs to nuclear testing, and from the Cuban Missile Crisis to nuclear reactors, speaker Mark Rice discusses how Alaska’s nuclear history covered nearly the whole state, and continues to this day.

Explore the dramatic story of Alaska’s Cuban Missile Crisis with Friends of Nike Site Summit, a non- profit organization dedicated to preserving and interpreting Alaska’s Cold War heritage.