A current exhibit at the William L. Clements Library aims to present the experiences of ordinary Americans who served in France as part of the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) during the First World War. Studying hundreds of letters written by soldiers, postcards, photographs, and other diverse materials, curator Louis Miller discovered some shared themes from these firsthand accounts to explore in the exhibition. Miller’s lecture will discuss some of the exceptional and heartbreaking stories found in the Clements’ archives and present an overview of the exhibit.

Join us for the lecture at the Hatcher Graduate Library Gallery; an after-hours viewing of the exhibit at the Clements Library will follow the lecture. Visitors have the opportunity to view both paper and three-dimensional objects relating to the First World War, including a doughboy helmet, censored letters, photographs, and souvenirs. A pamphlet of excerpts from the writings of Americans who served complements the exhibit.

Louie Miller is an archivist at the University of Michigan’s William L. Clements Library. He has a Masters of Science in Information from the U-M School of Information with a specialization in archives and records management and a Bachelors in History from Kalamazoo College. It was while working on his undergraduate thesis at Kalamazoo that he was first drawn to the topic of American involvement in the First World War.