Ephemera 43 Speakers

Greta Reisel Browning, C.A., Associate Professor, is the Reference & Instruction Archivist and Curator of the Rhinehart Rare Book Collection on British History in the Special Collections Research Center at Appalachian State University. Greta has a Master of Arts in Public History from North Carolina State University and a Master of Library Science from North Carolina Central University.  She has also completed five courses about the history of the book at Rare Book School at The University of Virginia.

Greg Gibson has been an antiquarian book dealer since 1976, specializing in books, manuscripts, and ephemera relating to the sea and its history. He’s bought and sold hundreds of clipper ship sailing cards in his career, and has advised collectors, librarians, auctioneers and historians regarding them. (Saturday evening Presentation)

Kevin Johnson is Photo Archivist at the Penobscot Marine Museum. He earned a bachelor’s degree from St. Joseph’s University, and a Professional Certificate in Photography from the Maine Photographic Workshops, where he first encountered the Eastern Illustrating and Publishing Company collection. Johnson has grown the Museum’s collection to more than 500,000 images from various sources including EIP (acquired in 2007), National Fisherman magazine, the Maine Sardine Council, photographer Kosti Ruohomaa, and many others. He is the co-author of Maine on Glass: The Early Twentieth Century in Glass Plate Photography.

Nicholas D. Lowry is President and Principal Auctioneer of Swann Auction Galleries in New York City, and Director of the auction house’s Vintage Posters Department. Born into a family of antiquarian book dealers, he was raised and educated in New York, and graduated from Cornell University. As one of the world’s foremost authorities on vintage posters, Lowry has spent over 25 years serving as poster appraiser on the PBS show Antiques Roadshow.  He has spoken and written extensively about the history of posters and currently serves on the Advisory Board for New York City’s Poster House Museum. 

Curator of Architecture, Design, and Engineering at Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division, Mari Nakahara holds a Ph.D. in Architectural History and Design from Tokyo Metropolitan University, and a MLS from Catholic University of America. Her experience working at archives, not limited to architecture, includes the New York Public Library, the Skyscraper Museum, and the Octagon, the Museum of the American Architectural Foundation.

Michael Peich is Emeritus Professor of English at West Chester University where he created the West Chester University Poetry Conference (1995), and the WCU Poetry Center (2000). His interest in baseball history has resulted in articles and lectures about the Southern Minor Leagues, nineteenth-century baseball advertising, and Chester County (PA) baseball. Peich collects vintage baseball cards and ephemera and is currently doing research on the Negro Leagues. Mike serves on the Board of Directors of the Ephemera Society of America and is President of the Chester County Sports Hall of Fame.

Jeremy Rowe, an Emeritus Professor at Arizona State University and a Senior Research Scientist at New York University, has collected, researched, and written about historic photography for over 30 years: from daguerreotypes and cased images to mounted photographs, real photo postcards, and vernacular images with an emphasis on Arizona and the Southwest, Lower Manhattan, and the open-ended category of “images that strike me.” Jeremy has written numerous publications about historic photography, including Arizona Photographers 1865 – 1920 a History and Directory, Arizona Real Photo Postcards a History and Portfolio, and Arizona Stereographs 1865- 1930.

Hannah Swan is the archivist for the School of Pharmacy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, currently working on an NEH grant-funded project to process ephemera held by the American Institute of the History of Pharmacy. She holds a postgraduate degree in Archives and Records Management from University College London, a master’s in Book History and Material Culture from the University of Edinburgh, and worked as a Reference Assistant at the Phillips Library of the Peabody Essex Museum. She received the 2022 Anthony Davis Book Collecting Prize for her personal collection of midcentury party-planning books and ephemera.

Douglas W. Wamsley, an attorney by profession, is an independent researcher and scholar who has written extensively on the history of nineteenth-century Arctic exploration and its participants. He is the author of numerous publications that examine individual contributions to our knowledge and perceptions of the far northern regions, including the forthcoming biography: Big Wolf, the Adventurous Life of Lieutenant Frederic G. Schwatka.