MIDDLEBURY — UVM professor Luis Vivanco will share the story of the bicycle’s introduction to Vermont in a talk at Ilsley Public Library in Middlebury next Wednesday, Feb. 5, at 7 p.m. His talk, “When the Bicycle Came to Vermont,” is part of the Vermont Humanities Council’s First Wednesdays lecture series and is free and open to the public.
Vivanco will explore the fascinating early history of the bicycle in the Green Mountain State, an invention that generated widespread curiosity when it arrived in the 1880s — helping spark important changes in industrial production, consumerism, road policies, gender relations and cultural ideas.
Vivanco is a Professor of Anthropology and Co-Director of the Humanities Center at the University of Vermont. He has published extensive scholarship on bicycle culture, politics and history.