This Week @ MHS

After a busy week here at the Society we are slowing things down a bit with a shortened week. The MHS is closed on Monday, 20 January, in observance of Martin Luther King, Jr., Day and will re-open at the normal time on Tuesday, 21 January. Our only scheduled event takes place on Wednesday, 22 January, as the Society welcomes James O'Connell of the National Parks Service for a public author talk. Drawing on his recent book, The Hub's Metropolis: Greater Boston's Development from Railroad Suburbs to Smart Growth, urban historian O'Connell will present an illustrated talk about how metropolitan Boston has been shaped by distinct eras of suburbanization, with each one producing a land use development pattern that is still apparent on the regional landscape. This program is open to the public, reservations requested. Click here to register online or call the MHS reservations line at 617-646-0560. A pre-talk reception begins at 5:30PM and the talk begins at 6:00PM.

"The Cabinetmaker & the Carver: Four centuries of Massachusetts Furniture" is now closed. The next exhibit will feature material from the MHS collections and other institutions. "Tell It With Pride: The 54th Massachusetts Regiment and Augustus Saint-Gaudens' Shaw Memorial" is scheduled to open to the public on Friday, 21 February, so be sure to mark your calendar!

This Week @ MHS

We have a busy week here at the Society with several public events on tap. First up, on Tuesday, 14 January, is an Environmental History Seminar featuring Edward D. Melillo of Amherst College. “Out of the Blue: Nantucket and the Pacific World” builds upon insights from environmental history, migration studies, and cultural geography to argue that certain historical groups of displayed a rooted cosmopolitanism, which develops through sustained encounters with the peoples and environments of far-away places. Through whaling, Nantucket mariners came to know a distant ocean and its inhabitants in was that were often more refined and subtle than many contemporaneous understandings of the Pacific World. Nancy Shoemaker, University of Connecticut, provides comment. Seminars are free and open to the public; RSVP required. Subscribe to receive advance copies of the seminar papers. The seminar begins at 5:15PM.

On Wednesday, 15 January, stop by at noon for a Brown Bag lunch talk with Dylan Yeats, New York University, presenting “Americanizing America: Yankee Civilization and the U.S. State.” With research at the Massachusetts Historical Society and the Boston Athenaeum, Yeats is charting the evolution of what he terms the Yankee Network, comprising academic, educational, missionary, and social reform organizations, and the ways in which this network sought to harness those organs of the state that it could over the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Brown Bag discussions are free and open to the public.

Also on Wednesday, MHS Associate Members (age 40 and under) are invited to an evening social with the Young Friends of Historic New England. Guests will gather at the MHS for a reception followed by a scavenger hunt based on “The Cabinetmaker & the Carver” exhibition. For more information, please call 617-646-0543 or e-mail awolfe@masshist.org. And speaking of the current furniture exhibition, if you have not seen it yet then you are running out of time! The exhibition ends on Friday, January 17. Make sure you come in sometime this week between 10:00AM and 4:00PM to catch a rare glimpse of these Massachusetts-made pieces from private collections which span four centuries.

Finally, on Thursday, 16 January, there is another seminar, this time from the Biography series. “When Subjects Talk Back: Oral History, Contemporary Biography, and the Runaway Interview” will feature a conversation with Joyce Antler, Professor of American Studies at Brandeis, who is currently writing a book on Jewish women active in the feminist movement; Claire Potter, Professor of History at the New School, who is writing on anti-pornography efforts in the 1980s; and Ted Widmer of Brown University, senior advisor to former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. The moderator for the discussion is Carol Bundy, author of “The Nature of Sacrifice: A Biography of Charles Russell Lowell, Jr., 1835-64.” The talk begins at 5:30PM and is open to the public. Be sure to RSVP for this program by emailing seminars@masshist.org or phoning 617-646-0568.

Please note that the Society is closed on Monday, 20 January, in observance of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Normal hours will resume on Tuesday, 21 January.

This Week @ MHS

After a sputtering return to business last week due to a two-day snowstorm, the Society is back up and running this week, though it is a quiet one. On Wednesday, 8 January, join us at noon for a Brown Bag lunch discussion with Katherine Johnston of Columbia University. Well-timed to coincide with the latest round of winter storms and chills and the ensuing discussions about global climate versus local climate, during this lunchtime talk Johnston presents "A Climate Debate: Abolition and Climate in Eighteenth-Century Britain." As British Parlimanetary debates over abolition in the West Indies grew increasingly serious toward the end of the eighteenth century, the Board of Trade interrogated people familiar with plantation life. What sorts of health risks did plantation work pose for enslaved laborers? Could Europeans labor in the West Indies climate? This project examines some of the testimony that absentee planters provided to Parliament and contrasts these arguments with evidence taken from these same planters' private letters. Public testimony did not always match up with personal opinions, and this project explores some of the differences between the two. This event is free and open to the public.

And as this recent storm has shown, the Society is susceptible to the New England winters. When planning a trip the MHS, be sure to keep an eye on the website and events calendar to see updates on building closures and schedule changes.

This Week @ MHS

There are no events scheduled here at the Society this week.

Please note that the Library of the MHS is closed beginning Tuesday, 24 December, and will reopen on Thursday, 2 January. The galleries are open to the public Thursday, 26 December - Saturday, 28 December, and again on Monday, 30 December, 10:00AM-4:00PM. Be sure to come in and take a look at our current exhibition, "The Cabinetmaker & the Carver: Boston Furniture from Private Collections" before it closes on 17 January. And keep an eye on our events calendar to see what is coming up in January.