This Week @ MHS

There are no public events on the calendar this week at the Society as we head into a long holiday weekend. However, this is the last chance to view one of our current exhibitions, "Estlin Cummings Wild West Show," which will be closed at the end of the day Friday, 30 August. The other two exhibitions that are on display will stay up for one additional week with the last chance for viewing coming on Saturday, 7 September.

Also, please note that the MHS will be closed Saturday, 31 August and Monday, 2 September, in observance of the Labor Day holiday. Normal operating hours will resume on Tuesday, 3 September. Enjoy the long weekend!

This Week @ MHS

August is creeping by and the summer is beginning its downward trajectory toward fall. So to with the event schedule here at the Society. This week is the last of the month to feature public programming so be sure to stop by and take part!

First, on Monday, 12 August 2013, there is a Brown Bag lunch taking place at 12:00 PM. Zara Anishanslin of College of Staten Island, CUNY, presents "Rebelling Subjects, Revealing Objects: The Material and Visual Culture of Making and Remembering the American Revolution." Anishanslin's research uses objects and images to narrate how ideology, politics, and war - and their material practices - were ambivalent and fluid in the Revolutionary era. The project considers how women, Loyalists, slaves, and Native Americans, as well as Patriots, experienced, made, and remembered the American Revolution from 1763 to 1791, with a coda about historical memory arranged around General Lafayette's Jubilee Tour. This talk is free and open to the public so pack a lunch and come on by!

On Tuesday and Wednesday, 13-14 August, the MHS sponsors a two-day teacher workshop taking place at Coolidge Point in Manchester, Massachusetts. "Old Towns/New Country: The First Years of a New Nation" concentrates on how to use local resources to examine historical issues with a national focus. The workshop highlights the concerns and conflicts, hopes and fears, experiences and expectations of the people living in the Boston area in the period just after the Revolution, a time of uncertainty, fragility, and possibility. Questions to be investigated include: What was it like to live in a town that had been around for a long time in a country that was new? How much did geography, economy, culture, and social makeup of the region influence peoples concerns? How does a local focus add a crucial dimension to our understanding of a key period in American history? The workshop is open to teachers, librarians, archivists, members of local historical societies, and all interested local history enthusiasts. Workshop faculty includes Jayne Gordon, Kathleen Barker, and Laura Lowell of the MHS, historian Christian Samito, and Dean Eastman, a local educator and previous recipient of an MHS Teacher Fellowship. Workshop partners include Salem Maritime National Historic Site and The Trustees of Reservations. An additional two-day workshop in Pittsfield, Massachusetts is scheduled for 8-9 November. To Register: Please complete this registration form and send it with your payment to: Kathleen Barker, Massachusetts Historical Society, 1154 Boylston Street, Boston, MA 02215. For Additional Information: Contact the Education Department: 617-646-0557 or education@masshist.org.

On Wednesday, 14 August, join us for another Brown Bag lunch talk. This time, Kristin Allukian from the University of Florida presents "Working to Become: Women, Work, and Literary Legacy in American Women's Postbellum Literature." This interdisciplinary project has foundations in both 19th-century women's history and literature, focusing on literary representations of career women by late 19th-century American women writers. Allukian's research re-imagines the interconnections of society and women's paid labor, showing that work, and women's work in particular, was no longer a fixed entity that showed up in the lives of those living during the 19th-century but, rather, was a shaping force. This Brown Bag lunch is free and open to the public and begins at 12:00 PM.

Finally, on Saturday, 17 August, stop in for The History and Collections of the MHS, a 90-minute docent-led tour that explores all of the public rooms in the building while touching on the art, architecture, history, and collections of the Society. The tour is free and open to the public. No reservation is required for individuals or small groups. Parties of 8 or more should contact the MHS prior to attending a tour. For more information please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.

And don't forget that there are currently three exhibitions on display. The exhibitions feature a variety of artifacts and manuscripts from the Society's holdings and are free and open to the public Monday-Saturday, 10:00am-4:00pm.

This Week @ MHS

This week at the MHS there are two events on schedule for public consumption as well as a multi-day Society-sponsored workshop. First, on Wednesday at 12:00pm there will be a Brown Bag Lunch talk taking place. Join us as Marian Desrosiers of Salve Regina University presents "Private Lives and Public Spaces: John Banister and Colonial Consumers." Ms. Desrosiers' research examines the account books of Rhode Island merchant John Banister (1707-1767) to gain insight into his roles as merchant, retailer, ship owner, broker, and as a trade and industry leader in Newport. Banister's careful delineation of profit, loss, commissions, taxes, and ownership reveal a merchant's family expenses and income and his lists of commodities provide information about the lives of consumers and producers in the public marketplace. All of these details combine to reveal how Banister's adventurous capitalism influenced the economy of pre-Revoultionary America. This event is free and open to the public.

On Saturday, 10 August, the Society will host The History and Collections of the MHS, a 90-minute docent-led tour that explores all of the public rooms in the building while touching on the art, architecture, history, and collections of the Society. The tour is free and open to the public. No reservation is required for individuals or small groups. Parties of 8 or more should contact the MHS prior to attending a tour. For more information please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.

Finally, beginning on Monday, 5 August, and continuing until Thursday, 8 August, the MHS sponsors a teacher workshop: "Battle Road: Crisis, Choices, and Consequences." Using historical documents, landscapes, buildings and artifacts as investigative tools, participants will examine the concerns, conflicts, dilemmas, decisions, and dramatic confrontations of people along the road to revolution. Presented by the Massachusetts Historical Society and partnering organizations, the workshop takes place in locations throughout Boston, Lexington, Lincoln and Concord. An outstanding group of historians, educators, and site interpreters will work with the group over the course of the four day workshop.

This workshop is open to teachers and the general public, and is funded in part by a grant from the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati. Educators can earn PDPs and 2 graduate credits (for an additional fee) through Framingham State University.

To register, complete this registration form and send the form with your payment to:

Kathleen Barker
Massachusetts Historical Society
1154 Boylston Street
Boston, MA 02215
education@masshist.org

Complete directions for public transportation options, parking, and special lodging rates in Concord will be sent to all registrants. Questions? Call workshop directors Jayne Gordon (617) 646-0519 or Kathleen Barker (617) 646-0557.

This Week @ MHS

After a sleepy week here at the MHS that was all but void of public programs, this week comes with a plethora of programs in which to partake. Up first on Monday, 29 July, the Society will host a lunch-time author talk with Erik J. Chaput: "'The People's Martyr' and the Dorr Rebellion." The People's Martyr is a book about Thomas Wilson Dorr and a rebellion he lead in Rhode Island in 1842 which now bears his name. His attempt at constitutional reform set off a debate over the nature of people's soverignty in Jacksonian American. Author/historican Erik Chaput pays special attention to the issues of gender and race, paricularly the profound fears of southern policiticians that Dorr's ideology would lead to slave insurrections. Mr. Chaput received his doctorate in early American History from Syracuset University in 2011 and is on the faculty in the School of Continuing Education at Providence College. His research has appeared in numerous publications and he is the co-editor with Russell J DeSimone of a digital edition of the letters of Thomas Wilson Dorr, available on the Dorr Rebellion project site hosted by Providence College.This event begins at 12:00pm and is free and open to the public.

On Tuesday, 30 July, is the first of a two-day workshop titled "Old Towns/New Country: The First Years of a New Nation." This workshop will take place in Lancaster & Leominster, Massachusetts, in partnership with the Freedom's Way National Heritage Area. The workshop will concentrate on the period just after the Revolution and the concerns and conflicts, hopes and fears, experiences and expectations of the people living in the Boston area at a time of uncertainy, fragility, and possibility, using local resources to examine historical issues with a national focus. The program investigates such questions as: What was it like to live in a town that had been around for a long time in a country that was new? What were people in our town worried about as the nation was forming after the Revolution? How were these concerns influenced by geography, economy, culture, and social makeup of the region? What resources and pieces of evidence exist in our town that can help us find these things out? How is this evidence best presented to allow people of all ages to discover the answers to such questions and how does local focus add to our understanding of national history? The workshop is open to teachers, librarians, archivists, members of lcoal historical societies, and all intersted local history enthusiasts. The workshop faculty will include MHS staff members as well as Freedom's Way Director of Education Maud Ayson, Historian Mary Fuhrer, and MHS Teacher Fellow Timothy Castner. Additional partners include the Freedom's Way National Heritage Area, Leominster Public Library, and the First Church of Lancaster. The program takes place on Tuesday, 30 July and Wednesday, 31 July, 8:30am-3:30pm. To Register: Please complete this registration form and send it with your payment to: Kathleen Barker, Massachusetts Historical Society, 1154 Boylston Street, Boston, MA 02215. For Additional Information: Contact the Education Department: 617-646-0557 or education@masshist.org.

On Wednesday, 31 July, come by the MHS at lunchtime for another of our Brown Bag Lunch talks. In this episode, Eric Otremba of Macalester College presents "Empire of Learning: Natural Scientists and Caribbean Slavery in the Seventeenth-Century English Atlantic." In this project, Mr. Otremba examines confluences between the scientific and progressive ideas associated with the early English Enlightenment and the concurrent proliferation of Caribbean slave plantations. Through a study of sugar plantations, it demonstrates how both slavery and the Enlightenment shared common roots within the expansionist discourse of natural science in the late seventeenth century. This event begins at 12:00pm and is free and open to the public.

Following on Thursday, 1 August, is another Brown Bag, this time presented by Zara Anashanslin, College of Staten Island, SUNY. In "Rebelling Subjects, Revealing Objects: The Material and Visual Culture of Making and Remembering the American Revolution," Ms. Anishanslin considers how women, Loyalists, slaves, and Native Americans, as well as Patriots, experienced, made, and remembered the American Revolution from 1763 to 1791, with a coda about historical memory arranged around General Lafayette’s Jubilee Tour. In an effort to get past the binaries that often still characterize the historiography on the Revolution, it uses objects and images to narrate how ideology, politics, and war—and their material practices—were ambivalent and fluid in the revolutionary era. Free and open to the public, this program begins at 12:00pm.

Finally, on Saturday the Society will once again host The History and Collections of the MHS, a 90-minute docent-led tour that explores all of the public rooms in the building while touching on the art, architecture, history, and collections of the Society. The tour is free and open to the public. No reservation is required for individuals or small groups. Parties of 8 or more should contact the MHS prior to attending a tour. For more information please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.