This Week @ MHS

The library is CLOSED this week but you can still stop in and view our current exhibition, Yankees in the West. Gallery hours for the week between Christmas and New Year are as follows:

- Monday, 25 December : CLOSED

- Tuesday, 26 December : 10:00AM-4:00PM 

- Wednesday, 27 December : 10:00AM-4:00PM 

- Thursday, 28 December : 10:00AM-4:00PM 

- Friday, 29 December : 10:00AM-4:00PM 

- Saturday, 30 December : 10:00AM-4:00PM. There is also a free building tour on Saturday. Be here at 10:00AM for the History and Collections of the MHS. 

The Society is CLOSED on Monday, 1 January. Normal hours resume on Tuesday, 2 January. 

Happy Holidays!

This Week @ MHS

There is just one event on the calendar for the coming week here at the Society:

- Tuesday, 19 December, 5:30PM : This week's seminar is part of the History of Women and Gender series. Micki McElya of University of Connecticut leads the discussion and Genevieve A Clutario of Harvard University provides comment. "Miss America's Politics: Beauty and the Development of the New Right since 1968" examines the centrality of the Miss America pageant, its local networks, and individual contestants to the rise of conservative women and the New Right in the 1960s and 1970s. It analyzes the celebration, power, and political effects of normative beauty, steeped in heterosexual gender norms and white supremacy, and argues for the transformative effect of putting diverse women's voices at the center of political history and inquiry. 

Seminars are free and open to the public; RSVP required. Subscribe to receive advance copies of the seminar papers.

Please note that the library closes early on Monday, 18 December, at 3:30PM, and the building closes at 4:00PM. Also, the MHS is CLOSED on Saturday, 23 December. The library remains closed the following week and reopens on Tuesday, 2 January. See the online calendar for more details about holiday closures and gallery hours. 

This Week @ MHS

As the end-of-year holidays approach we are slowly applying the brakes to our programming schedule here at the Society. However, we still have a few public events coming in the next couple of weeks. Here are the items on offer in the week ahead:

- Tuesday, 12 December, 5:15PM : Hannah Anderson of University of Pennsylvania leads the discussion in the this week's Environmental History Seminar. "Lived Botany: Settler Colonialism, Household Knowledge Production, and Natural History in Eighteenth-Century Pennsylvania" examines how colonists developed ways of interpreting their landscapes that simultaneously partook of and deviated from the norms of eighteenth-century natural history. Domestic spaces became sites where colonists created information about the natural world, allowing them to feel secure in the new environments where they claimed dominion. Thomas Wickman of Trinity College is on-hand to provide comment. Seminars are free and open to the public. To RSVP, e-mail seminars@masshist.org or call 617-646-0579. Subscribe to receive advance copies of the seminar papers.

- Wedensday, 13 December, 6:00PM : Come in for an author talk with Manisha Sinha of University of Connecticut, whose most recent work is The Slave's Cause: A History of Abolition. This book broadens the chronology of abolition beyond the antebellum period, and sets the abolition movement in a transnational context and illustrates how the abolitionist vision ultimately linked the slave's cause to the struggle to redefine democracy and human rights across the globe. This event is open to the public; registration is required with a fee of $10 (no charge for MHS Members or Fellows). A pre-talk reception begins at 5:30PM, followed by the speaking program at 6:00PM.

- Saturday, 16 December, 10:00AM : The History and Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society Tour is a 90-minute docent-led walk through our public rooms. The tour is free, open to the public, with no need for reservations. If you would like to bring a larger party (8 or more), please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.

While you're here you will also have the opportunity to view our current exhibition: Yankees in the West

This Week @ MHS

The calendar is a bit top-heavy this week with a slew of events in the first few days. Here is a look at the programs in the week ahead:

Please note that on Thursday, 7 December, the library opens late at 12:00PM.

- Monday, 4 December, 6:00PM : Join us for a special program presented by a group of undergraduate students from Boston University, called Reforming Boston: Remaking the 19th-Century City. In this presentation and virtual exhibit, Professor Andrew Robichaud and his students present more than twenty rare artifacts and documents from the collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society. From prison and asylum reform, to education and temperance, to women's rights and abolitionism, this presentation explores many dimensions of reform in Boston. How did Boston reformers understand their changing world, and how did they understand social change and improvement? This program is open to the public at no cost, though registration is required. Light refreshments served after the presentations. 

- Tuesday, 5 December, 5:15PM : This week's seminar is from the Early American History series and features Adrian C. Weimer of Providence College, with Walter Woodward of University of Connecticut providing comment. "Petitions and the Cry of Sedition" looks at the political upheavals of the early Restoration in which a remarkable number of Massachusetts men and women expressed keen dissatisfaction with the monarch or General Court, leading to trials over seditious speech. The rich theological language in the petitions and feisty curses in the trial records offer an unrivaled glimpse into the significance of religion for the mobilization of local political communities in this tumultuous era. Seminars are free and open to the public. To RSVP, e-mail seminars@masshist.org or call 617-646-0579. Subscribe to receive advance copies of the seminar papers. 

- Wednesday, 6 December, 12:00PM : Chris Pastore of State University of New York at Albany leads this week's Brown Bag discussion with "Constructing the Ocean's Edge: Toward an Environmental History of the Atlantic World." This presentation examines the environmental history and cultural geography of the North Atlantic shore during the Age of Exploration. A closer look at the ways coasts blurred the bounds of natural knowledge, conventions of conduct, and even the distinction between good and evil, may help us write uncertainty into an otherwise linear narrative of human progress, and, by extension, global expansion.

- Wednesday, 6 December, 6:00PM : MHS Fellows and Members are invited to the Society’s annual holiday party. Enjoy an evening of holiday cheer, celebrate the season, and wish a happy retirement to MHS President Emeritus Dennis Fiori. Holiday cocktail attire requested. RSVP by 1 December. Not a Member? Join today!

- Saturday, 9 December, 10:00AM : The History and Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society Tour is a 90-minute docent-led walk through our public rooms. The tour is free, open to the public, with no need for reservations. If you would like to bring a larger party (8 or more), please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.

While you're here you will also have the opportunity to view our current exhibition: Yankees in the West.