This Week @MHS

We have two seminars and a gallery talk scheduled at the MHS this week. 

- Tuesday, 13 November, 5:15 PM: Ditched: Digging Up Black History in the South Carolina Lowcountry with Caroline Grego, University of Colorado Boulder, with comment by Chad Montrie, University of Massachusetts--Lowell. For nearly three centuries, Black sea islanders enslaved and free have dug thousands of miles of ditches that channeled the South Carolina Lowcountry, for purposes from rice to phosphate to mosquito control. This piece explores the evolving projects of environmental use and management in the Lowcountry, through the conduit of ditches, and traces the history of how the environment, politics, and labor intersected in the miry ditches of the region from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. This is part of the Boston Seminar on Environmental History series. Seminars are free and open to the public. 

- Thursday, 15 November, 5:15 PM: An “Organic Union”: Ecclesiastical Imperialism and Caribbean Missions with Christina Davidson, Harvard University, and comment by Greg Childs, Brandeis University. In 1880, hundreds of black clergy and lay delegates of the African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) gathered to discuss reunion with the British Methodist Episcopal Church of Canada. Factions within both denominations disputed the nature and procedure of the proposed organic union. This paper argues that the organic union debate was in fact crucial to AME expansion and the development of foreign missions in Haiti and the broader Caribbean. This is part of the Boston Seminar on African American History series. Seminars are free and open to the public. 

- Saturday, 17 November, 2:00 PM: Gallery Talk: Fashioning the New England Family with Kimberly Alexander, University of New Hampshire. Material culture specialist and guest curator, Dr. Kimberly Alexander will help viewers explore and contextualize rarely seen costumes, textiles and fashion-related accessories mined from the MHS collection. Representing three- centuries of evolving New England style, most of the pieces have never before been on view to the public.

Fashioning the New England Family is open Monday through Saturday, from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM. The exhibition explores the ways in which the multiple meanings of fashion and fashionable goods are reflected in patterns of consumption and refashioning, recycling, and retaining favorite family pieces. Many of the items that will be featured have been out of sight, having never been exhibited for the public or seen in living memory. The exhibition is organized as part of Mass Fashion, a consortium of cultural institutions set up to explore and celebrate the many facets of the culture of fashion in Massachusetts. 

Please note that the building is closed on Monday, 12 November. The library will close at 3:00 PM on Friday, 16 November. Take a look at our calendar page for information about upcoming programs.

This Week @MHS

Here is a look at what is going on this week at the MHS:

- Tuesday, 6 November, 5:15 PM: “A Rotten-Hearted Fellow”: The Rise of Alexander McDougall with Christopher Minty, the Adams Papers, MHS, and comment by Brendan McConville, Boston University. Historians have often grouped the DeLanceys of New York as self-interested opportunists who were destined to become loyalists. By focusing on the rise of Alexander McDougall, this paper offers a new interpretation, demonstrating how the DeLanceys and McDougall mobilized groups with competing visions of New York’s political economy. These prewar factions stayed in opposition until the Revolutionary War, thus shedding new light on the coming of the American Revolution. This is part of the Boston Area Seminar on Early American History series. Seminars are free and open to the public.

- Wednesday, 7 November, 12:00 PM: John Perkins Cushing & Boston's Early China Trade with Gwenn Miller, College of the Holy Cross. In July of 1803, John Perkins Cushing, an orphaned relation of some of the most prominent families in Boston, set sail for the Canton at the age of sixteen. The emerging literature on the Early American China trade often mentions Cushing as an aside, sometimes refers in passing to his importance among the foreign residents of Canton. This project explores how he came to be in that position of importance and casts Boston’s opium exchange at the center of the trade.

- Wednesday, 7 November, 6:00 PM: Founding Martyr: The Life & Death of Dr. Joseph Warren, the American Revolution’s Lost Hero with Christian Di Spigna.   Had he not been martyred at Bunker Hill in 1775, Dr. Joseph Warren, an architect of the colonial rebellion, might have led the country as Washington or Jefferson did. Warren was involved in almost every major insurrectionary act in the Boston, from the Stamp Act protests to the Boston Massacre to the Boston Tea Party, but his legacy has remained largely obscured. Di Spigna’s biography of Warren is the product of two decades of research and scores of newly unearthed documents that have given us this forgotten Founding Father anew. A pre-talk reception begins at 5:30 PM; the speaking program begins at 6:00 PM. There will be a special rum tasting courtesy of Privateer Rum at the reception.There is a $10 per person fee (no charge for MHS Fellows and Members or EBT cardholders). Please note that this program is SOLD OUT.

- Friday, 9 November, 12:00 PM: Persistent Futures of Americas Past: The Genres of Geography & Race in Early America with Timothy Fosbury, University of California--Los Angeles. This talk analyzes the speculative literary origins of America as a desired community and geography of economic, political, and religious belonging in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by considering how place making was a form of nascent race making in the early Americas. Moving between New England, Bermuda, and the Caribbean, this talk considers how settler imaginings of their desired futures in the Americas produced the preconditions for what we would now call race.

- Saturday, 10 November, 8:00 AM to 6:30 PM: Art & Memory:The Role of Medals, Medal Collectors of America and MHS Conference. This conference on medals and medal collecting will include a series of presentations on the role medals have played in America history, the evolution of medallic art, and the ways medals have reflected American culture up through the 20th century. In addition, a panel discussion will cover the stylistic developments from Renaissance medallic art to contemporary art medals (“The Art of the Medal”).  A second panel will explore the individual passions that drive numismatists to build their unique collections (“Why Collect Medals?”). There is a $75 per person conference fee, with optional dinner afterwards for an additional $95 per person. A cocktail reception at the MHS will conclude the conference in the late afternoon.

Fashioning the New England Family is open Monday through Saturday, from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM. The exhibition explores the ways in which the multiple meanings of fashion and fashionable goods are reflected in patterns of consumption and refashioning, recycling, and retaining favorite family pieces. Many of the items that will be featured have been out of sight, having never been exhibited for the public or seen in living memory. The exhibition is organized as part of Mass Fashion, a consortium of cultural institutions set up to explore and celebrate the many facets of the culture of fashion in Massachusetts. 

Please note that the library is closed on Saturday, 10 November and the building is closed on Monday, 12 November. Take a look at our calendar page for information about upcoming programs.

This Week @MHS

- Monday, 29 October, 6:00 PM: Armistice: WWI in Memory & Song, a collaboration of the MHS and the Boston Conservatory at Berklee, with John Brancy, Baritone; Peter Dugan, Piano; and Peter Drummey, MHS. A temporary exhibition on the end of World War I will be coupled with songs and a conversation about the journey home that men and women faced at the close of The War to End All Wars. This program will explore both the history of the war and the memory of it. On Tuesday October 30 at 8:00 pm, John Brancy and Peter Dugan will perform their program “Armistice: The Journey Home” in Seully Hall at Boston Conservatory at Berklee. A pre-program reception begins at 5:30 PM; the speaking program begins at 6:00 PM.

- Tuesday, 30 October, 5:15 PM: Governing the “Black Power” City: Leon H. Sullivan, Opportunities Industrialization Centers Inc., & the Rise of Black Empowerment with Jessica Ann Levy, Johns Hopkins University, and comment by Julia Rabig, Dartmouth College. This paper traces the Opportunities Industrialization Center’s rise from its meager founding in North Philadelphia to one of the largest black community development programs in the United States. In doing so, it sheds new light on the financial and intellectual investments made by American business, government bureaucrats, and civil rights entrepreneurs like Sullivan in transforming black dissidents into “productive citizens,” “productive” having economic and civic connotations. This is part of the Boston Seminar on Modern American Society and Culture series. Seminars are free and open to the public. 

- Thursday, 1 November, 5:30 PM: "No Ideas But in Things": Writing Lives from Objects with Deborah Lutz, University of Louisville; Karen Sanchez-Eppler, Amherst College; Susan Ware, Independent Scholar, and moderator Natalie Dykstra, Hope College. Often a biographer confronts silences in the record of her subject, when part of the life story is not documented with words. Mute sources—objects in the subject’s archive—can pose a challenge for interpretation, but also offer rich opportunities. How can biographers read objects as eloquent sources? This is part of the New England Biography Seminar series. Seminars are free and open to the public.

- Saturday, 3 November, 10:00 AM: The History & Collections of the MHS. Join us for a 90-minute docent-led tour of our public rooms. The tour is free, open to the public, with no need for reservations. If you would like to bring a party of 8 or more, please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org. 

Fashioning the New England Family is open Monday through Saturday, from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM. The exhibition explores the ways in which the multiple meanings of fashion and fashionable goods are reflected in patterns of consumption and refashioning, recycling, and retaining favorite family pieces. Many of the items that will be featured have been out of sight, having never been exhibited for the public or seen in living memory. The exhibition is organized as part of Mass Fashion, a consortium of cultural institutions set up to explore and celebrate the many facets of the culture of fashion in Massachusetts. 

Take a look at our calendar page for information about upcoming programs.

This Week @MHS

We have a busy week ahead with a couple of seminars, an author talk, and a workshop.

- Monday, 22 October, 5:15 PM: Paul Revere's Ride through Digital History with Joseph M. Adelman, Framingham State University and Omohundro Institute; Liz Covart, Omohundro Institute; Karin Wulf, Omohundro Institute. This seminar examines components of the Omohundro Institute’s multi-platform digital project and podcast series, Doing History: To the Revolution. It explores Episode 130, “Paul Revere’s Ride through History,” and the ways the topic was constructed through narrative and audio effects, as well as the content in the complementary reader app. Participants are asked to listen to the podcast and access the reader app before the session. 

- Tuesday, 23 October, 5:30 PM: Reproducing Race in the Early Americas with Rhae Lynn Barnes, Princeton University; Deirdre Cooper Owens, Queens College; Sasha Turner, Quinnipiac University, and moderated by Nicole Aljoe, Northeastern University. This roundtable will use the body as frame for examining racial formation in the Caribbean and U.S. from the eighteenth century to the present. The presenters will meditate on biological reproduction in relation to citizenship and subjecthood, labor and economy, medical and scientific knowledge, and representations of blackness in popular culture. This program will take place at the Knafel Center, Radcliffe Institute. This is part of the Boston Seminar on the History of Women, Gender, & Sexuality series. Seminars are free and open to the public. 

- Wednesday, 24 October, 6:00 PM: Swindler Sachem: The American Indian Who Sold His Birthright, Dropped Out of Harvard, & Conned the King of England with Jenny Hale Pulsipher, Brigham Young University. Jenny Pulsipher opens a window onto 17th-century New England and the English empire from the unusual perspective of John Wompas, a Nipmuc Indian who may not have been all he claimed but was certainly out of the ordinary. Drawing on documentary and anthropological sources as well as consultations with Native people, Pulsipher examines struggles over Native land and sovereignty during an era of political turmoil and reveals how Wompas navigated these perilous waters for the benefit of himself and his kin. A pre-talk reception begins at 5:30 PM; the speaking program begins at 6:00 PM. There is a $10 per person fee (no charge for MHS Fellows and Members or EBT cardholders) 

- Saturday, 27 October, 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM: Fashioning History workshop. Throughout history, our choices about what we wear tell the world about our personality, position, background, and beliefs. From textile in Boston Boycott, manufacture in the Industrial Revolution, to the fashion of war and protest, clothing offers a vivid lens to examine American cultural history. Drawing on the MHS exhibit “Fashioning the New England Family,” we will explore how clothing and style help us understand the everyday lives of historical New Englanders. This program is open to all who work with K-12 students. Teachers can earn 22.5 Professional Development Points or 1 graduate credit (for an additional fee). For questions, contact Kate Melchior at education@masshist.org or 617-646-0588.

Fashioning the New England Family is open Monday through Friday, from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM. The exhibition explores the ways in which the multiple meanings of fashion and fashionable goods are reflected in patterns of consumption and refashioning, recycling, and retaining favorite family pieces. Many of the items that will be featured have been out of sight, having never been exhibited for the public or seen in living memory. The exhibition is organized as part of Mass Fashion, a consortium of cultural institutions set up to explore and celebrate the many facets of the culture of fashion in Massachusetts. 

Take a look at our calendar page for information about upcoming programs.