Seminar Series 2010

The Massachusetts Historical Society sponsors four seminar series, each addressing a diverse range of topics including: Early American History, Environmental History, Immigration & Urban History, and the History of Women & Gender. Seminars are open to everyone. Click on the title of the seminar series for information on this season's speakers and topics.

Seminar meetings usually revolve around the discussion of a pre-circulated paper. Sessions open with remarks from the essayist and an assigned commentator, after which the discussion is opened to the floor. After each session, the Society serves a light buffet supper. We request that those wishing to stay for supper make reservations in advance by calling 617-646-0540.

We are now offering seminar papers in PDF format at a password-protected web page. Subscribers will receive instructions for accessing the essays when we receive their payment. Annual fees for seminar subscriptions are as follows:

Boston Early American History Seminar: $25 (online)
Environmental History Seminar: $25 (online)
Immigration & Urban History Seminar: $25 (online)

Visit our website to purchase an on-line subscription: http://www.masshist.org/events/attend.cfm

(Visit the Schlesinger Library to subscribe to the History of Women & Gender seminar: http://www.radcliffe.edu/events/calendar.aspx)

For questions or registration assistance, contact the Research Department: seminars@masshist.org or 617-646-0557.

The fall seminar season begins on 16 September, and all seminars appear in the MHS Events Calendar as well as in each week's This Week @ MHS blog post.

Microfilm Goes High-Tech!

We've recently acquired three wonderful new microfilm reader/scanners, and they're receiving rave reviews from staff and readers alike (research fellow Matt Bahar, pictured here, has been making good use of one in recent days), and other library visitors have been tossing around some pretty impressive superlatives about them (by which I mean positive superlatives, which was not usually the case with the previous readers).

The new machines, called ScanPro 2000s, allow readers to scan images from microfilm as PDF or image files onto a flash drive, to their email account, or to a printer in the library. The quality is significantly better than the printouts made from our older machines, and the ability to create zoomable, enhanceable image files and high-quality PDF documents is definitely an improvement.

When we first saw a demo of one of these, staff picked a reel of microfilm that we knew was just about impossible to read on our other machines (too dark, too smudgy, &c.). With the ScanPro, a couple of quick clicks resulted in a clear, easily-readable image (I confess, I was shocked at the level of detail we could pick out by adjusting the settings just a little bit). There's even a "spot-edit" feature, that allows you to lighten up that dark corner of a page or highlight a signature by increasing the contrast. Just about every time I use one of them (usually before we open since they've been pretty popular during the day!) I find another nifty new feature.

Researchers who cannot visit the library can request digital files to be e-mailed to them by the library staff. Please see details here at under "low resolution digital files."

The purchase of the ScanPros was made possible thanks to a grant from the Ruby W. and LaVon P. Linn Foundation, and to fundraising efforts led by MHS Fellow Frederic D. Grant, for which we (and our readers) are exceedingly grateful.

Next time you visit, be sure to ask for a "test drive" of one of the new machines!

Summer Reading Sale!

If you’ve had enough beach reads this summer, perhaps it’s time to consider a publication from the Massachusetts Historical Society for your next book. Now through 31 August, the Society is offering many of its most popular titles at a discount to MHS Fellows and Members. Whether you’re interested in John Winthrop or John Adams, soldiers or suffragettes, the MHS has a wide range of engaging, high-quality books available for the curious reader. Click here [PDF] to learn more about our discounted titles.

Did you know that the Massachusetts Historical Society has been publishing books since 1792? Not only is the MHS the oldest historical society in America; it’s also one of the country’s oldest publishers. Perhaps even more surprising, many of the Society’s earliest publications are still available for purchase. The oldest volume in the inventory is Collections of the MHS, series 1, volume 6, which dates from 1799. Like all of the Collections, this volume features items straight from the archives, such as letters by George Washington and Peter Stuyvesant, as well as a list of vocabularies from American Indian languages. Bibliophiles may also be interested to know that copies of many of the Society’s Proceedings, dating from the 1860s, are still in stock, as are all 18 volumes of Sibley’s Harvard Graduates.

For information on any of our publications, whether from the 18th century or the 21st, visit http://www.masshist.org/in_print/ or e-mail publications@masshist.org.

2010-2011 Research Fellows Announced

The MHS awards a wide variety of research fellowships each year, and I'm happy to be able to pass along the list for the 2010-11 season. Please pardon the lengthy list. For more information about each type of fellowship, click the link in the heading. We look forward to welcoming back longtime friends and meeting new ones from among this exciting group.

MHS-NEH Long-Term Research Fellowships:

Rachel Van, Columbia University, Free Trade and Family Values: Kinship Networks and the Culture of Early American Capitalism

Joanne van der Woude, Harvard University, American Aeneids: Conquest and Conversion in Poetry from the Americas

Suzanne and Caleb Loring Research Fellowship (with the Boston Athenaeum):

Peter Wirzbicki, New York University, Black Intellectuals, White Abolitionists, and Revolutionary Transcendentalists: Creating the Radical Intellectual Tradition in Antebellum Boston

New England Regional Fellowship Consortium (NERFC) Awards (with 16 other institutions)*

Thomas Adams, Tulane University, The Servicing of America: Service Work, Political Economy, and the Making of Modern America

*Rachel Cope, Brigham Young University, Drops of Grace and Mercy: How Women Cultivated Personal Change through Conversion Processes

Christine DeLucia, Yale University, The Memory Frontier: Making Past and Place in the Northeast after King Philip's War

Allison Elias, University of Virginia, Gendering the Problems of Working Women: Clerical Workers, Labor Organizing, and Second-Wave Feminism

Hayley Glaholt, Northwestern University, ‘Reversing the Chivalry of Christ’: Quaker Women Challenge the ‘Species Line’ of Pacifist Ethics

Jane Fiegen Green, Washington University St. Louis, The Boundary of Youth: Adulthood and Civil Society in Early America, 1780-1850

Yu-ling Huang, State University of New York at Binghamton, The United States and Reproductive Politics in Postwar East Asia: A Transnational Network of Demographic Knowledge, Contraceptive Technologies, and Population Control Policies

*Robert Mussey, ‘To Seek a Better Country’: A Biography of Richard Cranch and Family

*Nicholas Osborne, Columbia University, Little Capitalists: Savings Institutions in United States History, 1816-1941

Christopher Pastore, University of New Hampshire, From Sweetwater to Seawater: An Environmental and Atlantic History of Narragansett Bay, 1636-1836

*Joshua Smith, U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, Yankee Doodle Upset: New England's Yankee Identity in the War of 1812

Peter Wirzbicki, New York University, Black Intellectuals, White Abolitionists, and Revolutionary Transcendentalists: Creating the Radical Intellectual Tradition in Antebellum Boston

* Note: Those names marked with a * will be conducting research at MHS through this award.

MHS Short-Term Research Fellowships:

Richard Boles, The George Washington University, Divided Faiths: The Rise of Segregated Northern Churches (African American Studies Fellowship)

Annie Rudd, Columbia University, The Performance of Everyday Life: A History of the Photographic Pose (Andrew Oliver Research Fellowship)

Anthony Antonucci, University of Connecticut, ‘When in Rome’: American Relations with the Italian States from Thomas Jefferson to Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1790-1860 (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)

Matthew Bahar, University of Oklahoma, The People of the Dawnland and Their Atlantic World (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)
 
Irene Cheng, Columbia University, Forms of Function: Self Culture, Geometry, and Octagon Architecture in Antebellum America (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)

Rachel Herrmann, University of Texas at Austin, Food and War: Indians, Slaves, and the American Revolution (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)

Sarah Keyes, University of Southern California, Circling Back: Migration to the Pacific and the Reconfiguration of America, 1820-1900 (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)

Susan Pearson, Northwestern University, Registering Birth: Population and Personhood in American History (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)

Nathan Perl-Rosenthal, Columbia University, Corresponding Republics: Private Letters and Patriot Societies in the American, Dutch and French Revolutions, ca. 1765-1792 (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)

Marc Selverstone, University of Virginia, Henry Cabot Lodge and the Withdrawal of American Troops from Vietnam (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)

David Silverman, The George Washington University, Thundersticks: Firearms and the Transformation of Native America (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)

Eric Hinderaker, University of Utah, Boston's Massacre: Authority and Violence in the British Empire (Benjamin F. Stevens Fellowship)

Mary Kelley, University of Michigan, American Reading and Writing Practices, 1760-1860 (Malcolm and Mildred Freiberg Fellowship)

Marc-William Palen, University of Texas at Austin, The Cleveland ‘Conspiracy’: Mugwumpery, Free Trade Ideology, and Foreign Policy in Gilded-Age America (Marc Friedlaender Fellowship)

David Preston, The Citadel, Braddock's Veterans: Paths of Loyalty in the British Empire, 1755-1775 (Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati Fellowship)

Nora Doyle, University of North Carolina, ‘A Higher Place in the Scale of Being’: Experience and Representation of the Maternal Body in America, 1750-1865 (Ruth R. & Alyson R. Miller Fellowship)

Laura Prieto, Simmons College, New Woman: New Empire: 1898 and Its Legacies for Women in the United States (Ruth R. & Alyson R. Miller Fellowship)

Edward Hanson, The Papers of Robert Treat Paine (Paine Publication Fund Fellowship)

Brian Gratton, Arizona State University, Henry Cabot Lodge and the Politics of Immigration Restriction (Twentieth Century Fellowship)

Sara Damiano, The Johns Hopkins University, Financial Credit and Professional Credibility: Lawyers and Laypeople in New England Ports, 1700-1776 (W.B.H. Dowse Fellowship)

Neal Dugre, Northwestern University, Creating New England: Intercolonial Political Culture and the Birth of a Region in the Seventeenth-Century English Atlantic (W.B.H. Dowse Fellowship)