By Dan Hinchen

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!

By Dan Hinchen

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.

By Dan Hinchen

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.

By Dan Hinchen

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.

By Dan Hinchen

There is a bit of a lull in the action this week at the Society with only two public programs on the slate. Up first is the next episode of the MHS Brown Bag talks. On Wednesday, 24 July, bring a lunch to hear NERFC Fellow Michael Blaakman, Yale Univeristy, as he presents “Speculation Nation: Land Speculators and Land Mania in Post-Revolutionary America.” Mr. Blaakman will discuss research for a dissertation which traces the causes and consequences of large-scale land speculation between 1776 and 1812 in order to ask: Why and how had the new United States become a land of speculation? What effect did land speculation have on society, politics, and the evolving capitalist economy during the revolutionary settlement? On the formation of the American state? What about speculation was uniquely American, and what about the nascent republic was distinctly speculative? Brown Bag lunch talks are free and open to the public and begin at 12:00 PM.

And on Saturday, 27 July, 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.

By Dan Hinchen

After a week void of public events here at the MHS, this week the Society offers a slew of public events to satisfy your historical curiosities.

First, beginning on Monday, 15 July, the MHS hosts a two-day workshop titled “Old Towns/New Country: The First Years of a New Nation.” 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 historian Benjamin Park and MHS Teacher Fellow Betsy Lambert. The program takes place on Monday, 15 July, and Tuesday, 16 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.

Also on Monday, research fellow Anna Bonewitz, University of York, will present a Brown Bag discussion of her research titled “Fashion Across Borders and Seas: Print Culture, Women’s Networks, and the Creation of Feminine Identities in the British Atlantic World, 1750-1900.” Ms. Bonewitz’s reserach examines the diverse media through which women learned about fashion and how ideas of fashion were circulated around and between Britain and the United States, from the time of the engimatic fashion doll to the birth of modern advertising. Her project also considers how the circulation of visual and material sources for fashion information such as fashion dolls, portraits, and advertisements, was as much a process of learning as it was of sharing. The circulation of these objects enabled women to form valuable networks whereby ideas of femininity, politics, national identity and imperialism were created, solidified and challenged. Brown bag lunch talks are free and open to the public and begin at 12:00pm.

On Wednesday, 17 July, the MHS will host another Brown Bag lunch talk. This time, Denise Gigante of Stanford University will present “The Book Madness: Charles Deane and the Boston Antiquarians.” Ms. Gigante’s research looks at a hub of bibliomaniacs associated with the early years of the MHS. Among the circle of learned historians were George Livermore, Charles Deane, Alexander Young, and Edward Crowninshiled. Together, these amateur men of letters provide a unique look outlook on the culture of book collecting and the formation of private and public libraries in mid-19th-century America.

Then, on Thursday, 18 July, at 12:00pm, the MHS presents “Lest We Forget: The Massachusetts 54th,” a commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the Massachusetts 54th Regiment’s attack against Fort Wagner, South Carolina, and featuring guest speaker Noah Griffin. Visit his website to learn more about his work. Learn more about the Massachusetts 54th, as well as the Society’s manuscripts and photograph collections related to the regiment at our 54th Regiment! site. This event is free and open to the public

And on Saturday, 20 July, 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.

By Dan Hinchen

This week is a very quiet one here at the Historical Society. There are no special events on the calendar but that does not mean that there is no reason to pay the Society a visit. The MHS has three current exhibitions that are free and open to the public. The “headlining” exhibition is “The Object of History: 18th Century Treasures from the Massachusetts Historical Society,” which features portraits, needlework, firearms, clothing, furniture, silver, scientific instruments, documents, and books from the Society’s collections.

Complementing the main exhibition is a smaller display called “The Education of Our Children is Never Out of My Mind.” On view here are letters written by John and Abigail Adams to each other, to their children, and to friends and family regarding their views on education.These two exhibits will be viewable until 7 September 2013.

The third exhibition, unrelated to the other two, is “Estlin Cummings Wild West Show,” featuring a selection of E.E. Cummings’s childhood writings and drawings, showcasing the young poet’s earliest experiments with words and illustrations. This display will be available until 30 August 2013.

All of these exhibitions are free and open to the public six days a week, Monday-Saturday, 10:00am – 4:00pm.

Finally, on Saturday, 13 July, 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.

By Dan Hinchen

It is a holiday week and there are plenty of goings-on here at the Massachusetts Historical Society to celebrate our nation’s independence. Please note that the library of the Historical Society will be closed on Thursday, July 4, in observance of Independence Day.

Kicking off the week on Monday, 1 July, come by at noon for a Brown Bag Lunch talk. This installment features Jen Staver of University of California, Irvine, presenting “Navigating the Other North American Coast: New England Merchants and Sailors Approach the North American Pacific, 1780s-1820s.” Ms. Staver’s project investigates social and environmental change along the far Pacific coast of North America from 1760 through 1820 by focusing on knowledge of and labor in the region’s oceanic and littoral landscapes. Brown bag lunch talks are free and open to the public, so pack up a midday snack and come on by.

On Wednesday, 3 July, another brown bag lunch talk will take place. This time, short-term fellow Lo Faber, Loyola University of New Orleans, presents “The Spirit of Enterprise Excited by the Acquisition of Louisiana: New Englanders and the Orleans Territory, 1803-1812.” In 1803 and 1804 New Englanders warily eyed their country’s vast new acquisition. Some worried that Louisiana was a “savage,” uncivilized land that would corrupt the new nation; others that it would reduce the already-declining political importance of New England; others that it would become a new addition to the “empire of slavery.” Still others, however, especially Jeffersonian republicans, dismissed these and other concerns and celebrated the Purchase and the economic opportunities it would bring. A few went so far as to move south in search of fortunes in the Orleans Territory. This event is free and begins at 12:00pm.

And on Thursday, 4 July, the MHS will host a special Independence Day Exhibition. Though the library is closed, the gallery spaces will be open from 12:00pm to 4:00pm, currently displaying three exhibitions. Also included on Thursday is a special exhibition of materials related to the Declaration of Independence. Exhibits are free and open to the public six days per week, Monday-Saturday.

Finally, on Saturday, 6 July, 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.

By Dan Hinchen

As summer gets into full swing, things are pretty quiet at the MHS with only two items on the calendar for this week. First, on Wednesday, 26 June, the Society will host the next installment of the Brown Bag Lunch series. Come by at 12:00pm to hear Brooke Newman, Virginia Commonwealth University, present “Island Masters: Gender, race, and power in the eighteenth-century British Caribbean.” At its height in the late eighteenth century, Jamaica was the most valuable and productive of Britain’s colonial possessions in the Atlantic world. Yet intertwined with Jamaica’s reputation for unparalleled profit was a growing apprehension of settler degeneration—in manners, morals, bloodlines, and especially life expectancy. The island, as one would-be colonist put it, offers “the most flattering prospect of pecuniary acquisition or death.” Such notions signify Britain’s ambivalent and contradictory relationship with Jamaica, and the West India colonies more generally, during the era of slavery. This event is free and open to the public so pack a lunch and stop on by.

Then, on Saturday, 29 June, visit the Society for The History and Collections of the MHS, a 90-minute docent-led tour that explores all of the public rooms in the building will 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.

By Dan Hinchen

This week is the first full week for the three new exhibitions on display. Among them, the Society is featuring correspondence between John and Abigail Adams that illustrate their views on education for their children in “The Education of our Children is Never out of My Mind.” Also on display are several childhood drawings and early poetic works of e.e. cummings in “Estlin Cummings Wild West Show.” Finally, the new main exhibit on display is “The Object of History: 18th-Century Treasures from the Massachusetts Historical Society,” featuring a range of artifacts from the Society’s holdings, from flint-lock pistols to a pair of spectacles. All of these exhibits are free and open to the public, Monday-Saturday, 10:00am-4:00pm.

In conjunction with the main exhibit, the Society will host a series of conversations with MHS Librarian Peter Drummey about what documents and artifacts from the collections can tell us about the characters, events, and issues of the past, as well as the role of the MHS in documenting the rich history of our state and nation. On Monday, 17 June 2013, join in on the latest in this series as David Wood, Concord Museum, and Peter Drummey discuss early works of art, artifacts, and documents on display. Registration required. Fee $25/$15 (F/M); Free for MHS Fund Giving Circle members. Please contact the education department at 617-646-0557 / education@masshist.org. Register for all three programs in “The Object of History” series and receive a registration discount! Series fee: $60/30 (F/M); Free for MHS Fund Circle members.

Then, on Wednesday, 19 June 2013, the MHS will host another talk in the Brown Bag Lunch series. This week, Jen Manion of Connecticut College presents “19th-Century Narratives of Transgender Experience & the History of Possibility.” In the 1880s, the field of sexology declared masculine women to be inverts—true homosexuals. Prior to this period, representations of gender crossings were more varied and common. Such representations shine a spotlight on some of the most obvious anxieties concerning women’s place in society as well as the constitutive relationships between sex, gender, and sexuality. Brown bag lunches are free and open to the public, beginning at 12:00pm.

Last, on Saturday, 22 June, there will be a free tour of the Society’s home at 1154 Boylston St. The History and Collections of the MHS is a 90-minute docent-led tour that explores all of the public rooms in the building will 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.