2010-2011 Research Fellows Announced

By Jeremy Dibbell

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)

This Week @ MHS

By Jeremy Dibbell

Please join us on Wednesday, 7 April for a brown-bag lunch talk by Robert J. Robertson of Lamar University, “Louisa Adams and her brother, Henry, in Italy – A brief glimpse.” This event will begin at 12 noon. More info here.

And the “Margaret Fuller and Her Circles” conference kicks off on Thursday, 8 April with a keynote address at 6 p.m. by Mary Kelley of the University of Michigan, “‘The Measure of my Footprint’: Margaret Fuller’s Unfinished Revolution.” A reception will follow. The conference will continue on Friday and Saturday here at MHS.

Putnam Diaries to be Microfilmed

By Jeremy Dibbell

The Sarah Gooll Putnam diaries (finding guide) will be unavailable from 8 April through approximately 1 May 2010; they are headed offsite to be microfilmed. In July 2009 the MHS received a $16,771 Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) grant from the Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners to conserve, microfilm and digitize portions of the diaries.

Putnam, a Boston portrait artist, began her diary on Thanksgiving Day in 1860 when she was nine years old and maintained it until her death in 1912, filling 27 volumes. The diaries are richly illustrated with approximately 400 watercolor paintings and chronicle Putnam’s career as an artist as well as her extensive travels throughout the United States and abroad.

 

Obama to Visit MHS, Deliver Manuscript

By MHS

Upon learning that he was one of only three presidents for whom the MHS does not have manuscript holdings, Barack Obama announced this morning that he’ll be dropping by the Historical Society this evening (he’ll be in town for two DNC fundraisers) to personally deliver a handwritten draft copy of his 2004 Democratic convention keynote address, delivered here in Boston.

In a statement announcing the trip, Obama promised that he would ask his two immediate predecessors to follow his example.

 

 

[Note: Please note the date of this post]

This Week @ MHS

By Jeremy Dibbell

We hope you’ll join us on Wednesday, 31 March for an author talk with Michael O’Brien about his new (and delightful) book Mrs. Adams in Winter. Refreshments will be served at 5:30 p.m., with the talk set to start at 6 p.m. Reservations are now required for this event, and it’s filling up fast! You can sign up here.

On Thursday, 2 April, as part of the Boston Early American History seminar series, Jeannine DeLombard of the University of Toronto will present a talk, “The Ignominious Cord: Abraham Johnstone’s Address and the New Black Politics.” Edward Rugemer of Yale University will deliver a comment. Please read the Seminars @ MHS blog post for more information on attending seminars, including how to make reservations and receive the papers in advance. The seminar will begin at 5:15 p.m.

The Adams Women and War

By Jeremy Dibbell

We’ve added a special display to our annual MHS Open House, which will be held this Saturday, 27 March, from 10 a.m. – 3 p.m. Along with talks on the Margaret Fuller exhibit by Librarian Peter Drummey (11 a.m. and 1 p.m.), and the guided tours of the MHS building (10 a.m., 12 p.m., 2 p.m.), the Adams Papers editorial staff has prepared a small exhibit, “War Through the Eyes of the Adams Women.” Editor Maggie Hogan tells me the display “will feature items related primarily to Louisa Catherine Adams’ journey through Europe in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 but also Abigail’s experiences as an observer of the Battle of Bunker Hill. Among the items on display will be Louisa’s Narrative of a Journey, a record of her expenses for the trip, and her French passport—a particularly striking and beautiful document.”

The LCA documents will also be on display for our author talk with Michael O’Brien about his new (and delightful) book Mrs. Adams in Winter. That event will be held on Wednesday, 31 March. Refreshments will be served at 5:30 p.m., with the talk set to start at 6 p.m. Reservations are now required for this event, and it’s filling up fast! You can sign up here.

 

This Week @ MHS

By Jeremy Dibbell

As of today, Monday, 22 March our new exhibit is open: “‘A More Interior Revolution’: Elizabeth Peabody, Margaret Fuller, and the Women of the American Renaissance” will be available for viewing Monday through Saturday from 1-4 p.m., and will be up through 30 June. Guest curator Megan Marshall has selected letters and journals written by Fuller and Peabody, together with writings and works of art created by other women who participated in the literary renaissance in New England between 1830 and Fuller’s death in 1850. The exhibition draws upon the collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society and the Concord Free Public Library. You can find more information on the exhibit here.

 On Thursday, 25 March, the Boston Immigration and Urban History seminar series continues with a 5:15 p.m. talk by Emily Lieb of Columbia University, “‘A Street’s Last Chance’: Dollar Houses and the Great New Baltimore.” Brent Ryan of Harvard’s Graduate School of Design will give the comment. Please read the Seminars @ MHS blog post for more information on attending seminars, including how to make reservations and receive the papers in advance.

And finally, we hope you’ll join us on Saturday, 27 March from 10 a.m. – 3 p.m. for the annual MHS Open House. This will feature talks on the exhibit by Stephen T. Riley Librarian Peter Drummey (11 a.m. and 1 p.m.), as well as guided tours of the MHS building (10 a.m., 12 p.m., 2 p.m.). You can learn more about MHS programs and events, become a member, and enjoy some special refreshments.

 

Holton Wins Bancroft for “Abigail Adams”

By Jeremy Dibbell

We’re thrilled and excited here at MHS today to report that our friend Woody Holton has been awarded one of the three 2010 Bancroft Prizes for his book Abigail Adams. One of the most prestigious prizes for books of history, the Bancroft is awarded by the trustees of Columbia University “to the authors of books of exceptional merit in the fields of American history, biography, and diplomacy.”

Congratulations, Woody, on this well-deserved honor!

MHS Videos on C-SPAN

By Jeremy Dibbell

C-SPAN has just announced that a whopping 160,000 hours of video from 1987 to the present is now available free through the C-SPAN Video Library website. These include many MHS-related events from 1999 through 2009, among them:

– Woody Holton’s 9 November 2009 talk on his recent biography, Abigail Adams. Video.

– Two panels from the Charlottesville portion of last summer’s Adams/Jefferson libraries conference: Jefferson, Adams and Religion (Video) and Jefferson, Adams and Their Legacy (Video).

– A 1999 vignette on the Thomas Jefferson collections at MHS with our librarian, Peter Drummey. Video.

– Joseph Ellis’s 16 December 2004 talk on his biography of George Washington, His Excellency. Video.

– A 29 January 2009 lunch talk by Ken Burns on his documentary series “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea.” Video.

– The dramatic reading of letters between John and Abigail Adams, held at Faneuil Hall on 19 November 2007, featuring Gov. Deval and Diane Patrick, Gov. Mike and Kitty Dukakis, and Sen. Edward and Victoria Kennedy. Video.

To find other MHS-related events (there are many more), just search for “Massachusetts HIstorical Society” in the search bar at the top of the C-SPAN Video Library homepage.

JQA, Lead-Water, & Lindsey Vonn

By Jeremy Dibbell

John Quincy Adams’ tweet for today, 15 March, has generated lots of questions from his followers. He writes “Rode out. attempted to write. Instead of lead-water use fresh butter. Inflammation increased. Evening Chess.” He expands on this slightly in his long diary entry: “I ceased this day using lead-water to disperse the inflammation of my leg, finding it altogether insufficient to check its progress; and substituted in its stead an application of fresh butter.”

What’s lead-water, why replace it with butter, and what’s Lindsey Vonn got to do with this?

The OED defines lead-water as “dilute solution of acetate of lead.” At the time this liquid was used as a treatment for inflammation (Benjamin Rush suggests a poultice of “bread moistened with lead water” to treat sore legs); in other cases it seems to have been used directly on inflamed areas. It is, of course, extremely poisonous – don’t try this at home!

The lead-water having proven ineffective, JQA switched to butter, another commonly-suggested remedy for drawing down inflammation (along with various other things, like oil). And that’s where Lindsey Vonn comes in: as treatment for her pre-Olymipics shin injury she told Sports Illustrated that her physical therapist prescribed an unusual remedy: “He’s been wrapping cheese on it, and I know that sounds funny, but it seems to work. He’s been rubbing castor oil on it.” She even tweeted about it.