MHS Calendar of Events - February 2021

FEBRUARY CALENDAR

2021

Our mission is to promote understanding of the history of Massachusetts and the nation by collecting and communicating materials and resources that foster historical knowledge.

LOCATION 1154 Boylston Street Boston, MA 02215 CONTACT Tel: 617.536.1608 Fax: 617.859.0074 VISITOR INFORMATION Our building is temporarily closed to the public due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Working remotely, we are offering an engaging selection of online programs, building a virtual community of scholars, delivering online resources to educators, providing access to our collection, and continuing to publish.

While the library is closed to the public, members of our Reader Services team are working remotely and available to assist you.

Please visit www.masshist.org/library/reference for more information about the resources available to all researchers.

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Cover: Automaton drawing of Cupid, April 29, 1835.

RSVP Information

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February Programs at a Glance

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February Program Descriptions

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A Look Ahead: Winter-spring Programs

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FEBRUARY PROGRAMS

This winter, the MHS offers an engaging roster of online special events, author talks, panel discussions, brown-bag lunches, and seminars. For a complete schedule, visit www.masshist.org/events.

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Generous support provided by

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Past Programs

Visit www.masshist.org/events for additional event information, updates, cancellations, and registration.

If you missed a program, would like to revisit the material presented, or are interested in viewing past programs, visit www.masshist.org/video. A selection of past programs is just a click away.

EVENTS, AUTHOR TALKS, & SERIES For more information or to register for an online program, visit www.masshist.org/events.

WORKSHOPS Visit www.masshist.org/teaching-history for more information. Register online at www.masshist.org/events.

BROWN-BAG LUNCH PROGRAMS Brown-bags provide an informal opportunity for visiting researchers to discuss their work, field questions, and receive new ideas. Please visit www.masshist.org/events for more information or to register for an online brown-bag.

SEMINARS Seminars bring together a diverse group of scholars and members of the public to workshop a pre-circulated paper. After brief remarks from the author and an assigned commentator, the discussion is opened to the floor. There is a subscription fee for advance access to supporting materials. For more information, please visit www.masshist.org/research/seminars; register online at www.masshist.org/events.

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Become a Member The MHS welcomes Members from near and far to join its community of history lovers. Members enjoy invitations to Members-only events, free admission to select programs, and subscriptions to Miscellany. Join today or give the gift of membership to the history enthusiast, amateur historian, or history professional in your life. Join at www.masshist.org/support.

All programs will take place online unless otherwise noted.

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MONDAY |

5:30 | VIRTUAL CONVERSATION

Driving While Black: African American Travel & the Road to Civil Rights Gretchen Sorin, SUNY Oneonta, and Catherine Allgor, MHS

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TUESDAY |

5:15 | VIRTUAL SEMINAR

Women of the Underground: Political Repression, Kinship Networks & the Transatlantic Resistance to Restoration Politics Cynthia Van Zandt, University of New Hampshire Comment: Adrian Weimer, Providence College

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THURSDAY |

5:30 | VIRTUAL PROGRAM

Higher Laws: Black & White Transcendentalists & the Fight Against Slavery Peter Wirzbicki, Princeton University

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TUESDAY |

6:00 | VIRTUAL PROGRAM

Peter J. Gomes Memorial Book Prize Ceremony Kerri Greenidge, Tufts University, and Annette Gordon-Reed, Harvard University

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THURSDAY |

5:30 | VIRTUAL CONVERSATION

The Crooked Path to Abolition: Abraham Lincoln & the Antislavery Constitution James Oakes, The Graduate Center, CUNY, and Randall Kennedy, Harvard Law School

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TUESDAY |

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THURSDAY |

6:00 | VIRTUAL PROGRAM

Confronting Racial Injustice: Slavery, Wealth Creation & Intergenerational Wealth Nicole Maskiell, University of South Carolina, and Elon Cook Lee, National Trust for Historic Preservation Moderator: Jared Hardesty, Western Washington University This program is in partnership with Northeastern University Law School’s Criminal Justice Task Force

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TUESDAY |

5:15 | VIRTUAL SEMINAR

A Portal to the Pacific Ocean: Puget Sound, the Transcontinental Railroads & Transpacific Trade, 1869–1914 Sean Fraga, University of Southern California Comment: David Armitage, Harvard University

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WEDNESDAY |

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THURSDAY |

5:30 | VIRTUAL PROGRAM

Threat of Dissent: A History of Ideological Exclusion & Deportation in the United States Julia Rose Kraut

5:30 | VIRTUAL CONVERSATION

Protest & Citizenship: Revisited Stephen Kantrowitz, University of Wisconsin–Madison; Crystal Feimster, Yale University; Chad Williams, Brandeis University; Hasan Jeffries, Ohio State University

FEBRUARY PROGRAMS AT A GLANCE

February

5:15 | VIRTUAL SEMINAR

Boston Women on Drugs Trysh Travis, University of Florida Comment: Elizabeth Lunbeck, Harvard University

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Founded in 1791, the MHS is an invaluable resource for American history, life, and culture. Our extraordinary collections tell the story of America through millions of rare and unique documents, artifacts, and irreplaceable national treasures. All programs are virtual unless otherwise noted.

FEBRUARY

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MONDAY |

5:30 | VIRTUAL CONVERSATION

Driving While Black: African American Travel & the Road to Civil Rights Gretchen Sorin, SUNY Oneonta, and Catherine Allgor, MHS Driving While Black demonstrates that the car—the ultimate symbol of independence and possibility—has always held particular importance for African Americans, allowing Black families to evade the dangers presented by an entrenched racist society and to enjoy, in some measure, the freedom of the open road.

Melding new archival research with her family’s story, Gretchen Sorin recovers a lost history, demonstrating how, when combined with black travel guides—including the famous Green Book—the automobile encouraged a new way of resisting oppression.

To reserve: This is an online program. Please register at www.masshist.org/events.

FEBRUARY

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TUESDAY |

5:15 | VIRTUAL SEMINAR

Pauline Maier Early American History Seminar Women of the Underground: Political Repression, Kinship Networks & the Transatlantic Resistance to Restoration Politics Cynthia Van Zandt, University of New Hampshire Comment: Adrian Weimer, Providence College Nonconformist resistance to the Stuart Restoration is often told as the history of ministers, regicides, and other men who actively preserved their loyalty to the political and religious ideals of the 1640s and 1650s. However, many of the ongoing activities necessary to preserve the movement were carried out by women. This paper explores women’s roles in the transatlantic kinship, religious, and veterans’ networks which enabled nonconformists to sustain themselves in the face of defeat and repression.

To reserve: This is an online program. Please register at www.masshist.org/events.

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THURSDAY |

5:30 | VIRTUAL PROGRAM

Higher Laws: Black & White Transcendentalists & the Fight Against Slavery Peter Wirzbicki, Princeton University In the cauldron of the antislavery movement, antislavery activists and Transcendentalist intellectuals, developed a “Higher Law” ethos, a unique set of romantic political sensibilities— marked by moral enthusiasms, democratic idealism, and a vision of the self that could judge political questions from “higher” standards of morality and reason. The Transcendentalism that emerges here was intended to fight slavery, but it would influence later labor, feminist, civil rights, and environmentalist activism. African American thinkers and activists have long engaged with American Transcendentalist ideas about “double consciousness,” nonconformity, and civil disobedience. When thinkers like Martin Luther King, Jr., or W. E. B. Du Bois invoked Transcendentalist ideas, they were putting to use an intellectual movement that Black radicals had participated in since the 1830s.

To reserve: This is an online program. Please register at www.masshist.org/events.

FEBRUARY

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TUESDAY |

6:00 | VIRTUAL CONVERSATION

Peter J. Gomes Memorial Book Prize Ceremony Kerri Greenidge, Tufts University, and Annette Gordon-Reed, Harvard University Please join us for a special evening in which historian Kerri Greenidge will receive the 2020 Gomes Prize for Black Radical: The Life and Times of William Monroe Trotter. Greenidge will join Annette Gordon-Reed in a conversation about Trotter’s pursuit of radical equality and Black self-determination, as well as the multilayered world of Black Boston that was not simply an abolitionist haven for former slaves but a segregated world with limited opportunity for even a Harvard-educated man like Trotter.

FEBRUARY PROGRAM DESCRIPTIONS

FEBRUARY

To reserve: This is an online program. Please register at www.masshist.org/events.

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FEBRUARY

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THURSDAY |

5:30 | VIRTUAL CONVERSATION

The Crooked Path to Abolition: Abraham Lincoln & the Antislavery Constitution James Oakes, The Graduate Center, CUNY, and Randall Kennedy, Harvard Law School Some celebrate Lincoln for freeing the slaves; others fault him for a long-standing conservatism on abolition and race. James Oakes provides another exploration of Lincoln and the end of slavery. Through the unforeseen challenges of the Civil War crisis, Lincoln and the Republican Party adhered to a clear antislavery strategy founded on the Constitution itself. Lincoln and the Republicans claimed strong constitutional tools for federal action against slavery, and they used those tools consistently to undermine slavery, prevent its expansion, and pressure the slave states into abolition. This antislavery Constitution guided Lincoln and his allies as they navigated the sectional crisis and the Civil War. When the states finally ratified the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery, it was a confirmation of a long-held vision.

To reserve: This is an online program. Please register at www.masshist.org/events.

FEBRUARY

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TUESDAY |

5:15 | VIRTUAL SEMINAR

The History of Women, Gender & Sexuality Seminar Boston Women on Drugs Trysh Travis, University of Florida Comment: Elizabeth Lunbeck, Harvard University In the mid-20th century, Boston emerged as a laboratory for “the modern alcoholism movement,� a campaign to replace penal responses to chronic drunkenness with medico-moral treatment focused on returning white men to their appropriate roles as breadwinners. In the late 1970s, radical feminist and women of color community health activists in Boston and Cambridge critiqued this system. This paper examines their attempts to create a more equitable, responsive, and genuinely feminist approach to substance abuse and assesses their strengths and shortcomings.

To reserve: This is an online program. Please register at www.masshist.org/events.

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THURSDAY |

6:00 | VIRTUAL CONVERSATION

Confronting Racial Injustice, Program 1: Slavery, Wealth Creation & Intergenerational Wealth Nicole Maskiell, University of South Carolina, and Elon Cook Lee, National Trust for Historic Preservation Moderator: Jared Hardesty, Western Washington University Developed by the Northeastern University School of Law Criminal Justice Task Force, Confronting Racial Injustice is a free, five-part series hosted by the MHS and sponsored by a number of Boston-area organizations.

From the 17th century to the 21st, enslavement—even when it took place outside of Massachusetts—shaped the province and the state in significant ways. It was and has been central to creating wealth: family fortunes, institutional endowments, and public budgets in the Commonwealth have all benefited from its spoils. This panel discussion between academic and public historians explores Massachusetts’s connections to slavery and the trade of enslaved people, the wealth—and the poverty—enslavement created and bequeathed, and how the legacies of enslavement are reflected in injustices that haunt Massachusetts to this day.

To reserve: This is an online program. Please register at www.masshist.org/events.

FEBRUARY

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TUESDAY |

5:15 | VIRTUAL SEMINAR

Dana G. Malgeri Modern American Society & Culture Seminar A Portal to the Pacific Ocean: Puget Sound, the Transcontinental Railroads & Transpacific Trade, 1869–1914 Sean Fraga, University of Southern California Comment: David Armitage, Harvard University The transcontinental railroads reshaped the United States—its politics, economy, culture, and environment. But, as Sean Fraga argues, these railroads also saw themselves as part of an emergent global steam-powered network. This paper shows how American interest in trade with East Asia motivated Northern Pacific Railway and Great Northern Railway to build transcontinental lines to Puget Sound. In doing so, these railroads left lasting impacts on the region’s lands, waters, and peoples.

FEBRUARY PROGRAM DESCRIPTIONS

FEBRUARY

To reserve: This is an online program. Please register at www.masshist.org/events.

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FEBRUARY

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WEDNESDAY |

5:30 | VIRTUAL PROGRAM

Threat of Dissent: A History of Ideological Exclusion & Deportation in the United States Julia Rose Kraut Beginning with the Alien Friends Act of 1798, the United States passed laws in the name of national security to bar or expel foreigners based on their beliefs and associations—although these laws sometimes conflict with First Amendment protections of freedom of speech and association or contradict America’s self-image as a nation of immigrants. The government has continually used ideological exclusions and deportations of noncitizens to suppress dissent and radicalism throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, from the War on Anarchy to the Cold War to the War on Terror. In Threat of Dissent, Julia Rose Kraut provides a comprehensive overview of the intersection of immigration law and the First Amendment.

To reserve: This is an online program. Please register at www.masshist.org/events.

FEBRUARY

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THURSDAY |

5:30 | VIRTUAL CONVERSATION

Protest & Citizenship: Revisited Stephen Kantrowitz, University of Wisconsin–Madison; Crystal Feimster, Yale University; Chad Williams, Brandeis University; Hasan Jeffries, Ohio State University Collective protest, in addition to being a constitutionally protected right, is a fundamental and enduring part of American life and culture. Protest and agitation has at times proven a powerful way of advancing the rights and status of marginalized groups by swaying public opinion and fueling changes in law and public policy. Our panel of scholars will revisit a conversation held at the MHS in 2018 that explored the ways in which protest has been used to highlight injustice and change the citizenship rights of certain groups. In the wake of the high-profile demonstrations triggered by the murder of George Floyd, what can we take from the past to understand our current political and social climate?

To reserve: This is an online program. Please register at www.masshist.org/events.

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March 2: Pauline Maier Early American History Seminar, Health, Disease & Early American Environments with Molly Nebiolo, Northeastern University; Camden Elliott, Harvard University; and Thomas Wickman, Trinity College.

March 3: The Strange Genius of Mr. O: The World of the United States’ First Forgotten Celebrity with Carolyn Eastman, Virginia Commonwealth University, and Sara Georgini, MHS. March 4: African American History Seminar, From Jobs & Freedom to Jobs & Opportunity: Andrew Young, Growth & the Illusion of Job Creation with Danielle Wiggins, California Institute of Technology, and Brenna Greer, Wellesley College.

March 9: Environmental History Seminar, Climate in Words & Numbers: How Early Americans Recorded Weather in Almanacs with Joyce Chaplin, Harvard University.

March 11: Confronting Racial Injustice, Redlining: From Slavery to $8 in 400 Years March 24: From Revolution to Pandemic: What Makes Boston One of the World’s Top Innovation Centers? with Robert Krim and Scott Kirsner.

March 25: New England Biography Series, Marriage of Minds or Boston Divorce? The Lives & Good Works of Caroline Healey Dall & Rev. Charles Henry Appleton Dall on Two Continents with Neilesh Bose, University of Victorial, and Helen R. Deese, Caroline Healey Dall Editor, MHS, and moderator Megan Marshall, Emerson College.

March 30: Malgeri Modern American Society & Culture Seminar, The Parlor & the Public: Tin Pan Alley & the Birth of Manhattan Mass Culture with Samuel Backer, Johns Hopkins University and Jeffrey Melnick, University of Massachusetts Boston.

April 1: African American History Seminar, “Fighting the Dogs”: Fugitivity, Canine Hunters & Slave Resistance in the Rural South with Tyler Parry, University of Nevada—Las Vegas, and Harriet Riveto, MIT. April 13: Environmental History Series, Kaleidoscope Metropolis: Autonomy and Integration in the Fractured City with Garrett Nelson, Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center, and Lizbeth Cohen, Harvard University.

April 20: The History of Women, Gender & Sexuality Seminar, Contesting Domesticity with Kwelina Thompson, Cornell University; Shoniqua Roach, Brandeis University; Laura Puaca, Christopher Newport University; and Allison Horrocks, Lowell National Historical Park.

April 27: Malgeri Modern American Society & Culture Seminar, The “Other” Illegals: Unauthorized European Immigration to New York City & Boston in the 20th Century with Danielle Battisti, University of Nebraska Omaha; Carly Goodman, La Salle University; and Christopher Capozzola.

A LOOK AHEAD WINTER-SPRING PROGRAMS

Take a look at our upcoming slate of online author talks, panel discussions, workshops, seminars, and brown-bag lunch programs.

Please visit www.masshist.org/events for updates and to register.

April 29: New England Biography Series, Fashioning a Life: How Style Matters in Biography with Caroline Weber, Barnard College, Channing Joseph, University of Southern California, and Natalie Dykstra, Hope College.

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T U RBU L E N T T I M E S T UR N E D AN ARTI S T I NTO A H E RO.

Premiering Mon, 2/15 at 9pm GBH 2 and GBH Passport