Picture It: The Women's Suffrage Movement
For as long as women have battled for equitable political representation in America, those battles have been defined by images.
Isaiah Thomas’s Apprenticeship: The Labor and Value of Children’s Literature
When the Worcester, Massachusetts, printer Isaiah Thomas (1749–1831) donated his collection of early American imprints to found the American Antiquarian Society, he did not include in that donation many books written for children. Yet Thomas was the foremost publisher of children’s literature in his time, and books addressed to child readers at school or at home generated at least a quarter of his press profits. Isaiah Thomas’s own accounts of his career always emphasized his experience as a printer’s apprentice, beginning to set type when he was only six years old.
Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped into Slavery and their Astonishing Odyssey Home
In this talk, Richard Bell will discuss his new book, Stolen, a gripping and true story about five young, free black boys who were kidnapped in the North in 1825 and smuggled into slavery in the Deep South—and their daring attempt to escape and bring their captors to justice.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: The Bard of Brattle Street
Join us for a thoughtful conversation with Nicholas A. Basbanes about this new book, Cross of Snow: A Life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Led by AAS Vice President for Programs and Outreach James David Moran, the conversation will explore Longfellow the poet—the public side—and Longfellow the consummate New Englander and family man—the private, personal side. How did Longfellow interact with the print culture of his day? What influence did his family life have on his poetry? How did national politics impact his work?
Pestilence and Print in Early America
The 24-hour news cycle and the consumption of an endless variety of media seems to have reached its apex in recent months with COVID-19.The perpetual barrage of articles, memes, and debates taking place in both traditional and social media outlets—as well as consumers’ seeming inability to turn away from it—has led to the coining of a new term: “doomscrolling.” But before instant communication and digital technology made doomscrolling possible, how did people get information about epidemics and pandemics? Who was providing that information, for what purposes, and in what print mediums?
Finding the Lost Tradition of Economic Equality in America
Although Americans today are concerned about the ever-increasing levels of wealth and income inequality, many continue to believe that their country was founded on a person’s right to acquire and control property. But in his latest book, The Lost Tradition of Economic Equality in America, 1600–1880, Mandell argues that the United States was originally deeply influenced by the belief that maintaining a “rough” equality of wealth was essential for a successful republican government.
Revere in Perspective: Artisanry, Labor, and Luxury
In conjunction with the American Antiquarian Society’s traveling exhibition Beyond Midnight: Paul Revere (exhibited at the New-York Historical Society, the Worcester Art Museum, and the Concord Museum during 2019-2020), the Center for Historic American Visual Culture (CHAViC) hosted a virtual symposium during three consecutive afternoons.
Manuscript Cultures in 17th Century New England
Join Ashley Cataldo, AAS curator of manuscripts, and Meredith Neuman, associate professor at Clark University, for a lively presentation on early New England manuscript culture. Presenters will showcase a variety of genres, including diaries, correspondence, account books, deeds, sermon notes, notebooks, annotations, and more. They will explore other intriguing features of manuscripts from the period, including shorthand and curious preservation issues.
Telling Seventeenth-Century New England Stories Through the Archives
Artists can often provide a unique perspective on our understanding of the past, moving beyond an intellectual understanding of the facts and their meanings to an exploration of sensations and emotions.
Before COVID: Illness in Everyday Life in Early New England
This unique presentation will place Ben Mutschler, author of The Province of Affliction: Illness and the Making of Early New England, in conversation with AAS Curator of Manuscripts Ashley Cataldo about his new book and the AAS collections most relevant to researching it.