Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: A Retrospective

This year, join us as we take a look back at Jacqueline Jones’ Bancroft Prize winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist publication, Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family, from Slavery to the Present (1985). Jones will discuss Labor of Love in relation to her other books and her own family life at the time in 1985. She will also talk about the significance of everyday paid and unpaid labor as a subject for historical study, as well as labor history as a form of political activism.

Texas Lithographs: A Century of History in Images

Join us as scholar Ron Tyler discusses his latest publication Texas Lithographs: A Century of History in Images. Westward expansion in the United States was deeply intertwined with the technological revolutions of the nineteenth century, from railroads to telegraphy. Among the most important of these, if often forgotten, was the lithograph. Before photography became a dominant medium, lithography—and later, chromolithography—enabled inexpensive reproduction of color illustrations, transforming journalism and marketing and nurturing, for the first time, a global visual culture.

The Sewing Girl's Tale: A Story of Crime and Consequences in Revolutionary America

On a moonless night in the summer of 1793 a crime in the back room of a New York brothel transformed Lanah Sawyer’s life. It was the kind of crime that even victims usually kept secret. Instead, the seventeen-year-old seamstress did what virtually no one else dared to do: she charged a gentleman with rape. The trial rocked the city and nearly cost Lanah her life. And that was just the start.

Fugitive Texts: Slave Narratives in Antebellum Print Culture

Antebellum slave narratives have taken pride of place in the American literary canon. Once ignored, disparaged, or simply forgotten, the autobiographical narratives of Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, and other formerly enslaved men and women are now widely read and studied. One key aspect of the genre, however, has been left unexamined: its materiality. What did original editions of slave narratives look like? How were these books circulated? Who read them?

On the Edge: A Live Performance by the Worcester Chamber Music Society

Bookending the beginning of the 20th century and all that was to come, pieces by Amy Beach and Claude Debussy illustrate the influences American and French composers had on each other and seem almost to anticipate the upheaval the world would experience.

The evening will include an opportunity to view original scores by Ms. Beach and other women composers, part of the American Antiquarian Society’s collection. A wine and dessert reception will follow the concert.

Water, Land, and Ecology: Doing Environmental History in Early America

In an age when we are hyperaware of global warming, we tend to speak of ecological crises in global terms, representing environments through international comparison and webs of interdependency. Yet it is easy to forget how recent this development is, when just two decades ago catastrophes such as pollution were framed with specific attention to immediate contexts. Even the idea of shared national environmental concerns is relatively recent, suggesting that we should pay attention to how writing before the twentieth century reflected a sense of place.

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