The Colonial 'Cabbala of the Jews' at the American Antiquarian Society

This talk will center around a unique, beautifully scribed manuscript housed at the AAS, which was given the title 'The Cabbala of the Jews' by its cataloger in 1935. Until recently, this manuscript had never been studied and had an anonymous author, though recent investigation shows that it was written by the famous Scottish Quaker thinker who had made his way to East Jersey, George Keith. The manuscript made its way to Cotton Mather and played a key role in his polemics against Quakerism.

Traumas and Triumphs: A Roundtable on the History of Black Childhood

Join us for a roundtable discussion on the history of Black childhood. Moderated by Nazera Wright (University of Kentucky), this program brings together Kabria Baumgartner (Northeastern University) and Crystal Webster (University of British Columbia), who share their own research on the subject. Participants will discuss the threats and challenges facing African American children in the nineteenth century, as well as the ways in which they wrote, organized, and forged their own individual and collective identities.

The Transcendentalists and Their World

Join historian Robert Gross as he discusses his new book The Transcendentalists and Their World, which offers a fresh view of the thinkers and writers whose impact on philosophy and literature would spread from Concord to all corners of the earth. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau called this New England town home, but Concord from the 1820s through the 1840s was no pastoral place fit for poets and philosophers. The Transcendentalists and their neighbors lived through a transformative age of American life.

A Cultural Biography of 'The Star-Spangled Banner’

Join musicologist Mark Clague as he shares insights from his research at AAS that contributed to his most recent book, O Say Can You Hear?: A Cultural Biography of 'The Star-Spangled Banner' (W.W. Norton, 2022). In the book, Clague examines the origins of both text and music, alternate lyrics and translations, and the song’s use in sports, at times of war, and for political protest. He argues that the anthem’s meaning reflects, and is reflected by, the nation’s quest to become a more perfect union.

Cotton Mather’s Spanish Lessons

The Boston minister Cotton Mather was the first English colonial to refer to himself as an American. He was also the first to author a Spanish-language publication: La Fe del Christiano (The Faith of the Christian), a Protestant tract intended to evangelize readers across the Spanish Americas. In her new book Cotton Mather’s Spanish Lessons: A Story of Language, Race, and Belonging in the Early Americas (Harvard University Press, 2022), Kirsten Silva Gruesz offers a fresh take on this key colonial intellectual and his understanding of linguistic and human difference.

Travels with George

Does George Washington still matter? Join author Nathaniel Philbrick as he discusses his latest New York Times bestseller, Travels with George: In Search of Washington and His Legacy. In his own journey travelling through the thirteen former colonies, Philbrick retraces the steps of George Washington's 1789 tour of America and examines the president’s unique contribution to the forging of the nation.

The Education of Betsey Stockton

Join us as historian Gregory Nobles discusses his latest publication, The Education of Betsey Stockton: An Odyssey of Slavery and Freedom. The life of Betsey Stockton (ca. 1798–1865) is a testament to the courage and commitment of a Black woman whose persistence grew into grassroots resistance to racism in the antebellum North. When she was a child, Betsey Stockton was “given, as a slave” to the household of Rev. Ashbel Green, a prominent pastor and later the president of what is now Princeton University. Although she never went to school, she devoured the books in Green’s library.

Rescued from Oblivion

The third historical society in the nation, the American Antiquarian Society played an influential role in the formation of historical culture and consciousness in the early United States, laying the groundwork for professional practices that are still embraced today: collection policies, distinctions between preservation of textual and nontextual artifacts, publication programs, historical rituals and commemorations, reconciliation of scholarly and popular approaches, and more.

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