Event is Free. No Registration Required.

Joshua Morrison, University of Virginia

This talk explores the economic and cultural exchange between New England and Zanzibar, the premier entrepôt of the Western Indian Ocean. This trade network linked the cotton magnates of Massachusetts with the Omani elite, Indian merchants, and Swahili slaves of Zanzibar. As the trade expanded, each close-knit community found themselves increasingly dependent on an incredibly foreign counterpart for survival. This project maps the many compromises,...

There will be a pre-talk reception at 3:30

Kat Williams, Maybelle Blair, Shirley Burkovich, Donna Mills, Marti Sementelli, moderated by Red Sox historian Gordon Edes

There is a $20 per person fee (no charge for MHS Fellows and Members or EBT cardholders).

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This talk will examine the emerging legal category of the “disabled” American at the end of the nineteenth century in relation to the construction of disability in Civil War literature, broadly conceived. In texts ranging from hospital newspaper poetry to mendicant narratives sold for veterans’ financial support, representations of Civil War injury engaged shifting understandings of disability: from individual condition to evolving social class.

There will be a pre-talk reception at 5:30

Stephen Bush, Brown University

There is a $10 per person fee (no charge for MHS Fellows and Members or EBT cardholders).

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William James advocated a philosophy of democracy and pluralism that emphasizes individual and collective responsibility for our social arrangements, our morality, and our religion. In James’s view,...