As a part of a bicentennial series celebrating Boston Athenaeum writers, J. Frederick Marchant presents Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882); Jill McDonough presents Amy Lowell (1874-1925); and Rosanna Warren presents Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882).
Scholar Nancy Seasholes looks at the history of land creation in Boston over its 375-year history. She focuses on the Central Waterfront area. Her presentation includes slides.
An mp3 of the lecture audio can be downloaded.
Professor Robert J. Allison reviews the history of Boston, focusing on major events and historical figures in the city's past.
Audio and video options are available.
Art historian and curator David Dearinger traces the birth and development of the Hudson River School of American landscape painting, beginning in 1820, using key examples of paintings; gives an overview of the movement's historiography; discusses contemporary critical responses to it; and comments on the waning and eventual demise of the style in the 1870s. His presentation includes slides.
A panel discusses the history of Chinese immigration and Chinese Americans and their experiences in Boston from the 1800s onwards.
Author John Hanson Mitchell outlines his discovery of 2,000 antique glass plate negatives by a previously unknown 19th-century African-American landscape photographer, Robert Alexander Gilbert. Mitchell presents slides of Gilbert's work, and discusses what is known of Gilbert's life.
Writer Carol Bundy talks about the life of her great-great-great uncle, Charles Russell Lowell, Jr., a Boston abolitionist and industrialist eventually killed in the Civil War. The presentation includes slides.
Audio and video options are available.
Scholar Ellen Smith traces the history of Jewish immigrants and the Jewish community in Boston from the colonial era in the 1700s to the present day.
Scholars P. Gabrielle Foreman and Reginald H. Pitts reveal historical details previously lost to time about the life of Harriet Wilson, author of the 1859 novel Our Nig; Or Sketches from the Life of a Free Black. Considered by some to be the first North American African-American novelist, Harriet Wilson largely disappeared from the historical record in 1863 until the discovery of new information.
Executive Director of the Museum of Afro-American History Beverly Morgan-Welch discusses the history of the Museum's meeting house and of the museum itself.