Curator Erica Hirshler introduces the Bostonians who collected and supported the work of French Impressionist painters including Jean-Francois Millet, Jean-Baptiste Corot, and Claude Monet. Hirshler examines the basis for this enthusiasm for Impressionism. Her presentation includes slides.
Audio and video options are available.
Biographer Charles Calhoun looks at the life of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and the society he encouraged and kept at his Craigie House, which included many major writers and intellectuals of the day.
The audio of this lecture is available independently as an mp3 file.
A panel of historians and political analysts discuss the experiences and history of Irish and Jewish immigrants and their descendants in Boston. The panelists look at the current population of these ethnic groups in Boston, as well.
The discussion's audio can be downloaded in mp3 format.
Professor Martha N. Gardner looks at the life of Lucy Ellen Sewall (1837-1890), a 19th-century Boston medical doctor, who worked for better care for motherless infants, including at the Massachusetts Infant Asylum. Gardner examines medicine in the 19th century and the role of women in medicine. Her presentation includes slides.
Author Lisa Alther talks about her work to trace her family genealogy and determine whether her ancestry includes any members of a perhaps-folkloric group of Tennessee residents called the "Melungeons." She talks about how people reconstruct their family trees, adding and omitting to create the history they wish to remember.
Professor Allen Gontz describes the techniques and technology used to search for sunken artifacts in the Boston Harbor and the wrecks found by these techniques, including those of the Magnifique (wrecked in 1782) and the Niagara (wrecked in 1897). The presentation includes slides.
Joseph Garver, reference librarian of the Harvard Map Collection, displays maps of coastal Massachusetts from the 1600s to the 1930s and shows how cartographers have drawn the shoreline to suit their political and commercial goals. His presentation includes slides.
An audio version can be downloaded.
Athenaeum program director and librarian Richard Wendorf looks back over the 200-year history of the Boston Athenaeum, using objects from the Athenaeum's collection to illustrate this history and focusing on points of change in that history.
Professor and author Michael Oren looks at the history of relations between the U.S. and the Middle East, beginning in 1785 with the Barbary Wars and continuing to the present day.
The lecture audio is also available as a mp3 file.
Pulitzer Prize-winning author James M. McPherson examines the contemporary popular perspectives on the Civil War, both of Northerners and Southerners, civilians and soldiers. McPherson uses the popular music of the period as a framework for discussing the changing views, and focuses on the growing desire to end the war and the increasing sense of hopelessness that it would ever end.
An audio version can be downloaded.