Professor Marla Miller discusses the falling out of use of the term "mantuamaker" by female dressmakers in Boston and the transition to the term "dressmaker." Miller focuses on the history of dressmaking and of women as dressmakers, beginning in the colonial era and continuing to the 1800s. Her presentation includes slides.
Audio and video options are available.
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.
A panel of scholars responds to the second part of the PBS miniseries Slavery and the Making of America, which focuses on the Northeast, and includes the story of Mum Bett, who sued for her freedom in Massachusetts and whose victory led to the abolition of slavery in Massachusetts in 1783.
NPR senior news analyst Cokie Roberts tells the stories of women who supported and took part in the Revolutionary War on the colonial side.
Historian Alfred Young, author of Masquerade, and Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich examine Americans' public memory of Deborah Sampson (a woman who fought in the American Revolution disguised as a man) and other Revolutionary-era women. Performer and storyteller Joan Gatturna also brings Deborah Sampson to life in a dramatic first-person performance.
Author Nancy Schultz, author of Fire and Roses: The Burning of the Charlestown Convent, 1834, describes the burning down of a Roman Catholic convent and elite boarding school in 19th-century Boston; and discusses its causes.
World War II welder and wife of a veteran Margaret Spalluzzi talks about working as a welder during the war, life as a civilian during the war, and communicating with her husband overseas.
The audio portion of this oral history is available independently as a MP3 file.
American Textile History Museum curator Karen Herbaugh looks at the sewing diaries of three New England women and one young girl, compiled in the late 1800s and early 1900s. She examines the history of fashion and fabric revealed by the diaries. This presentation includes slides.
Audio and video options are available.
Authors Philip McFarland and Debby Applegate trace the lives of the Beechers, a family which included the siblings Henry Ward Beecher, a famous preacher, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Audio and video options are available.
Historian Kate Clifford Larson reviews the life of Harriet Tubman and Tubman's work in freeing other slaves along the Underground Railroad. Larson focuses on unsimplifying Tubman's life story and presenting it in its complexity and full breadth.