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Tuesday, December 9th at 7 PM ET

Virtual Event | Free

In this Fireside Chat, author Travis Glasson will discuss his new book Nobody Men: Neutrality, Loyalties, and Family in the American Revolution (Yale University Press, 2025). Neutrals – people who were neither ardent Patriots nor committed Loyalists – made up perhaps forty to sixty percent of the colonial population at the time of the American Revolution.  However, their experiences are usually glossed over in histories of the conflict.  Glasson’s work uses the experiences of the extended Cruger family, whose members included two mayors of New York City, a pro-American British MP, and the St. Croix merchant who gave Alexander Hamilton a start in life, to put neutrals’ stories at the center of a wider reconsideration of the Revolutionary conflict as a trans-Atlantic civil war.  In the process, it gives us new ways to think about how and why people made the Revolutionary-era political choices they did, what the conflict had in common with other civil wars across human history, and how the Revolution’s legacy has been defined by remembering some stories and forgetting others.

Travis Glasson is Associate Professor of History at Temple University and an Affiliated Faculty member with Temple’s Global Studies Program.  He completed his BA at the College of the Holy Cross and his MA and PhD at Columbia University.  Glasson’s other publications include the book Mastering Christianity: Missionary Anglicanism and Slavery in the Atlantic World (Oxford University Press, 2011) and articles published in venues including the William and Mary Quarterly and The Journal of British Studies.  

Hosted by the Program in Early American Economy and Society

Library Company History & Exhibitions Tour

Friday, January 9th at 11:00 AM

In-Person Event

Join us for a guided tour of the Library Company’s first-floor exhibition galleries. Learn more about the history of the de facto first Library of Congress and oldest colonial cultural institution in the United States. Guests will also learn more about art and artifacts on display in the Logan Room, and as well as hear about the collection materials showcased in our rotating exhibition space.

Space is limited, so please sign up for only one tour time per person. Tickets are available for all First Fridays in November 2025 through April 2026.

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Tuesday, January 27th, 2026 at 7 PM ET

Eva Landsberg will interview Amy Watson about her new book, Patriots Before Revolution: The Rise of Party Politics in the British Atlantic, 1714-1763 (Yale University Press, 2025). 

In Patriots Before Revolution, historian Amy Watson shows that the political label “Patriot” was first adopted by a network of British politicians with radical ideas about the principles and purpose of the British Empire. The early Patriots’ ideological mission was not American independence but, rather, imperial reform: Patriots sought to create a British Empire that was militant, expansionist, confederal, and free. Over the course of the eighteenth century, these reformers used print media and grassroots mobilization efforts to expand their party to North America, where Patriotism would have revolutionary implications in the decades to come. The interview will be followed by Q&A.

Amy Watson is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She earned a PhD from Yale University and was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Southern California/Huntington Library, Early Modern Studies Institute. Her research has been supported by the Massachusetts Historical Society, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Gates Cambridge Scholarship, and the Library Company of Philadelphia, among others. Her other publications include articles in The William and Mary Quarterly and The Scottish Historical Review.

Hosted by the Program in Early American Economy and Society

Episodes from A Flood of Pictures: The Formation of a Picture Culture in the United States

Book talk with author Dr. Michael Leja

Friday, January 30th, 2026 at 1:30 PM ET

Virtual Event | Free

When and how did pictures begin to permeate everyday lives in the United States? What happened to those daily lives when they did? And what happened to pictures in the process? The formative period for this cultural transformation was the three decades before the Civil War, when the ordinary experiences of a large segment of the population came to include pictures of many kinds, including illustrations in books, pamphlets, and newspapers; photographs on cards; full-sheet printed pictures collected in scrapbooks or albums or hung on walls; posters and broadsheets; spectacular paintings displayed in theatrical venues; and more.

In a surprisingly short span of time pictures assumed important functions. They supplemented verbal texts—and in some cases overshadowed them—for conveying news and information; portraying people, places, and events; selling things; educating and instructing; promoting and disguising political agendas; and shaping social identities. All sorts of individual and collective experiences were increasingly mediated by visual representations.

This talk will highlight two of the influential projects featured in A Flood of Pictures. They help to illuminate a time before successful pictorial formulas for mass appeal were established, before an audience habituated to consumption of pictures existed, and before pictures had become thoroughly commodified.

A Flood of Pictures is available for purchase at University of Pennsylvania Press.

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Hosted by the Visual Culture Program

Library Company History & Exhibitions Tour

Friday, February 6th at 11:00 AM

In-Person Event

Join us for a guided tour of the Library Company’s first-floor exhibition galleries. Learn more about the history of the de facto first Library of Congress and oldest colonial cultural institution in the United States. Guests will also learn more about art and artifacts on display in the Logan Room, and as well as hear about the collection materials showcased in our rotating exhibition space.

Space is limited, so please sign up for only one tour time per person. Tickets are available for all First Fridays in November 2025 through April 2026.

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