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December

06dec2:00 pm3:30 pm"We Did not See the Sun for a Single Moment:" William Rau and his Transit of Venus ExperienceMember Event

Event Details

“We Did not See the Sun for a Single Moment:” William Rau and his Transit of Venus Experience

Friday, December 6th, 2024

2 PM ET
The Library Company of Philadelphia | Members Only

In June 1874, young Philadelphia photographer William H. Rau set sail to the Chatham Islands off the coast of New Zealand, serving as an assistant photographer in the United States government’s Transit of Venus Expedition which studied and recorded the movement of Venus between the Sun and Earth. This fall the United States and New Zealand are commemorating the 150th anniversary of this first scientific collaboration between the two countries with a series of events and exhibitions, including at the Library Company. The exhibition, “We Did not See the Sun for a Single Moment:” William Rau and the Transit of Venus Expedition, curated by Sarah Weatherwax, explores Rau’s experience during this expedition through a display of related photographs, texts, and ephemera.

We invite Library Company members to a special event in honor of this commemoration on Friday, December 6th, 2-3:30pm. In celebration of this special anniversary, Senior Curator of Graphic Arts Sarah Weatherwax will provide an exhibition overview as well as a review of select collection materials illustrating the long and extensive career of Transit of Venus photographer William H. Rau. An exhibition viewing and reception will follow the presentation where attendees will have the opportunity to meet organizers of this international celebration.

Space is limited for this event.

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December 6, 2024 2:00 pm - 3:30 pm(GMT-05:00)

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11dec5:30 pm7:30 pmPlantation Goods: A Material History of American SlaveryBook Talk

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Plantation Goods: A Material History of American Slavery

Wednesday, December 11th, 5:30pm

In-Person Event

Plantation Goods: A Material History of American Slavery reveals the biggest stories of early American history through the most mundane artifacts: shoes manufactured in Massachusetts for the use of enslaved people in Mississippi, for example, or woolen dresses stitched in Rhode Island for enslaved women in South Carolina to wear. In following these everyday goods from the communities in which they were made to the communities in which they were used, we can rethink the geography of slavery and freedom in the decades between American independence and the Civil War. And in doing so, we can confront questions that continue to preoccupy us in the age of the iPhone and fair-trade coffee: what are the moral, ecological, and political relationships linking consumers and producers across long distances? What does it mean to be “complicit?”

Seth Rockman is an associate professor of history at Brown University. He is the author of Scraping By: Wage Labor, Slavery, and Survival in Early Baltimore and coeditor of Slavery’s Capitalism: A New History of American Economic Development. Rockman serves on the faculty advisory board of Brown University’s Ruth J. Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice. Rockman is a Library Company shareholder, having been one of the first PEAES long-term fellows in 2001–2002.

Hosted by the Program in Early American Economy and Society.

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Time

December 11, 2024 5:30 pm - 7:30 pm(GMT-05:00)

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19dec7:00 pm8:00 pmFIRESIDE CHAT: The Driver's Story: Labor and Power in the World of Atlantic SlaveryFree

Event Details

Fireside Chat with Randy Browne

The Driver’s Story: Labor and Power in the World of Atlantic Slavery

Thursday, December 19, 2024
7:00 PM ET
Virtual Event | Free

On plantations across the Americas, enslavers used the so-called “driving system” to solve their fundamental problem: how to extract labor from captive workers who had every reason to resist. Starting in the seventeenth-century English Caribbean, enslavers appointed enslaved Black men—and sometimes women—to supervise and punish other enslaved laborers. This talk explores enslaved drivers’ complex roles on Caribbean plantations, where they found themselves trapped between the insatiable labor demands of white plantation authorities and the constant resistance of other enslaved people. Browne shows how drivers were at the center of enslaved people’s working lives, social relationships, and struggles against slavery.

Randy M. Browne is an award-winning historian of Atlantic slavery who specializes in the British Caribbean. He is the author of The Driver’s Story: Labor and Power in the World of Atlantic Slavery (2024) and Surviving Slavery in the British Caribbean (2017), which received the biennial Elsa Goveia Book Prize from the Association of Caribbean Historians. Randy is Professor of History and Director of First-Year Seminar at Xavier University. His articles on slavery and the transatlantic slave trade have appeared in the William and Mary Quarterly, Slavery & Abolition, and the New West Indian Guide. Randy received his B.A. in History and Spanish from Eckerd College and his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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December 19, 2024 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm(GMT-05:00)

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Applications Now Open for 2025-2026 Research Fellowships

Applications for the 2025-26 fellowships cycle are now being accepted. The submission deadline is January 15, 2025.

The Library Company’s fellowships program, founded in 1987, supports collections-based research in the humanities and fosters intellectual community. Several categories of research support are available: long-term postdoctoral fellowships, long-term dissertation fellowships, and short-term fellowships. Some fellowships support research in particular areas of study (e.g., African American history, women’s history, medical history, economic history, visual culture) while others are open to applicants who wish to draw on any area of the Library’s Company’s collections.

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For text materials (first-floor reading room), walk-ins are welcome and appointments are optional. Click here to learn more.

For visual materials (second-floor reading room), appointments are required. Click here to learn how to make an appointment.

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