Michael Gallen, Independent
Kensington: From Textiles to Tranq

Dr. Michael Gallen is an independent scholar working on Kensington: From Textiles to Tranq, a full-length history of the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia from its time as Shackamaxon, a Lenni-Lenape community, through its industrial heights and to its current state as an epicenter of the opioid crisis. The project, a social, economic, and visual historiography of Kensington  serves to give voice to its residents and uses graphic depictions of the area to foster new understandings of the effect of influences, such as antebellum reform and capitalist messaging, on the evolution of the neighborhood into the 21st century.

During his fellowship, Michael reviewed turn-of-the 20th-century views of Kensington by Philadelphia surveyor and amateur photographer John H. Webster; images of the Treaty Tree, including William’s Birch’s plate from his “Views of Philadelphia”; iconography of the Nativist Riots of 1844 as well as 19th-century advertising prints showing Kensington manufactories. Maps and stereographs depicting the area, including along the Delaware waterfront, also comprised the materials representing the ever-changing images of the neighborhood in American visual culture that Michael studied for his project.