Cameron Seglias, Ph.D. Candidate in Cultural Studies, Freie Universität Berli

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Arwin D. Smallwood, Professor and Chair of the Department of History and Political Science, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University

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Jeff Thomas, Philadelphia Composer and Producer, Stride10Nine Studios

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Carole Adrienne Murphy, CEO/Producer, JAMCOFilms

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Ariel Ron, Glenn M. Linden Assistant Professor of the U.S. Civil War Era, Southern Methodist University

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Three Sessions: Wednesdays

September 16, September 30 & October 14

5:30-7:00 p.m. est

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The 19th Amendment forbids denying the right to vote on the basis of sex.  Yet its passage a century ago was less a definitive declaration of women’s equality than it was one episode in a longer history.  This seminar contextualizes this important anniversary by examining the 19th-century roots of foundational questions about gender roles: what can women do?  What should their roles in society be?  The Library Company’s collections illustrate the competing answers posed during the crucial decades of the 1860s and 1870s.  American women, both White and Black, shaped political conversations and public spaces in ways that were varied and complex, local and national, progressive and conservative – much like they do today.

Seminar Leader

Amy Sopcak Joseph

Amy Sopcak-Joseph is a historian of Early American gender and print culture.  In 2019, she defended her dissertation at the University of Connecticut and became an assistant professor at Wilkes University.  Her project, “Fashioning American Women: Godey’s Lady’s Book, Female Consumers, and Periodical Publishing in the Nineteenth Century,” examines the Lady’s Book’s intertwined histories as literary magazine, fashion rag, and material object.  This work was awarded the Zuckerman Prize in American Studies and has been supported by many institutions, including the Library Company; American Antiquarian Society; Winterthur Museum, Garden, and Library; and the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute.  Prior to earning her PhD, Amy was the Education Coordinator at the American Antiquarian Society.

Dr. Sopcak-Joseph collaborated with Curator of Women’s History Cornelia King on the exhibition Women Get Things Done: Women’s Activism, 1860-1880 (launch date Sept. 22, 2020)

Maria Zytaruk, Associate Professor of English, University of Calgary

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Zach Bates, Ph.D. Candidate in History, University of Calgary

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Christopher N. Phillips, Professor of English, Lafayette College

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Jen Manion, Associate Professor of History, Amherst College

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Thursday, October 15th

7:00-8:00 p.m. EST

If we learned about the battle for women’s suffrage in history class, we likely didn’t learn that the fight went well beyond the passage of the 19th Amendment in 1920. And we definitely didn’t learn that many of the people fighting for voting rights were different from their peers in ways that we might now think of as queer. But LGBTQ+ history IS American history. Join us as we meet some of the folks who were key to winning and protecting women’s suffrage from the 19th century through the Civil Rights Era, who were gender variant or in same-sex relationships. As we meet them, we’ll talk about how we know what we know (or don’t) about their private lives and whether it matters.

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About the Speaker

Megan Springate is the National Coordinator for the National Park Service 19th Amendment Centennial Commemoration, and editor of LGBTQ America: A Theme Study of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer History (National Park Foundation and National Park Service, 2016). An historical archaeologist by training, she received her PhD in Anthropology from the University of Maryland in 2017.

This event is sponsored by the Library Company’s Charlotte Cushman Society.

Three Sessions: Wednesdays

October 21, November 4 & November 18

5:30-7:00 p.m. est

This seminar will consider the innovative contributions of John Dickinson to the creation of the United States Constitution through his work on the Articles of Confederation (1776), the Annapolis Convention (1786) that met to consider the shortcomings of the Articles, the ensuing Federal Convention (1787), and the debate over ratification (1788). As the only leading figure to contribute substantially to every phase of the American Founding beginning with the Stamp Act resistance, Dickinson also played a key role during the constitutional era. In a timely seminar led by Dr. Jane E. Calvert, chief editor of the John Dickinson Writings Project and Associate Professor of History at the University of Kentucky, participants will explore drafts, notes, and essays, along with selected secondary source readings, to understand Dickinson’s contributions to the U.S. Constitution, reflecting on both what he offered and what his colleagues rejected.

About Dr. Jane E. Calvert 

Dr. Jane E. Calvert is founding director and chief editor of the John Dickinson Writings Project and Associate Professor of History at the University of Kentucky. Her publications on Dickinson include Quaker Constitutionalism and the Political Thought of John Dickinson and Volume One of The Complete Writings and Selected Correspondence of John Dickinson. She is currently writing a biography of him. Her work is funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, the State of Delaware, the Harry and Lynde Bradley Foundation, the William Nelson Cromwell Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, the Library Company of Philadelphia, among others.

Vincent DiGirolamo, Assistant Professor of History, Baruch College

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Tuesday, October 27th

6:00 – 7:00 p.m. ET

via Zoom

Voter Suppression in U.S. Elections is a round table discussion between Dr. Carol Anderson, Charles Howard Candler Professor and Chair of African American Studies at Emory University, Dr. Kevin Kruse, Professor of History at Princeton University, Dr. Jim Downs, Professor of History and American Studies at Connecticut College and hosted by Dr. William D. Fenton, Director of Scholarly Innovation at the Library Company of Philadelphia. Voter Suppression in U.S. Elections emerges from an extraordinary conversation held at Library Company last year in conjunction with the annual conference of the Organization of American Historians. This round table conversation will reflect upon that conversation and assess recent developments related to voter disenfranchisement and the voting barriers that ostracize the poor, Black, and Latino communities.

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About the Panelists

Carol Anderson (Author)
Carol Anderson is the Charles Howard Candler Professor and Chair of African American Studies at Emory University and a Guggenheim Fellow in Constitutional Studies. She is the author of several books, including Eyes off the Prize: The United Nations and the African-American Struggle for Human Rights, 1944-1955, which was published by Cambridge University Press and awarded both the Gustavus Myers and Myrna Bernath Book Awards; White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide, which won the 2016 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism and was also a New York Times best seller and a New York Times Editor’s Pick. Her most recent book, One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy, was long-listed for the National Book Award in Nonfiction and was a finalist for the PEN/Galbraith Book Award in Nonfiction.

Kevin M. Kruse (Author)
Kevin M. Kruse specializes in twentieth-century American political history, with special attention to conflicts over race, religion, and rights. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and his MA and PhD degrees from Cornell University. He is a professor of history at Princeton University, where he has served on the faculty since 2000. Kruse is the author of White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism, One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America, and, with Julian Zelizer, Fault Lines: A History of the United States since 1974, as well as the coeditor of three essay collections. He is currently working on his next project, titled “The Division: John Doar, the Justice Department, and the Civil Rights Movement.”

Jim Downs (Editor)
Jim Downs is a professor of history and American studies at Connecticut College. He is the author of Sick from Freedom: African-American Illness and Suffering during the Civil War and Reconstruction and the coeditor of Beyond Freedom: Disrupting the History of Emancipation (Georgia) and Connexions: Histories of Race and Sex in North America.

To learn more and purchase the book, click here.

Glenda Goodman, Assistant Professor of Music, University of Pennsylvania

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Jordan Alexander Stein, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Fordham University

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Erin Pauwels, Assistant Professor of American Art, Temple University and Erika Piola, Curator of Graphic art and Director of the Visual Culture Program, Library Company of Philadelphia

Session 1

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Erin Pauwels, Assistant Professor of American Art, Temple University and Erika Piola, Curator of Graphic art and Director of the Visual Culture Program, Library Company of Philadelphia

Session 1

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Thursday, December 3rd

5:00-6:30 p.m. est

Drawing on period texts and illustrations (travelogues, almanacs, journals, advertisements) promoting coal, this talk will consider how contemporary audiences came to understand this fossil fuel in three ways: through the lens of landscape, as a geological specimen, and as a central component of the domestic sphere. Come learn about how coal’s multiple roles in the visual economy of the early-19th-century prompted a broadening of its use in the following decades.

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About Rebecca Szantyr

Rebecca Szantyr was the 2019-2020 William H. Helfand Visual Culture Fellow at the Library Company of Philadelphia. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at Brown University, where her research focuses on 18th- and 19th-century print culture. Her dissertation on the Neapolitan-American artist Nicolino Calyo examines the overlap of popular culture and the fine arts in the Atlantic World. From 2015-2018, Rebecca was the Florence B. Selden Fellow in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the Yale University Art Gallery, where she curated exhibitions on Jacob Lawrence and the history of caricature. Her research has been supported by the American Antiquarian Society, the Joukowsky Research Travel Fund at Brown, the Winterthur Museum, Garden & Library, and the Library Company.

Danielle Skeehan, Assistant Professor of English and Comparative American Studies, Oberlin College and Conservatory

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