Past Fireside Chats
“Entangling Lives: Locating Early American Women’s History in the Built Environment”
May 19, 2022
“The One that Wears the Breeches : Women’s Fashion, Dress Reform and Gender Expectations in Nineteenth Century America”
April 21, 2022
The Cacophony of Politics: Northern Democrats and the American Civil War
March 17, 2022
The First Reconstruction: Black Politics in America, From the Revolution to the Civil War
February 17, 2022
The Origins of an Archive: Enslavers and the Geopolitics of Knowledge Production in an Age of Abolition
Devin Leigh, PhD Candidate in History and Teaching Assistant, University of California, Davis
December 16, 2021
Historians’ Methods and Philadelphia’s Nativist Riots
Zachary M. Schrag, Professor of History and Art History, George Mason University
December 9, 2021
Navigating Neutrality: Early American Governance in the Turbulent Atlantic (Book Talk)
Sandra Moats, Associate Professor of History, University of Wisconsin–Parkside
December 2, 2021
Harnessing Harmony: Music, Power, and Politics in the United States, 1788-1865 (Book Talk)
Billy Coleman, Postdoctoral Fellow in Early American History with the Kinder Institute on Constitutional Democracy, University of Missouri
November 11, 2021
The Lost Tradition of Economic Equality in America, 1600-1870 (Book Talk)
Daniel Mandell, Professor of History, Truman State University
November 4, 2021
Selling Antislavery: Abolition and Mass Media in Antebellum America (Book Talk)
Teresa A. Goddu, Associate Professor of English and American Studies, Vanderbilt University
October 28, 2021
From Mother Divine to the Corner Swami: Religious Cults in Philadelphia (Book Talk)
Thom Nickels, Author and Journalist
August 19, 2021
Covered with Night: A Story of Murder and Indigenous Justice in Early America (Book Talk)
Nicole Eustace, Professor of History, New York University
August 12, 2021
Liberty Displaying the Arts & Sciences: Abolition & Empire in the Post-Revolution Atlantic World
Emily Casey, Assistant Professor of Art History, St. Mary’s College of Maryland
July 29, 2021
Biddle, Jackson, and a Nation in Turmoil (Book Talk)
Cordelia Frances Biddle, Independent Scholar and Novelist
July 22, 2021
Beyond the Boundaries of Childhood: African American Children in the Antebellum North (Book Talk)
Crystal Lynn Webster, Assistant Professor of History, University of Texas, San Antonio
July 15, 2021
Merchants of Medicines: The Commerce and Coercion of Health in Britain’s Long Eighteenth Century (Book Talk)
Zachary Dorner, Assistant Clinical Professor, University Honors, University of Maryland, College Park
June 24, 2021
Occupied America: British Military Rule & the Everyday Experience of Revolution
Don Johnson, Associate Professor of Early American History, North Dakota State University
June 10, 2021
Creative Confluence in a Peak Poetry World
A conversation with Orchid Tierney, author of A Year of Misreading the Wildcats; Jena Osman, author of Motion Studies; and Andrea Krupp, curator of Seeing Coal.
June 3, 2021
Liberty and Insanity in the Age of the American Revolution
Sarah Swedberg, Professor of History, Colorado Mesa University
May 27, 2021
Cry of Murder on Broadway and Bringing Down the Colonel
A Conversation with Julie Miller and Patricia Miller
May 20, 2021
The Strange Genius of Mr. O
Carolyn Eastman, Associate Professor of History, Virginia Commonwealth University
May 13, 2021
American Slavery and Russian Serfdom
Amanda Bellows, Lecturer, The New School and Hunter College
May 6, 2021
Past and Prologue: Politics and Memory in the American Revolution
Michael Hattem, Associate Director of the Yale-New Haven Teachers Institute
April 29, 2021
Reimagining Ben Franklin
Chris Kuncio, creator of Young Ben Franklin
April 22, 2021
Steady Sellers and the Problem of Inequality in 19th-Century America
Emily Gowen, Ph.D. Candidate, Boston University
April 15, 2021
Aristocratic Education and the Making of the American Republic
Mark Boonshoft, Assistant Professor of History, Duquesne University
April 8, 2021
New Books for a New Nation: Jesuit Library Building in 19th-Century Chicago
Kyle Roberts, Associate Director of Library & Museum Programming of the American Philosophical Society Library & Museum
April 1, 2021
Horology in Art
Bob Frishman, Fellow of the National Association of Watch & Clock Collectors
March 18, 2021
Prophets, Publicists, and Parasites (Book Talk)
Adam Gordon, Associate Professor of English, Whitman College
March 11, 2021
Surveying Penn’s Map of Governance
Dr. Agnès Trouillet, Associate Professor of British Studies, University Paris Nanterre
March 4, 2021
The Practice of Citizenship: Black Politics and Print Culture in the Early United States (Book Talk)
Dr. Derrick R. Spires, Associate Professor of Literatures in English, Cornell University
February 25, 2021
A Crisis of Peace: George Washington, the Newburgh Conspiracy, and the Fate of the American Revolution (Book Talk)
David Head, Associate Lecturer of History, University of Central Florida
February 11, 2021
The Fabric of Empire: Material and Literary Cultures of the Global Atlantic, 1650–1850
Danielle Skeehan, Associate Professor of English and Comparative American Studies, Oberlin College
February 4, 2021
Plum Pudding and Spartans Brave: The Pamphlet War Over the Paxton Massacre
John Smolenski, Associate Professor of History, University of California, Davis
January 14, 2021
The Nature of the Future: Agriculture, Science, and Capitalism in the Antebellum North (Book Talk)
Emily Pawley, Associate Professor of History, Dickinson College
December 10, 2020
Carbon Futures: Cultivating Coal Consumption in the Second Quarter of the 19th Century
Rebecca Szantyr, Ph.D. candidate, Department of the History of Art and Architecture, Brown University
December 3, 2020
Art & Spectacle in the 19th-Century United States (Part 2)
Erin Pauwels, Assistant Professor of American Art, Temple University and Erika Piola, Curator of Graphic arts and Director of the Visual Culture Program, Library Company of Philadelphia
November 19, 2020
Art & Spectacle in the 19th-Century United States (Part 1)
Erin Pauwels, Assistant Professor of American Art, Temple University and Erika Piola, Curator of Graphic arts and Director of the Visual Culture Program, Library Company of Philadelphia
November 12, 2020
When Novels Were Books (Book Talk)
Jordan Alexander Stein, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Fordham University
November 5, 2020
Cultivated by Hand: Amateur Musicians in the Early American Republic (Book Talk)
Glenda Goodman, Assistant Professor of Music, University of Pennsylvania
October 29, 2020
Crying the News: A History of America’s Newsboys (Book Talk)
Vincent DiGirolamo, Associate Professor of History, Baruch College
October 22, 2020
From Boston Marriages to the Lavender Menace: Queer Women and the Fight for Suffrage
Megan Springate, National Coordinator for the National Park Service 19th Amendment Centennial Commemoration
October 15, 2020
Female Husbands: A Trans History (Book Talk)
Jen Manion, Associate Professor of History, Amherst College
October 8, 2020
The Hymnal: A Reading History (Book Talk)
Christopher N. Phillips, Professor of English, Lafayette College
October 1, 2020
Eighteenth-Century Seeds & the Case for Greening Book History
Maria Zytaruk, Associate Professor of English, University of Calgary
September 17, 2020
Grassroots Leviathan: Agricultural Reform and the Rural North (Book Preview)
Ariel Ron, Glenn M. Linden Assistant Professor of the U.S. Civil War Era, Southern Methodist University
September 10, 2020
The Making of “Civil War Medicine”
Carole Adrienne is the Writer/Producer of a four-part documentary series-in-production, “Civil War Medicine.”
September 3, 2020
William Penn’s Letter to the King of the Lenape: A Choral Work
Jeff Thomas, Philadelphia Composer and Producer, Stride10Nine Studios
Andrew R. Murphy, Professor of Political Science, Virginia Commonwealth University
August 27, 2020
The Mysteries of the “Lost Colony” and the Iroquois Confederacy
Arwin D. Smallwood, Professor and Chair of the Department of History and Political Science, North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University
August 20, 2020
Slave Revolt and the Practices of Containment
Cameron Seglias, Ph.D. candidate, Graduate School of North American Studies
August 13, 2020
Elizabeth Powel and the Founding of the Republic
Samantha Snyder, Reference Librarian, Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington
Kayla Anthony, Executive Director, Philadelphia Society for the Preservation of Landmarks
July 30, 2020
America’s First Celebrity Preacher and How He Perfected the Protestant Art of Talking About Yourself
Seth Perry, Assistant Professor of Religion, Princeton University
July 23, 2020
How Parson Weems Remade George Washington-and Made the Nineteenth Century
Steven C. Bullock, Professor of History, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
July 16, 2020
Writing Across the Color Line (Book Talk)
Dr. Lucas A. Dietrich, Adjunct Professor of Humanities at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts
July 9, 2020
Lawyers in Early American Cities: Loyalists as Clients
Dr. Sally Hadden, Associate Professor of History and Director of Graduate Studies, Western Michigan University
July 2, 2020
Smugglers, Pirates, and Patriots: Free Trade in the Age of Revolution (Book Talk)
Dr. Tyson Reeder, Assistant Professor of History and Assistant Editor of the Papers of James Madison, University of Virginia
June 25, 2020
Juneteenth Seminar: Unfreedom: The Limits of the Fourteenth Amendment
Dr. Walter D. Greason, Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Educational Counseling and Leadership at Monmouth University
June 18, 2020
Nonviolent Protest and the American Revolution
Dr. Michael Goode, Associate Professor of History and Political Science, Utah Valley University
June 11, 2020
Lincoln and Viruses: Past and Present Collide
David J. Kent, Abraham Lincoln Historian, Lincoln Group of DC
June 4, 2020
Picturing Political Power: Images in the Women’s Suffrage Movement
Allison K. Lange, Assistant Professor of History, Wentworth Institute of Technology
May 28, 2020
The Long Reach of the Great Depression of the 1780s
Scott C. Miller, International Center for Finance postdoctoral fellow in Economic and Business History, Yale School of Management
May 21, 2020
An Archive of Taste (Book Talk)
Lauren F. Klein, Associate Professor of English and Quantitative Theory & Methods, Emory University
May 14, 2020
Joseph Lancaster and the ‘Delusion’ of Public Schools, 1818-1838
Adam Laats, Professor of Teaching, Learning and Educational Leadership, Binghamton University, State University of New York
May 7, 2020
Protestant Images of Other Religions in the Eighteenth Century
Mark Valeri, Reverend Priscilla Wood Neaves Distinguished Professor of Religion and Politics, Washington University in St. Louis
Apr 30, 2020
Mediterranean Quarantine: Perspectives of a Person of Privilege
Etta M. Madden, Assistant Department Head and Professor of English, Missouri State University
Apr 23, 2020
African Voices from the Transatlantic Slave Trade
Aaron Fogleman, Presidential Research Professor of History, Northern Illinois University
Apr 16, 2020