Past Fireside Chats

Time of Anarchy: Indigenous Power and the Crisis of Colonialism in Early America

Matthew Kruer, Assistant Professor of Early North American History and the College at the University of Chicago

August 18, 2022

The Guide to Indigenous Land Project

Dr. Elizabeth Rule, Assistant Professor of Critical Race, Gender, and Culture Studies at American University

Note: This Fireside Chat is not available online.

July 21, 2022

Disaffected: The Cultural Politics of Unfeeling in Nineteenth-Century America

Xine Yao, Lecturer in American Literature to 1900 in the English department at University College London

June 16, 2022

Entangling Lives: Locating Early American Women’s History in the Built Environment
Marla Miller, Distinguished Professor of History at UMass Amherst

May 19, 2022

The One that Wears the Breeches : Women’s Fashion, Dress Reform and Gender Expectations in Nineteenth Century America
Laura Ping, Diamonstein-Spielvogel fellow at the New York Public Library in New York City  and assistant professor at Bellarmine University

April 21, 2022

The Cacophony of Politics: Northern Democrats and the American Civil War
J. Matt Gallman, Professor of History at the University of Florida

March 17, 2022

The First Reconstruction: Black Politics in America, From the Revolution to the Civil War
Van Gosse, Professor of History at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania

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