Today @ MHS: Nelson Brown-Bag

By Jeremy Dibbell

Join us today (Wednesday) at 12 noon in the Dowse Library for a brown-bag lunch with Megan Kate Nelson, Assistant Professor of History at California State University, Fullerton. Nelson will discuss the cultural and environmental frameworks that inform her book project, Ruin Nation: The Destruction of the South and the Making of America during the Civil War Era. She will explain how and why Americans destroyed southern cities, plantations, forests, and men, and how both soldiers and civilians responded to these different kinds of ruins between 1861 and 1900. Dr. Nelson will also talk about the importance that letters and diaries of New Englanders play in her research, with examples drawn from the collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

Nelson received five fellowships – including the Suzanne and Caleb Loring Fellowship in the Study of the Civil War and the New England Regional Fellowship Consortium Award – to support the research and writing of Ruin Nation in 2008-2009 and has presented her work as part of the Boston Environmental History Seminar Series at the Massachusetts Historical Society (10 Februrary 2009) and the Weirding the War Conference at the University of Georgia.

This event is free and open to the public.

Posted in This Week @MHS

Meet & Greet: Reader Services

By Jeremy Dibbell

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be posting occasional pieces designed to introduce the various departments responsible for the wide range of activities that go on at 1154 Boylston Street. I thought it only fair to begin with my own department, since we in Reader Services are the folks you’re most likely to see when you come in to use the library. We’re the ones who staff the reception desk, the reading room and the reference desk, and who answer your reference questions by email, phone, or letter (yes, we still get a few). We’re responsible for retrieving and returning the materials our readers ask to see every day, and for enforcing the library’s policies and procedures. Reader Services staff also manage rights and reproduction requests submitted by authors, filmmakers and others who wish to cite material or use an image from our collections; coordinate incoming and outgoing loans; and curate the Society’s public exhibits.

Reader Services staff members include:

Peter Drummey, Stephen T. Riley Librarian
Anne Bentley, Curator of Art
Elaine Grublin, Reference Librarian
Tracy Potter & Jeremy Dibbell, Assistant Reference Librarians
Heather Merrill, Sara Georgini, Caitlin Corless, Anna Cook, & Rakashi Chand, Library Assistants

We also are frequently joined by an intern or two from the archives program at Simmons College. Our most recent, Jocelyn Gould and Daniel Hinchen, have just finished their semester with us.

If you have a general question for our department, or if you need to reach any one of us, you can find our complete contact information here.

 

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The Sun Never Sets …

By Jeremy Dibbell

Here’s a perfect example of the far-reaching influence of the MHS. Cuiyun Li, a professor at the College of Foreign Languages and Culture at Inner Mongolia University in China, has recently published a book which draws heavily on the collections and publications of the Historical Society: John Winthrop: A Pioneer of American Civilization (Inner Mongolia University Press, 2008). Li is at Harvard University on a Fulbright scholarship this academic year, and has paid several visits to the MHS in recent weeks. On her first visit, she presented us with a signed copy of her book, which will soon be among the books on display in the Saltonstall Reference Room (for those readers who can read Mandarin Chinese).

Li, who shares a birthday with Winthrop, told me that she will use her book in teaching graduate students at her home institution about John Winthrop and the important role he played in American history. “He is very special,” she said. “Too many people don’t know him.”

Li, holding a volume of John Winthrop’s journal

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