By Dan Hinchen

Here is the round-up of events in the week ahead:

– Monday, 20 March, 6:00PM : “Republic of Taste” is the first installment in a new series of author talks called Politics of Taste, and it takes its name from Catherine E. Kelly’s new book, Republic of Taste: Art, Politics, and Everday Life in Early America. Kelly, of Oklahoma University, demonstrates how American thinkers acknowledged the similarities between aesthetics and politics in order to wrestle with questions about power and authority. This talk is open to the public, registration required with a fee of $10 (no charge for MHS Members or Fellows. A pre-talk reception takes place at 5:30PM, followed by the speaking program at 6:00PM. 

– Wednesday, 22 March, 12:00PM : Pack a lunch in come on in for a Brown Bag talk with Marie Burks of MIT. “Love in the Time of Mutual Assured Destruction: Rethinking Cold War Rationality” highlights the work of intellectuals who deployed alternative rationalities to challenge the assumptions underlying not only nuclear strategy but also U.S. Cold War policy more boradly. These thinkers argued that, alongside familiar tools of Cold War rationality such as game theory, love and empathy were just as critical to a full understanding of social conflict. This talks is free and open to the public. 

– Thursday, 23 March, 6:00PM : The second program in the Politics of Taste series features Zara Anishanslin of the University of Delaware. “Portrait of a Woman in Silk: Hidden Histories of the British Atlantic World” explores and refines debates about the cultural history of the eighteenth-century British Atlantic world. This talk is open to the public, registration required with a fee of $10 (no charge for MHS Members or Fellows. A pre-talk reception takes place at 5:30PM, followed by the speaking program at 6:00PM.

– Saturday, 25 March, 1:00PM : “Slavery in Early Boston” is the first of three Partnership of Historic Bostons discussions this spring about slavery and servitude in early Massachusetts. Led by Prof. Kerri Greenidge of Tufts and UMass-Boston, this open group discussion will be about our responses to readings of primary texts about slavery in early Boston (17th and 18th centuries), including A Narrative of Uncommon Sufferings, and Surprizing Deliverance of Briton Hammon, and Samuel Sewall’s The Selling of Joseph. Please note that this is a reading discussion group, not a lecture. All participants are expected to have read the following two primary texts for this discussion. This talk is open to the public free of charge, though registration is required. 

Remember that our current exhbition, The Irish Atlantic, is open to the public free of charge, Monday-Saturday, 10:00AM-4:00PM.