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Watch the recording of this event, embedded below:
On November 26, 1791, George Washington convened his department secretaries—Alexander Hamilton, 
Thomas Jefferson, Henry Knox, and Edmund Randolph—for the first cabinet meeting. Faced with diplomatic crises, domestic insurrections, and constitutional challenges, Washington decided he needed a group of advisors he could turn to. He modeled his new cabinet on the councils of war he had led as commander of the Continental Army. Lindsay M. Chervinsky reveals the far-reaching consequences of Washington’s choice to create what has become one of the most powerful bodies in the federal government: the presidential cabinet.
Please note, this is an online event. Registrants will receive an email with links to join the program.
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The MHS is CLOSED for Independence Day (observed).
closeThe MHS is CLOSED for Independence Day (observed).
closeThe MHS is CLOSED for Independence Day.
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The 1973 film The Friends of Eddie Coyle was not a box office smash but it became a cult classic and was particularly popular among film makers and film critics. The movie may have been the first to depict Boston as a working class and violent city but it certainly was not the last. With Academy award-winning films including The Departed, Mystic River, Goodwill Hunting, and Manchester by the Sea, one might say there is a gritty Boston genre. Our discussion will explore what these films say about Boston and what the city represents nationally.
This is the first program in a series of three conversations in partnership with Brattle Theater and Emerson College. Please note, this is an online program.
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Emily Dickinson’s interior world was extraordinary. She loved passionately, was hesitant about 
publication, embraced seclusion, and created 1,789 poems that she tucked into a
dresser drawer.
Martha Ackmann unravels the mysteries of Dickinson’s life through ten decisive episodes that distill her evolution as a poet. Utilizing thousands of archival letters and poems, Ackmann constructs a remarkable map of Emily Dickinson’s inner life. Together, these ten days provide new insights into her wildly original poetry and render a concise and vivid portrait of American literature’s most enigmatic figure.
Please note, this is an online event. Registrants will receive an email with links to join the program.
Order the book through Porter Square Books and use code FEVERED2020 to receive 20% off the list price.
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Join us for a virtual tour of the Forbes House Museum in Milton, Massachusetts. Built in 1833, the Greek Revival mansion was the initially the seasonal home of the entrepreneurial Forbes family who made their fortune in the China trade. In the 1964 the house opened to the public as the Museum of the American China Trade, founded by Dr. H.A. Crosby Forbes, a curator of Asian art and direct descendant of the home's original occupants. Today, the house is the site of the Forbes House Museum and boasts an impressive collection of Chinese export art and objects; Civil War and President Lincoln memorabilia; and Forbes family holdings, including American and European painting, furniture, and artifacts.
Please note, this is an online event. Registrants will receive an email with links to join the program.
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Former Boston Globe reporter and best-selling New York Times author Larry Tye discusses his new biography Demagogue: The Life and Long Shadow of Senator Joe McCarthy, and the lessons that McCarthy's reign offer for our times. Tye had first-ever access to McCarthy's personal and professional papers, along with his military and medical records. The author shows how – by recklessly charging treason against everyone from George Marshall to much of the State Department – the Wisconsin senator became the most influential and controversial man in America. But Demagogue is a story not just of a senator, but of America's long-standing love affair with bullies.
Please note, this is an online event. Registrants will receive an email with links to join the program.
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This informal talk offers an overview of responsibility, duty, and obligation as they appeared across nineteenth-century American discourse – in the fields of abolition, domesticity, public welfare, philosophy, law, concepts of community, and so on. As American thinkers and authors theorized and retheorized whom we must be responsible for (and to), and what that responsibility to others might look like, they similarly suggested alternative approaches to traditional Western conceptions of the self and the individual.
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There are a remarkable number of gritty films set in Boston, yet that is not the only way the city is depicted. There are comedies, period pieces, and films that depict the diversity of the city with much greater accuracy. Next Stop Wonderland, Paper Chase and Between the Lines have not received the same attention from the Academy, but they have devout followings and depict a different vision of Boston. Our discussion will look at these other visions of the city and discuss short films and independent productions that offer a wider perspective of our city.
This is the second program in a series of three conversations in partnership with Brattle Theater and Emerson College. Please note, this is an online program.
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War Fever: Boston, Baseball, and America in the Shadow of the Great War 27 July 2020.Monday, 5:30PM - 6:30PM This program has been canceled
In the fall of 1918, a fever gripped Boston. The deadly Spanish flu, the Great War and anxiety of German spies kept people off the streets. War Fever explores this delirious moment in American history through the stories of three men: Karl Muck, the German conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, accused of being an enemy spy; Charles Whittlesey, a Harvard law graduate who became an unlikely hero in Europe; and the most famous baseball player of all time, Babe Ruth, poised to revolutionize the game he loved. Together, they offer a gripping narrative of America at war and American culture in upheaval.
Please note, this is an online event. Registrants will receive an email with links to join the program.
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As with many cities and towns in Massachusetts—and in the case of Salem, perhaps even more so—local patriotism is so strong that most materials for the study of local history have remained close to where they were created. Since soon after our founding, however, the Massachusetts Historical Society has collected and published materials about Salem.
Join Peter Drummey, the Historical Society’s Stephen T. Riley Librarian, for a virtual tour of personal papers (letters and diaries), manuscript records, publications, portraits, photographs and artifacts ranging from the time of the witchcraft hysteria through Salem’s golden age as during the height of the India Trade on to the industrial city of 100 years ago at the time of the Great Fire of 1914 and the influenza epidemic in 1918-1919.
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