Events

The MHS offers an engaging roster of programming to foster historical knowledge and we welcome everyone to attend, question, and contribute. We provide a forum for debate; host a variety of events that delve into the complexities of history; and encourage people to share their observations, interpretations, and ideas. 

Upcoming Events

The Dakkabar Connection: Robert E. Paige and the Global Crafts of the Black Arts Movement
The Dakkabar Connection: Robert E. Paige and the Global Crafts of the Black Arts Movement
Online / NOTE: times are shown in EST
Tuesday, March 18, 2025 5:00 PM - 6:15 PM EST
When Chicago-based textile artist Robert Earl Paige designed the Dakkabar fabric set for Sears it marked both a turning point in Paige’s career and an illumination of the global political economy reshaping African American cultural production in the age of decolonization. An active member of Chicago’s Black Arts Movement and inspired by travel to newly-independent Senegal, Paige sold Dakkabar as a piece of Africa for the American home. Yet the fabrics also record Paige’s craft of creative (mis)translation. Reading Dakkabar as a conduit between the American and Senegalese consumer textile markets, this paper reframes the commerce of Chicago’s Black Arts Movement within the postcolonial Atlantic World.
SeminarAfrican American HistoryOnline Event
After Lives: On Biography and the Mysteries of the Human Heart
After Lives: On Biography and the Mysteries of the Human Heart
Hybrid / NOTE: times are shown in EST
Thursday, March 20, 2025 5:00 PM - 6:15 PM EST
Megan Marshall’s innovative books, including The Peabody Sisters and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Margaret Fuller, are treasured works of American biography. Now Marshall turns her narrative gift to her own art and life, reinventing the personal essay as a portal to the past and its lessons for living into the future. The book’s six chapters range across centuries and continents, from Heian Kyoto to Hawthorne’s Concord, WWI Paris to 1960s Pasadena, Marshall’s California hometown, when Civil Rights gave way to Black Power as seen through the short, tragic life of her classmate Jonathan Jackson. Join Megan Marshall in conversation with distinguished historian John Stauffer as they discuss the biographer’s impulse to learn from others, as Marshall writes, “how to live, how not to live, what it means to live.”
SeminarNew England Biography SeriesHybrid Event
Libraries, Labor, and Perpetual Obsolescence: A Recent History of the Future
Libraries, Labor, and Perpetual Obsolescence: A Recent History of the Future
Online / NOTE: times are shown in EST
Tuesday, March 25, 2025 5:00 PM - 6:15 PM EST
In the 1990s, public libraries underwent a historic transformation catalyzed by new digital technologies, patrons’ changing demands, and neoliberal commitments to making public institutions and the individuals who used them more entrepreneurial. These changes are evident in the architecture and organization of space, as well as libraries’ outreach to the growing ranks of displaced contingent workers and self-employed who struggled to find stability outside the structure of conventional, full-time work. As public libraries sought to help their patrons maintain a foothold in the changing economy, they were challenged to assert their own distinctive value as once-restricted resources became widely available.
SeminarMalgeri Modern American Society and CultureOnline Event
1775: Rebels, Rights & Revolution Opening Reception
1775: Rebels, Rights & Revolution Opening Reception
At MHS
Thursday, March 27, 2025 5:30 PM - 7:00 PM EST
Be among the first to explore this exhibition, which charts major Massachusetts events in the first year of the American Revolution. The stories behind Paul Revere’s ride, the Battles of Lexington and Concord, the Battle of Bunker Hill, and more are illustrated through rare letters, diary accounts, and artifacts from the MHS collection. Plus, enjoy hors d’oeuvres, libations, and Revolution-themed performances.
American Revolution 250In PersonExhibitionDonor and Member Events
Social Reform and Identity Formation in the 17th Century - A Panel Discussion
Social Reform and Identity Formation in the 17th Century - A Panel Discussion
Hybrid / NOTE: times are shown in EST
Tuesday, April 1, 2025 5:00 PM - 6:15 PM EST
This panel investigates forms of social control in 17th century New England. Arthur George Kamya’s paper examines the regulation of distilled liquor in 17th century Massachusetts Bay Colony, exploring how authorities navigated competing moral, economic, and security imperatives. Initially targeting a cross-section of colonists, liquor laws evolved to focus on servants, Native Americans, and eventually African Americans. The colony's approach shifted from moral censure to pragmatic revenue generation, with officials using fines and licenses to fund government operations. Kamya’s study illuminates how alcohol regulation became a tool of social control, state-building, and the construction of racial hierarchies in colonial New England, offering insights into the complex interplay between commerce, governance, and identity formation in early America. As discussed in Alice King’s work, Connecticut adopted a notable strategy towards certain Indigenous populations during the initial decades of settlement, attempting to control and exploit Native communities by turning them into colonial tributaries who would provide essential supplies, wampum, and military aid. King’s paper considers the evolution of tributary politics at the end of the seventeenth century after the Dominion of New England and Glorious Revolution had destabilized colonial authority and left colonists vulnerable to attack by French and Native forces, including the Wabanaki Confederacy during King William’s War, 1689-1697, when Connecticut leaders sought to raise soldiers for New England’s defense from these historic tributary communities.
SeminarPauline Maier Early American HistoryHybrid Event
“The Permanent Prize for Nerve”: Examining Women's Postwar Battles with the US Veteran's Bureau
“The Permanent Prize for Nerve”: Examining Women's Postwar Battles with the US Veteran's Bureau
Online / NOTE: times are shown in EST
Thursday, April 3, 2025 5:00 PM - 6:15 PM EST
This paper considers the postwar experiences of disabled or chronically ill veterans of the First World War through an examination of pension files kept by the US Bureau of War Risk Insurance and the Veteran's Bureau. While this work will demonstrate how gendered notions of service, suffering, and recovery influenced the treatment available to both men and women, it will specifically focus on the treatment of women veterans, caretakers, and widows as documented in these files. The pension and insurance system tended to obscure the physical and emotional labor performed by women in the war and postwar period. At the same time, individual investigations frequently made spectacles of women whose behavior transgressed imagined prewar gender norms, or whose testimony disrupted dominant narratives of victory and resilience. These stories challenge familiar historical narratives of war and recovery, while drawing connections to our own postwar present.
SeminarHistory of Women, Gender and SexualityOnline Event
1775: A Society on the Brink of War and Revolution - Day 1
1775: A Society on the Brink of War and Revolution - Day 1
In Person (not at MHS) / NOTE: times are shown in EST
Thursday, April 10, 2025 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM EST
The Concord Museum, the David Center for the American Revolution at the American Philosophical Society, and the Massachusetts Historical Society will hold a conference on 10-11 April 2025 on the theme “1775”. The conference will be convened at the Concord Museum and marks the 250th anniversary of the battles of Lexington and Concord. There will be opportunities for attendees to visit historic sites and view objects and collections significant to the Revolution.
Hybrid EventAmerican Revolution 250
1775: A Society on the Brink of War and Revolution - Day 2
1775: A Society on the Brink of War and Revolution - Day 2
In Person (not at MHS) / NOTE: times are shown in EST
Friday, April 11, 2025 9:00 AM - 5:00 PM EST
The Concord Museum, the David Center for the American Revolution at the American Philosophical Society, and the Massachusetts Historical Society will hold a conference on 10-11 April 2025 on the theme “1775”. The conference will be convened at the Concord Museum and marks the 250th anniversary of the battles of Lexington and Concord. There will be opportunities for attendees to visit historic sites and view objects and collections significant to the Revolution.
Hybrid EventAmerican Revolution 250
Raising Bail, Critiquing the State: SNCC, the Civil Rights Movement and Cash Bail
Raising Bail, Critiquing the State: SNCC, the Civil Rights Movement and Cash Bail
Online / NOTE: times are shown in EST
Tuesday, April 15, 2025 5:00 PM - 6:15 PM EST
This paper re-examines the relationship between civil rights activists and the system of cash bail in the 1960s. Historians have largely considered cash bail as a legal hassle, an obstacle that naturally arose as a consequence of civil disobedience. Aside from the “jail, no bail” practice of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), little attention has been paid to the questions of how activists critiqued and organized around bail. Yet, as this paper shows, SNCC innovated a range of strategies and understood bail as a very specific mechanism of racialized state repression.
SeminarAfrican American HistoryOnline Event
Black Intellect in the Wake of the American Revolution
Black Intellect in the Wake of the American Revolution
Online / NOTE: times are shown in EST
Thursday, April 17, 2025 5:00 PM - 6:15 PM EST
This chapter from Aston Gonzalez's book manuscript examines black geniuses recognized in mathematics and the natural sciences in the decades after the American Revolution. Gonzalez analyzes how domestic and transatlantic print culture authored by African Americans and British abolitionists contributed to the conceptual development of “black genius.” Journalists, medical professionals, and antislavery activists turned a public spotlight onto three Black men – the mental calculator Thomas Fuller, doctor James Derham, and astronomer Benjamin Banneker – whose skills, they argued, directly contradicted widespread assertions that people of African descent possessed innately and unchangeably inferior intellectual faculties.
SeminarAfrican American HistoryOnline Event
Left on Broadway: Pins and Needles and the Cultural Work of Labor Unions
Left on Broadway: Pins and Needles and the Cultural Work of Labor Unions
Online / NOTE: times are shown in EST
Tuesday, April 22, 2025 5:00 PM - 6:15 PM EST
This paper is an excerpt from a book project that examines the musical revue Pins and Needles—a production of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU) which became the longest running Broadway show of the 1930s. Specifically, the paper examines how the unique feminist nature of the ILGWU and the emphasis on social justice shaped the cast of workers’ experiences during the rehearsals, as well as the content of the show, and how they navigated their unexpected stardom status to claim their place in American culture, celebrating working-class ideology of gender equality and solidarity. 
SeminarMalgeri Modern American Society and CultureOnline Event
The Book of the Body: The 19th-Century Flap Anatomy as Body/Text
The Book of the Body: The 19th-Century Flap Anatomy as Body/Text
Online / NOTE: times are shown in EST
Tuesday, April 29, 2025 5:00 PM - 6:15 PM EST
This chapter analyzes the use of “flap anatomies”, or layered, printed illustrations of human anatomy, in three sites of medical training in the late 19th century: Harvard University, the University of Edinburgh, and the Université de Paris. In an era characterized by rampant anxiety concerning both physical and moral ‘degeneration’, the role of flap anatomies in disseminating anatomical knowledge and helping shape public opinion regarding the medical profession was especially crucial in matters related to human reproduction. How was the flap anatomy – with its nudity, references to sexuality, and exploration of the body’s interior – able to reconcile these competing tensions? 
SeminarHistory of Women, Gender and SexualityOnline Event
Around the World with John Quincy Adams
Around the World with John Quincy Adams
At MHS
Wednesday, April 30, 2025 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM EST
John Quincy Adams (1767–1848) went everywhere, and he left an incredible paper trail to show for it. Go around the world with the Adams Papers editors in one history-filled night at the MHS. Visit the moments and manuscripts that cemented JQA as a statesman, a president, an anti-slavery crusader, and a public servant in the family tradition. Join us for JQA’s guide to a world gone by.
Public ProgramIn Person
Creating Culture in America, AAPI Diaspora Lives
Creating Culture in America, AAPI Diaspora Lives
Hybrid / NOTE: times are shown in EST
Wednesday, May 7, 2025 6:00 PM - 7:00 PM EST
Join us for a performance and panel considering cultural practices the Asian American and Pacific Islander diaspora have created in Massachusetts. Speakers will discuss what traditions their families brought to Massachusetts and how these intermingled with other cultures to form new rituals. They will also examine what has been lost and the challenges that prevented certain customs from continuing in new environments.
Public ProgramHybrid Event
Breaking Silences: Using Intimate Biography to Uncover the Lives of Thomas Wen Yi Liao and Mary Mon Toy
Breaking Silences: Using Intimate Biography to Uncover the Lives of Thomas Wen Yi Liao and Mary Mon Toy
Hybrid / NOTE: times are shown in EST
Thursday, May 15, 2025 5:00 PM - 6:15 PM EST
This program’s guests—a first-time author and a veteran novelist—spent decades researching family histories shadowed by war, global politics, and anti-Asian racism. Kim Liao discovered a many-layered story suppressed both in her family and by the Taiwanese government featuring her grandfather, a leader of the Taiwanese independence movement after World War II. Marnie Mueller, born in a Japanese American concentration camp in 1942 and later befriended by Mary Mon Toy, a talented “showgirl” incarcerated in a different camp, became her friend’s executor. After Mon Toy’s death in 2009, a hidden life story emerged that begged to be told alongside Mueller’s own long-concealed history. Learn about “intimate biography” from two authors who are inventing the form.
SeminarNew England Biography SeriesHybrid Event
Annual Fiori Lecture: French Material Culture in the Revolutionary Atlantic
Annual Fiori Lecture: French Material Culture in the Revolutionary Atlantic
Hybrid / NOTE: times are shown in EST
Monday, May 19, 2025 6:00 PM - 7:00 PM EST
Lafayette’s tour of the United States in 1824-5 resulted in the production of objects—ceramics, textiles, prints, among others—all emblazoned with his name and visage.  But like Lafayette himself, French impact on material culture dates to the American Revolution.  Join us as Ashli White examines the influence of various French things on political movements throughout the revolutionary Atlantic world and considers how diverse populations turned to these items as part of their attempts to realize liberty and equality.
Public ProgramAnnual Fiori LectureHybrid EventAmerican Revolution 250
Member Week
Member Week
At MHS
Monday, June 2, 2025 12:00 AM - 12:00 AM EST
...
Member Week
Revolutionary Kinship: Sustaining Family Through Wartime Divisions
Revolutionary Kinship: Sustaining Family Through Wartime Divisions
Hybrid / NOTE: times are shown in EST
Monday, June 16, 2025 6:00 PM - 7:00 PM EST
The American Revolution had a profound impact on families, with some ideas and experiences dramatically altered and some surprisingly durable. Conflicting beliefs about the future of the nation caused familial rifts, and many lost friends and loved ones to battle and plunder. Enslaved people simultaneously broadened ideas about family in response to the violence of slavery and evaluated whether independence would keep their kin safer from future violence. Gender roles were both everchanging in the circumstances of war as women ran businesses, handled material needs of war, and faced new childcare situations, but also remained constant in many ways. As a result of change and continuity, families included stepfamilies and single parents, relationships across plantations, and transcended biological connections. In this program, panelists will consider how the American Revolution both disrupted family arrangements and brought new formations of kinship while retaining many of the same structures.
Public ProgramHybrid EventAmerican Revolution 250
We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance
We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance
Hybrid / NOTE: times are shown in EST
Tuesday, June 24, 2025 6:00 PM - 7:00 PM EST
In her book We Refuse, historian Kellie Carter Jackson examines the breadth of Black responses to white oppression, particularly those pioneered by Black women.  Force—from work stoppages and property destruction to armed revolt—has played a pivotal part in securing freedom and justice for Black people since the days of the American and Haitian Revolutions. In conversation with Kanisorn Wongsrichanalai, Carter Jackson will discuss force alongside other vital tactics that have shaped the Black struggle, from the restorative power of finding joy in the face of suffering to the quiet strength of simply walking away. 
Public ProgramHybrid EventSpeakers Fund
Committeemen: Local Government and the Popular Politics of Revolution
Committeemen: Local Government and the Popular Politics of Revolution
Online / NOTE: times are shown in EST
Monday, July 14, 2025 6:00 PM - 7:00 PM EST
Over the spring and summer of 1775, revolutionary committees in small towns and rural communities took charge of the revolutionary movement.  In the chaos that followed the battles of Lexington and Concord, thousands of farmers, lawyers, ministers, shopkeepers, and artisans all over British North America reluctantly took up the reins of power in their communities. Exercising emergency civil powers, they established a rudimentary form of revolutionary government in place of the ousted colonial regimes. Local committeemen organized and equipped vast new revolutionary armies, collected taxes, drove out perceived enemies, and maintained what semblance they could of legal procedure. By the end of 1775, the local committees had succeeded in establishing a fragile but effective revolutionary authority that supplanted imperial government in all but a few isolated pockets of the thirteen now-former colonies.
American Revolution 250Online EventPublic Program
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We are pleased to participate in the Card to Culture program, a collaboration between Mass Cultural Council and the Department of Transitional Assistance, Massachusetts Health Connector, and Women, Infants & Children (WIC) Nutrition Program by extending discounts to EBT, WIC, and ConnectorCare cardholders. Cardholders are eligible for free or discounted entry at our public program events, including both virtual and in-person programs. There are no restrictions on the number of times an individual can present a card for admission and no restrictions on the number of tickets held per event (except for fundraising and cultivation events). See the full list of participating organizations offering EBT, WIC, and ConnectorCare discounts.

Our programs take place in person as well as virtually via Zoom or YouTube. All online programs are in English and have closed captioning enabled through Zoom or YouTube. If you would like to attend a program in person and are in need of accommodations, please register early and note your accessibility needs so we can make attendance feasible.  If you need ASL interpretation, please register at least two weeks in advance, to ensure time to secure an interpreter.

Donor And Member Events

The MHS hosts events throughout the year to thank our various donor groups. Members receive special invitations to exclusive events.

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Author Talks

The MHS keeps abreast of emerging trends in American history. Throughout the year, we host authors to speak on a variety of topics related to American and Massachusetts history. (Past event recordings available.)

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Panel Discussions & Special Events

The MHS offers a range of programs including lectures, panel discussions, gallery tours, and special events led by notable speakers, public figures, and scholars.

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Seminars

The MHS organizes seven seminar series that bring together a diverse group of scholars and members of the public to workshop a pre-circulated academic paper.

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Brown Bags

The MHS offers more than two dozen brown-bag lunch programs each year. These programs are free of charge and open to all.

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Workshops

The MHS develops and implements educator workshops on a variety of American history topics. 

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