Looking Local: Researching History in South End, Boston

MHS Event

Public Program Hybrid Event

Wednesday, May 10, 2023 10:00 PM - 11:00 PM UTC

At MHS / NOTE: time is shown in East Coast time.

In Partnership with the South End Historical Society

Register to attend online

Register to attend in person

The Massachusetts Historical Society and the South End Historical Society are teaming up to help you learn more about ways to research the rich and vibrant history of the Sound End. Each organization will explain how to use the items in their collections to find out more about local history.

Hybrid Event

The in-person reception starts at 5:30 and the program will begin at 6:00.

Masks are optional for this event.

The virtual program begins at 6:00 PM and will be hosted on the video conference platform, Zoom. Registrants will receive a confirmation message with attendance information.

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Tuesday, April 22, 2025 9:00 PM - 10:15 PM UTC

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.

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“O Sweet, Sacred, Divine Mystery”: Human Reproduction in French Popular Medical Treatises, 1870–1900

“O Sweet, Sacred, Divine Mystery”: Human Reproduction in French Popular Medical Treatises, 1870–1900

Tuesday, April 29, 2025 9:00 PM - 10:15 PM UTC

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?

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Around the World with John Quincy Adams

Around the World with John Quincy Adams

Wednesday, April 30, 2025 10:00 PM - 12:00 AM UTC

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 Program In Person

Creating Culture in America, AAPI Diaspora Lives

Creating Culture in America, AAPI Diaspora Lives

Wednesday, May 7, 2025 10:00 PM - 11:00 PM UTC

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 observances. They will also examine what has been lost and the challenges that prevented certain customs from continuing in new environments.

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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

Thursday, May 15, 2025 9:00 PM - 10:15 PM UTC

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.

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Annual Fiori Lecture: French Material Culture in the Revolutionary Atlantic

Annual Fiori Lecture: French Material Culture in the Revolutionary Atlantic

Monday, May 19, 2025 10:00 PM - 11:00 PM UTC

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.

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Gallery Talk: Rebels, Rights & Revolution: Battle of Bunker Hill

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Gallery Talk: Rebels, Rights & Revolution: Battle of Bunker Hill

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Friday, June 13, 2025 5:00 PM - 6:00 PM UTC

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Revolutionary Kinship: Sustaining Family Through Wartime Divisions

Revolutionary Kinship: Sustaining Family Through Wartime Divisions

Monday, June 16, 2025 10:00 PM - 11:00 PM UTC

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.

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We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance

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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.

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Curious and Complex Connections: Environmental History and the War of Independence

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