Event

MHS Film Club: Good Will Hunting

Public Program Film Club Online Event
Monday, December 12, 2022 6:00 PM - 7:00 PM EST
At MHS

Tim Grafft, former deputy director of the Massachusetts Film Office, Carolyn Pickman, Co-Founder, CP Casting Inc, and Missy Stewart, film production designer

Register to attend online

Join MHS and professionals involved with the making of the film, as we discuss 1997’s Good Will Hunting, featuring Robin Williams, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Minnie Driver, and more. The film follows Will Hunting, a janitor at M.I.T., who has a gift for mathematics, but needs help from a psychologist to find direction in his life. Watch the film at home and discuss your thoughts with us! Good Will Hunting is available through HBO Max, Amazon Video, DIRECTV, Redbox, Vudu, YouTube, and other streaming sites.

Online event.

Upcoming 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
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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.
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Online / NOTE: times are shown in EST
Thursday, April 17, 2025 5:00 PM - 6:15 PM EST
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At MHS
Saturday, April 19, 2025 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM EST
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American Revolution 250In PersonPublic Program
Gallery Talk: Rebels, Rights & Revolution: Battles of Lexington and Concord
Gallery Talk: Rebels, Rights & Revolution: Battles of Lexington and Concord
At MHS
Saturday, April 19, 2025 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM EST
Join Reference Librarian Lauren Gray for a gallery talk on the exhibition "1775: Rebels, Rights & Revolution," which charts major Massachusetts events in the first year of the American Revolution. Lauren will delve into the impact of the Battles of Lexington and Concord using related exhibition items. Visitors are invited to explore the rest of the exhibition and ask questions.
American Revolution 250In PersonPublic Program
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. 
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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
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Around the World with John Quincy Adams
At MHS
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Public ProgramIn Person
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Hybrid / NOTE: times are shown in EST
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Hybrid / NOTE: times are shown in EST
Thursday, May 15, 2025 5:00 PM - 6:15 PM EST
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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
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Member Week
Member Week
At MHS
Monday, June 2, 2025 12:00 AM - 12:00 AM EST
...
Member Week
Gallery Talk: Rebels, Rights & Revolution: Battle of Bunker Hill
Gallery Talk: Rebels, Rights & Revolution: Battle of Bunker Hill
At MHS
Friday, June 13, 2025 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM EST
Join Chief Historian, Peter Drummey, for a gallery talk on the exhibition, 1775: Rebels, Rights & Revolution, which charts major Massachusetts events in the first year of the American Revolution. Peter will discuss the impact of the Battle of Bunker Hill using related exhibition items. Visitors are invited to explore the rest of the exhibition and ask questions. 
American Revolution 250Public ProgramIn Person
Gallery Talk: Rebels, Rights & Revolution: Battle of Bunker Hill
Gallery Talk: Rebels, Rights & Revolution: Battle of Bunker Hill
At MHS
Friday, June 13, 2025 1:00 PM - 2:00 PM EST
Join Chief Historian, Peter Drummey, for a gallery talk on the exhibition, 1775: Rebels, Rights & Revolution, which charts major Massachusetts events in the first year of the American Revolution. Peter will discuss the impact of the Battle of Bunker Hill using related exhibition items. Visitors are invited to explore the rest of the exhibition and ask questions. 
American Revolution 250Public ProgramIn Person
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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