The Boston Area Early American History Seminar at the Massachusetts Historical Society provides a forum to discuss all aspects of North American history and culture from the first English colonization to the Civil War.

Each seminar meeting revolves around the discussion of a paper made available in advance. Subscribers may either print essays posted on our website as PDFs or receive paper copies by mail. To subscribe for the year, please send a $25 check (for access to the PDFs) or a $35 check (for copies by mail) payable to the Massachusetts Historical Society, 1154 Boylston Street, Boston, MA 02215. You may pay by credit card online at: www.masshist.org/events/attend.cfm. The fee covers the full academic year. Back copies are provided to those who subscribe after the start of the season.

To make dinner reservations or to join our mailing list, please contact us at the address above, (617) 646-0540, or seminars@masshist.org. For more information on this seminar series and other MHS programming, please visit the “Events” section of our website at www.masshist.org.

Schedule, 2007-2008

2007
Thursday, October 4, Richard D. Brown, University of Connecticut, and Doron Ben-Atar, Fordham University, “Darkness in New Light New England: Punishing Bestial Acts in the 1790s”
Comment: Mary Sarah Bilder, Boston College Law School

Thursday, November 1, Nian-Sheng Huang, California State University Channel Islands, “The Poor and the Minimum Cost of Living in Colonial Massachusetts”
Comment: Lisa Wilson, Connecticut College

Thursday, December 6, C. Dallett Hemphill, Ursinus College, “Founding Brothers and Sisters: Sibling Relations in the Era of the American Revolution”
Comment: Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Harvard University

2008
Thursday, February 7, Maya Jasanoff, Harvard University, “In Empire’s Embrace: The Loyalists Who Left”
Comment: Eliga H. Gould, University of New Hampshire

Thursday, March 20, John Murrin, Princeton University, “Self-Immolation: Patterns of Historiography in the Coming of the American Revolution”
Comment: Pauline Maier, MIT; Woody Holton, University of Richmond; Brendan McConville, Boston University

Thursday, April 3, Susan Branson, Syracuse University, “American Women and Enlightenment Science”
Comment: Joyce Chaplin, Harvard University

Thursday, May 1, Benjamin Carp, Tufts University, “Partygoers: Recovering the Narratives of the Boston Tea Party Participants”
Comment: Jim Taylor, Adams Papers

Thursday, June 19, Linford D. Fisher, Harvard University, “Leaving the English: Joseph Johnson and the Pan-Indian Migration to Brotherton, N.Y., 1775-1785”
Comment: Neal Salisbury, Smith College

Also of Interest:

Boston Environmental History Seminar
2008
Tuesday, January 8—Chris Pastore, “Extending Boston Commons:
Culture, Ecology, and Law in the Seventeenth-Century Salt Marsh”
Comment: John Duff, University of Massachusetts—Boston