UPCOMING EMSI EVENTS

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September 13, 2008

Two Early American Heroines and the Roots of the American Frontier Hero

Denise MacNeil, University of Redlands

LOCATION: Seaver Room #3, Huntington Library, 10:30-12:00

 

October 3-4, 2008

PERMANENCE AND THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT IN THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ATLANTIC WORLD
 
This interdisciplinary conference brings together those studying  the survival and the demise of structures, infrastructures, and cityscapes with those interested in the impact of buildings on historical memory. The long  eighteenth-century in the Atlantic world is a critical time and place for a conference on permanence and the built environment because of the period’s transatlantic obsession with the subject—the mania for brick construction in town and countryside, the emergence of fire insurance, the proliferation of imperial building projects in the ports of western Europe, Africa, and the Americas, and creole efforts to meet metropolitan architectural standards. These developments came into conflict with the need for shelter on the part of a growing eighteenth-century population on both sides of the Atlantic and  American Indian anxieties over  the preservation of landscape. They also were challenged by a series of punishing natural disasters and devastating wars for empire.  As the study of both historical memory and vernacular architecture have exploded over the past decade, we anticipate lively discussions around these papers, which will be pre-circulated.

LOCATION: Friends' Hall, Huntington Library, 8:30am - 5:00pm both days

Click here for conference program Atlantic_Conference.doc

 

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Past Events:

 

May 31, 2008

Institute Seminar: "Israel Israel (who was not Jewish) and the Rise of Jeffersonian Republicanism in Philadelphia."

William A. Pencak, Pennsylvania State University

LOCATION: Huntington Library, Seaver Room #3, 10:00-12:00 noon

 

May 22-23, 2008

"William and Mary Quarterly Collaboration" Workshop: "Writing Early American History"

LOCATION: Overseers' Room, Huntington Library, 8:30am-5:00pm both days

For complete conference program, click here: 2008_WMQ_Program.doc   

 

May 16-17, 2008

HEH Conference: “Medieval Peasants Revisited"

Piotr Gorecki, University of California, Riverside

LOCATION: Huntington Library, Overseers Room, 8:30am-5:00pm

 

May 15, 2008

A Hole in the Dream: The Ghost Dance and the Making of Modern America

Louis Warren, University of California, Davis

LOCATION: Overseers' Room, Huntington Library, 7:00-8:30pm

Co-sponsored by the Institute on California and the West (ICW)

For many people, the Ghost Dance and its tragic climax at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in 1890 have come to symbolize the close of the frontier and the end of the nineteenth century. Yet the perceived closure of an old order often has a curious way of becoming an opening for something new. Environmental and western historian Louis Warren will discuss the proposal for his next book, in which he argues the Ghost Dance is best understood not as the death knell of an outmoded way of life, but rather as an expression of desire for environmental renewal which was widely shared among Indians and non-Indians. Perhaps more surprisingly, among its results was the beginning of a modern, twentieth century sensibility that we now call multiculturalism. Writing against popular beliefs poses its own challenges, and will feature among the topics for discussion in this seminar.