Spring 2013 Events
Fall 2012 Events
Biographers in Historians' Clothing?
The Methods of Plutarch and Suetonius
A lecture by Professor Timothy Cornell of the University of Manchester. It will take place in Founders Hall 207,
November 2, 2012 at 4:30 pm. Reception to follow.
Financial Crisis and the Political Pendulum: How Trade Wars, White Whales, and Stimulus Packages have Created American Presidents.
A Lecture by Professor Scott Reynolds, College of William and Mary. It will take place in Collins Cinema, October 15, 2012 at 5.00pm.
The Story of America is a story of dreamers and defaulters. It is also a story of dramatic financial panics that defined the nation, created its political parties and caused millions to escape to new towns in the Northwest or cross the Mississippi into Texas. As far back as 1792, panics boiled down to a simple question: would Americans pay their debts - or was it just a nation of deadbeats? This presentation will explore the central financial problem at the heart of American financial panics and the way that party and policy changed after each one.
Dreaming of Black Presidents: Boston's 19th Century Black Activists and the Meaning(s) of Politics
A lecture by Professor Stephen Kantrowitz of University of Wisconsin - Madison. It will take place in Collins Cinema, September 21, 2012 at 4.00pm.
The people we know as 'Black abolitionists' were also the Nation's first Black political organizers and elected officials,taking office in Northern cities well before their counterparts in the Post-Civil War South. But how was this possible when they made up only a tiny percentage of the population in those places? and why did elective office matter so much to them? The answers to these questions help explain what Black activists of the Civil War era thought American citizenship could mean.