Pamela Colman Smith’s New York Victorian Society New York 2022-02-08 | An online lecture sponsored by the Victorian Society New York.Recorded March 30th, 2021 Speaker: Professor Elizabeth Foley O’ConnorPamela Colman Smith’s illustrations for the Rider Waite tarot deck are known to millions worldwide, but her many other contributions as an artist, folklorist, editor, and suffragist have received relatively little attention until recently. She was active from the 1890s through the 1920s, during the critical transition from the Victorian to Modernist eras. Drawing on new findings from her literary biography, Pamela Colman Smith: Artist, Feminist & Mystic, Elizabeth Foley O’Connor will share new details about Colman Smith’s life and work, especially her time in New York. Although she spent most of her life in England, Colman Smith was descended from two well-connected Brooklyn families. She attended the Pratt Instituted and launched her career as an artist and illustrator in Manhattan and was the first non-photographic artist that Alfred Stieglitz exhibited at his 291 galleries on Fifth Avenue. Colman Smith was well-known in the City’s artistic community and often gave several performances of Jamaican Anansi tales at venues around the City, including a memorable performance for Mark Twain.Elizabeth Foley O’Connor is an Associate Professor of English and Director of the Gender Studies program at Washington College.
Walter Scott Lenox and American Belleek with Curator Brian Gallagher Victorian Society New York 2024-01-26 | On Thursday, January 18, 2024, Brian Gallagher, Senior Curator of Decorative Arts at The Mint Museum, Charlotte, North Carolina, presented, in an online, talk, noteworthy examples of art porcelain produced in late nineteenth-century Trenton, New Jersey, at the three factories—Ott & Brewer, Willets Manufacturing Company, and Ceramic Art Company—where Walter Scott Lenox (1859–1920) served sequentially as artistic director. Lenox was instrumental in developing a version of the eggshell-thin, ivory-colored porcelain first manufactured in the village of Belleek in County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, that then achieved new aesthetic heights in the United States thanks to his vision and artistic talent. This subject is the focus of Gallagher’s exhibition Walter Scott Lenox and American Belleek, which was on view at the Mint Museum in January 2024.Brian Gallagher joined the Mint Museum’s curatorial staff in 2007, and before then he was an assistant curator in the Department of European Art at the Detroit Institute of Arts. He has organized numerous exhibitions during his museum career on a variety of decorative arts topics. Recent projects include Classic Black: The Basalt Sculpture of Wedgwood and His Contemporaries (2020) and Portals to the Past: British Ceramics 1675–1825 (2016). He co-authored the catalogues associated with these two projects and was the sole author for Walter Scott Lenox and American Belleek (2023). Gallagher has an M.A. and an M.Phil. from the Bard Graduate Center, New York, and an M.S. in Library and Information Science from Drexel University, Philadelphia.
Pregnancy In Victorian Novels with Dr. Livia Arndal Woods Victorian Society New York 2024-01-26 | How Do Our 21st-Century Perspectives Affect How We Think About Pregnancy in Victorian Novels? Join us an online talk originally presented on Tuesday, January 23, 2024. Livia Arndal Woods discusses her recent book Pregnancy in the Victorian Novel, which argues that we need to be attuned to speculation and our own experiences of embodiment to read depictions of women’s reproductive capacity in nineteenth-century British literature as anything other than punishment. Victorian novels tend to avoid the direct representation of pregnancy except in cases of maternal immorality or immodesty. Without active resistance, we inherit and repeat pregnancy plots in which reproductive bodies are always already guilty.Dr. Livia Arndal Woods (she/her/hers) earned a PhD from the CUNY Graduate Center and is Associate Professor of English at the University of Illinois at Springfield. Her research focuses on British Victorian literature and culture, women’s and gender studies, and the medical humanities.
Building The Brooklyn Bridge 1869 to 1883 Victorian Society New York 2023-01-09 | An online lecture sponsored by the Victorian Society New York.Recorded January 20th, 2022 Speaker: Jeffrey I. RichmanAbout this eventAuthor Jeffrey I. Richman will tell the captivating story of how a bridge of unprecedented size and technology was built over the East River, connecting, for the first time, the then independent cities of Brooklyn and New York. This awe-inspiring structure—built during an age of technological innovation— was not only a modern engineering feat of extraordinary imagination, fortitude, and skill, it also was a towering beacon of human triumph.In his lecture, based on his recently published book, Building The Brooklyn Bridge 1869 to 1883: An Illustrated History with Images in 3D, Mr. Richman will share some of the 253 superb 19th-century images, many never before published on the printed page (published by Bauer and Dean Publishers).A born storyteller, Mr. Richman relates how a small group of dedicated engineers and thousands of workers toiled for more than a decade to construct what was then the largest suspension bridge ever built, section by section, from the massive anchorages and elegant towers to the cables and bridge railway (operational four months after the bridge’s official opening). He reminds us how profoundly modern and groundbreaking the bridge was, in its use of new materials (steel), new technologies (electricity), and pioneering construction methods. He will discuss why this iconic bridge—proclaimed the “eighth wonder of the world” soon after its completion and a National Historic Landmark in 1964—continues to hold such a special place in the hearts of so many.Kurt Andersen, best-selling author and former host of the Peabody Award winning “Studio 360,” has written: “If you love Brooklyn or bridges or New York City or cities or 19th century marvels –– or all of the above, as I do ––Building Brooklyn Bridge is a perfect feast, a would-be time-traveler’s delight, overflowing with rare and evocative and fascinating images. It’s a terrific book!”Early sign-ups will receive a set of 3-D glasses for the talk!Bio: Jeffrey I. Richman has been fascinated by New York City’s history for as long as he can remember. In 2007, after thirty-three years practicing law, representing indigent criminal defendants, he became the full-time historian at Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery Since then, he has led Green-Wood’s Civil War, World War I, and World War II projects which, with the help of hundreds of volunteers, have researched, written, and posted online biographies of thousands of veterans interred there. He is the author of three books, including Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery: New York’s Buried Treasure (1998). He has also curated many exhibitions, including three on the Civil War and one on Coney Island. Driven by his passion for history in general and nineteenth-century New York in particular, Richman is an avid collector who has amassed an outstanding collection of stereoview and lantern slide photographs of early New York—including many of the Brooklyn Bridge under construction—that he has donated to The Green-Wood Historic Fund. One of his fondest memories is of attending the one-hundredth anniversary of the bridge’s opening in 1983—just one milestone in his love affair with the Brooklyn Bridge.
Been There, Done That: A Rousing History of Sex Victorian Society New York 2023-01-09 | An online lecture sponsored by the Victorian Society New York.Recorded February 17th, 2022 Speaker: Rachel FeltmanAbout this event:Roman physicians told female patients they should sneeze out as much semen as possible after intercourse to avoid pregnancy. Historical treatments for erectile dysfunction included goat testicle transplants. Sex has changed in a million ways since Adam and Eve, the original awkward virgins, and in a million others it hasn’t. With unstoppable curiosity and mischievous humor, science writer Rachel Feltman debunks myths, breaks down stigma, and uses the long, outlandish history of sex to dissect present-day practices, attitudes, and taboos in. Feltman will share some of her favorite misconceptions about sex, with a particular eye toward the oft-misrepresented Victorian era.Rachel Feltman is the Executive Editor of Popular Science, where she also hosts the hit podcast The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week. She has written for Scientific American, The Washington Post, Quartz, Popular Mechanics, and The Atlantic on everything from herpes to Uranus. Her first book, Been There, Done That: A Rousing History of Sex, will be released by Bold Type on May 17, 2022 and is available for preorder now.
Dressing Up: The Women Who Influenced French Fashion Victorian Society New York 2023-01-09 | An online lecture sponsored by the Victorian Society New York.Recorded February 28th, 2022 Speaker: Elizabeth L. Block, PhDAbout this eventJoin us for a conversation with Elizabeth L. Block, PhD, author of Dressing Up: The Women Who Influenced French Fashion (MIT Press).French fashion of the late nineteenth century is known for its allure, its ineffable chic —think of John Singer Sargent’s Madame X and her scandalously slipping strap. For Parisian couturiers and their U.S. customers, it was also serious business. In Dressing Up, Elizabeth Block examines the couturiers’ influential clientele—wealthy women in the United States who bolstered the French fashion industry with a steady stream of orders. Countering the usual narrative of the designer as solo creative genius, Block shows that these women—as high-volume customers and as pre-Internet influencers—were active participants in the era’s transnational fashion system.Elizabeth L. Block, PhD, an art historian, is Senior Editor in the Publications and Editorial Department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. She has contributed to publications including American Art and West 86th: A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture. Her book, Dressing Up: The Women Who Influenced French Fashion (2021), published by MIT Press, is available now.
Beyond the Gilded Age: Gold in America Victorian Society New York 2023-01-09 | An online lecture sponsored by the Victorian Society New York.Recorded April 20th, 2022Speaker: John Stuart GordonAbout this Event:Gold’s warm glow, resistance to corrosion, and rarity have made it a preferred material for objects meant to convey prestige, authority, or devotion. This talk by John Stuart Gordon, curator of Yale University Art Gallery’s current show, Gold in America: Artistry, Memory, Power, will focus on the exuberant and tumultuous years between the Gold Rush of 1848 and World War I. During this period, precious metal embodied promise, success, cunning, and greed. The discovery of gold in California lured fortune-seekers from around the globe, a handful of whom used their newfound wealth to shape New York’s culture. Once the nation moved onto the gold standard, the material became political and, in the hands of some sculptors, quietly subversive. Many of the sumptuous objects, coins, and paintings in this talk are included in the exhibition, Gold in America, on display through July 10, 2022.John Stuart Gordon is the Benjamin Attmore Hewitt Curator of American Decorative Arts at Yale University Art Gallery. John works on all aspects of American decorative arts and material culture, but his specialties are silver, modernist designs of the 1920s and 1930s, and postmodernism. In addition to his curatorial work, he supervises Furniture Study, the Art Gallery’s expansive study collection of American furniture and wooden objects.
Emerging Scholars: Brooklyn’s Cyclorama, Sheet Music Xenophobia, and an Electric Gown Victorian Society New York 2023-01-09 | An online lecture sponsored by the Victorian Society New York.Recorded May 16th, 2022 Speakers: Anna Lea, Hannah Morand, Madeline PorsellaAbout this eventWinners of the Victorian Society New York’s annual Emerging Scholars contest will speak on a fascinating array of topics. Hannah Morand, a graduate student at the University of Toronto, will analyze a 120-foot-long panoramic painting of a U.S. Army victory at Gettysburg, shown in the 1880s at venues including a freestanding circular building near Brooklyn’s City Hall. Anna Lea, a graduate student at the University of Vienna, will explore caricatures and interpretations of Chinese people and Chinese Americans in Tin Pan Alley sheet music and compositions. Madeline Porsella of the Bard Graduate Center will reveal new discoveries about a Vanderbilt heiress cladding herself in a gilt-trimmed dress embroidered with lightning bolts and illuminated by battery-powered light bulbs.
The Waldorf-Astoria and the Life of the City Victorian Society New York 2022-02-08 | An online lecture sponsored by the Victorian Society New York.Recorded May 5th, 2021Speaker: David FreelandAbout this Event:When the original Hotel Waldorf opened on Fifth Avenue in 1893, its managers sought to create a “haven for the well-to-do,” an elite citadel that would guard the privacy (and secrets) of a select assemblage of Astors, Vanderbilts and Whitneys. But after the Waldorf doubled in size with the addition of the Astoria in 1897, it had to open its doors to a wider spectrum. In this lecture based on his forthcoming book, American Hotel: The Waldorf-Astoria and Making of a Century, David Freeland will discuss how the hotel that cultivated (it was once said) “exclusiveness among the masses” became a turn-of-century meeting place for all kinds of people. Along the way, he’ll share a range of photos and documents to highlight the Waldorf’s contributions in architecture, music, and cuisine.David Freeland is the author of the books Automats, Taxi Dances and Vaudeville: Excavating Manhattan’s Lost Places of Leisure, for which he won the 2009 Award for Popular Culture and Entertainment for 2009 from the Metropolitan Chapter of the Victorian Society in America, and Ladies of Soul. As a historian and journalist, he has written for the Wall Street Journal, am New York, Time Out New York, New York History, American Songwriter, and other publications. He appeared in episodes of NBC TV’s “Who Do You Think You Are” and NYC Media’s “Secrets of New York.” Freeland lives in New York, where he leads walking tours and gives lectures on the city’s culture and history.
THE DOCTORS BLACKWELL: How Two Pioneering Sisters Brought Medicine to Women Victorian Society New York 2022-02-08 | An online lecture sponsored by the Victorian Society New York.Recorded March 17th, 2021 Speaker: Janice P. NimuraAbout this Event:DOCTORS BLACKWELL looks closely at the sisters Elizabeth and Emily Blackwell, English immigrants who, in quick succession, became the first and third women, respectively, in the U.S. to earn medical degrees—and who, in 1857, founded the very first hospital staffed by women, the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children.Tenacious visionaries, Elizabeth and Emily obtained their medical degrees despite the numerous and considerable challenges before them. Elizabeth’s entry into this previously all-male profession was called “a farce,” “the nefarious process of amalgamation,” and was met with bursts of laughter and derision. The dean of one school summed up a popular fear among male practitioners, who were worried that female patients would only want to see female doctors: “You cannot expect us to furnish you with a stick to break our heads with.” Attempts by both sisters to get into medical colleges were either denied or met with toothless acceptance—the faculty at Geneva Medical College left the ultimate decision of whether to accept Elizabeth up to the students, who only agreed as a sort of fraternity prank.The Blackwells’ ambitions extended far beyond themselves. Whereas Elizabeth strove to stand alongside her male allies as an exceptional woman who had proved herself their equal, Emily yearned to strip her gender and make her way in anonymity. Nimura writes of Elizabeth, “caring for suffering individuals had never been the engine that drove her. In becoming a doctor, she meant to heal humanity.” And as Emily once reminded Elizabeth, the point was “to be not the first female M.D.s, but the first of legions.”Now all but forgotten or watered down in children’s books, the sisters (especially Elizabeth, deemed the “lioness”) made national and international news when they earned their degrees and began practicing, and were consistently trailed by whispers and curious looks. They were written up in the New York Times; mocked in Punch, the London satirical paper; and they and their work were profiled in leading medical and women’s journals. What’s more, their lives intersected with some of the most notable figures of their era. Florence Nightingale, Lucy Stone, Horace Greeley, Henry Ward Beecher, Lady Byron, Henry Whitney Bellows, and Dorothea Dix made important introductions for them and/or supported their endeavors publicly. Elizabeth even won a private meeting with President Abraham Lincoln.THE DOCTORS BLACKWELL illuminates these two remarkable women—in all their complicated, contradictory brilliance—whose profound influence changed the medical profession forever.Janice P. Nimura—an independent historian whose last book, Daughters of the Samurai: A Journey from East to West and Back, was a New York Times’s Notable book of 2015—is the winner of a 2017 National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar award.
“Man With Glass Eye Seeks Woman With Glass Eye”: New York’s personal ads - Francesca Beauman Victorian Society New York 2022-02-08 | An online lecture sponsored by the Victorian Society New York.Recorded March 12th, 2021 Speaker: Francesca BeaumanAbout this EventHistorian Francesca Beauman, author of Matrimony, Inc.: from personal ads to swiping right, a story of America looking for love (2020), explores the history of personal ads in New York.One Thursday morning in 1861, a woman named Ethel placed an ad for a husband in the New York Herald. She explained that she was “compelled to adopt this mode of opening a correspondence owing to the strict surveillance under which she is placed at home.” The successful candidate needed to be under twenty-five and “possess a fine intellectual countenance, be of an agreeable disposition, and above all have a love of a mustache.” Clearly, if you’ve ever used a dating app or website, then you have more in common than you know with nineteenth century New Yorkers.Whilst researching her latest book, Beauman has uncovered hundreds of never-before-seen personal ads, which together offer startlingly fresh insight into American life as the population grew and the cities expanded. In this talk, she will share some of her favorites from the past 250 years or so, along the way helping to answer the age-old question: what do men and women look for in each other? And how has this changed (or not!) over the past 250 years?
Mary Church Terrell’s Family History and the Making of an Activist Victorian Society New York 2022-02-08 | An online lecture sponsored by the Victorian Society New York.Recorded February 22, 2021. Speaker: Prof Alison M. ParkerAbout this EventHighlighting new findings from her biography, Unceasing Militant, Alison Parker will share how Mary Church Terrell’s family history of enslavement and of opportunities and dangers during Reconstruction helped shape her activism. The Oberlin College graduate became an educator and served as the first Black woman on the Washington, D.D. board of education. As a leader in the National Association of Colored Women, the Constitution League, and then the NAACP, Terrell became a public lecturer. Pointing to the violence of white enslavers who had raped enslaved women, including both of her grandmothers, as well as to the violence of lynching that even ended the life of one of her childhood friends, Terrell spoke frequently in New York City, calling for Black men’s and women’s voting rights, as well as for federal anti-lynching legislation and an end to segregation.Alison M. Parker is the Chair & Richards Professor of American History at the University of Delaware.
Cottier & Co. on Fifth Avenue, NY: A One-Stop Shop for the House Beautiful Victorian Society New York 2022-02-08 | An online lecture sponsored by the Victorian Society New York.Recorded February 10th, 2021. Speaker: Prof. Petra ten-Doesschate ChuTrained as a stained glass artist, the Glasgow native Daniel Cottier (1838-1891), by age thirty-five, had created a worldwide network of large shops where one could buy everything for the elegant home–. from furniture to fabrics; from chandeliers to fine china, and from paintings to stained glass panels. This talk will focus on Cottier & Co. in New York, its clientele, and the unique place it occupied among other interior decorating firms because of its inclusion of an art gallery, which promoted contemporary European art. Cottier’s close friendships with contemporary American artists, such as Albert Pinkham Ryder, J. Alden Weir, and the sculptor Olin Levy Warner, whose careers he supported without, however, selling their art, will also be discussed.Petra ten-Doesschate Chu is professor emeritus of art history and museum studies at Seton Hall University (South Orange, NJ). A specialist in nineteenth-century art history, she has published or co-published some fifteen books, edited volumes, and exhibition catalogues, in addition to numerous articles and book chapters. Her textbook, Nineteenth-Century European Art, is used across the world. She is the founding co-editor of the open-access journal Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide (http://19thc-artworldwide.org). Most recently, together with Max Donnelly, Andrew Montana, and Suzanne Veldink, she has authored a book on Daniel Cottier entitled Daniel Cottier: Designer, Decorator, Dealer, which will be published in May/June by the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art and distributed by Yale University Press.
The King of Macabre: The Life of Edgar Allan Poe - Vivian Davis Victorian Society New York 2022-02-08 | An online lecture sponsored by the Victorian Society New York.Recorded January 19th, 2021. Speaker: Vivian DavisAbout this Event:Edgar Allan Poe has a firm place in history as the father of American horror, authoring the poems and short stories we are well versed with today like ‘The Raven’ and the ‘Cask of Amontillado’. What many may not know is the drama that surrounded his life; from being orphaned at a young age to moving from city to city trying to firmly place himself in the literary scene to personal loss to his own mysterious death. On his 212th birthday, historian and former Education Coordinator of the Bronx County Historical Society Vivian Davis will explore Poe’s life in New York, where the inspiration for his most famous works took place.
Here Today, Gone Tomorrow - Emily M. Orr Victorian Society New York 2021-08-08 | An online lecture sponsored by the Victorian Society New York.Recorded Dec 17th, 2020. Speaker: Emily M. OrrAbout this EventThis talk will time-travel to the department stores’ golden era when display professionals transformed the shopping experience through design innovation. At the turn of the twentieth century, architects, window dressers, shopfitters, and interior designers aimed to keep up with ever new display styles, strategies, and technologies. Ongoing building construction and the continual reinvention of window and interior arrangements created a compelling impression of speed and change for the public. Design distinguished stores from their competition and made the retail experience different from one visit to the next. This illustrated review will show how variable display design was central to both the artistic and economic pursuits of leading department stores in Chicago, London, and New York.Emily M. Orr is the Assistant Curator of Modern and Contemporary American Design at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. She holds a Ph.D. in the History of Design from the Royal College of Art/Victoria & Albert Museum. She is the author of Designing the Department Store: Display and Retail at the Turn of the Twentieth Century (Bloomsbury, 2019) and co-editor of the newly released monograph E. McKnight Kauffer: The Artist in Advertising (Rizzoli Electa/Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, 2020).
Restless Enterprise: The Art & Life of Eliza Greatorex – With Dr. Katherine Manthorne Victorian Society New York 2021-08-08 | An online lecture sponsored by the Victorian Society New York.Recorded December 9th, 2020. Speaker: Dr. Katherine ManthorneABOUT THIS EVENT:Once called “the first artist of her sex in America,” Eliza Greatorex emigrated from Ireland and went on to document the Hudson Valley, NYC, Colorado, Germany, France, Italy and Morocco in paintings, prints, books and drawings. She did all this while supporting her four children as a single mother and championing the Women’s Movement. In this “Year of the Woman,” join Dr. Manthorne for this illustrated lecture highlighting episodes from her new book Restless Enterprise: The Art & Life of Eliza Greatorex (U. California Press, 2020). Katherine Manthorne, a specialist in modern art of the Americas, earned her Ph.D. from Columbia University. Prior to joining the faculty at the Graduate Center of City University of New York she was Director of the Research Center at Smithsonian’s American Art Museum. Her fellowships include Tyson Scholarship at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art; Terra Foundation Professor, Free University, Berlin; and Senior Fulbright Research Fellow, University of Venice. Her scholarship had long focused on landscape and hemispheric dimensions of American art, beginning with Tropical Renaissance. North American Artists Exploring Latin America, 1839-1879 (1989) and continuing in California Mexicana: Missions to Murals, 1820 to 1930 (2017). Eager to better highlight the role of women within these developments, she has authored two new books: Women in the Dark: American Female Photographers 1850-1900 (Schiffer Publishing, 2020) and Restless Enterprise: The Art and Life of Eliza Pratt Greatorex (U. of California Press, 2020).
Faces of Civil War Nurses – With Ronald S. Coddington Victorian Society New York 2021-08-08 | An online lecture sponsored by the Victorian Society New York.Recorded November 11th, 2020. Speaker: Ronald S. Coddington During the American Civil War, women on both sides of the conflict, radiating patriotic fervor equal to their male counterparts, contributed to the war effort in countless ways: forming charitable societies, becoming nurses, or even marching off to war as vivandières, unofficial attachés to the regiments.In Faces of Civil War Nurses, Ronald S. Coddington turns his attention to the experiences of 77 women of all ages and walks of life who provided care during the war as nurses, aid workers, and vivandières. Their personal narratives are as unique as fingerprints: each provides a distinct entry point into the larger social history of the brutal and bloody conflict. Coddington tells these determined women’s stories through letters, diaries, pension files, and newspaper and government reports. Using identified tintypes and cartes de visite of women on both sides of the war, many of them never before published, Coddington uncovers the personal histories of each intrepid individual. Following their postwar stories, he also explains how the bonds they formed continued long after the cessation of hostilities.
Elevating the Potter’s Art: James Carr & His New York City Pottery Victorian Society New York 2021-08-08 | An online lecture sponsored by the Victorian Society New York.Recorded October 12th, 2020. Speaker: Caroline Hannah, Ph.DAbout this event:English immigrant potter James Carr (1820–1904) operated a factory on Manhattan’s west side from 1855 to 1889. Like other American pottery manufacturers, he struggled against great odds to make a variety of ware, including parian and majolica, that could compete with foreign goods. Determined to succeed, he experimented with materials and processes, hired leading modelers and decorators, and collaborated with artists and sculptors. Regarded by early ceramics curator Edwin AtLee Barber as “one of the fathers of the American ceramics industry,” Carr would be all but forgotten had he not taken pains to ensure his own legacy in ways that will seem familiar today: depicting popular themes and celebrities, participating in important exhibitions, placing key works in museum collections, managing his own narrative and exit.Design historian Caroline Hannah, Ph.D., examines the life and work of this enterprising potter through the trail of little known extant ceramic works and lively autobiographical accounts. “The story of his life,” as ceramics historian Jennie J. Young wrote in 1878, “is the history of modern American pottery.”
Crying the News: A History of America’s Newsboy – With Prof. Vincent DiGirolamo Victorian Society New York 2021-08-08 | An online lecture sponsored by the Victorian Society New York.Recorded September 30, 2020. Speaker: Prof. Vincent DiGirolamoAbout the Event:Join Baruch College history professor Vincent DiGirolamo in a discussion of his award-winning pictorial study of Victorian America’s most omniferent and unshushable creation: the newsboy.DiGirolamo will visually trace the shifting fortunes and influence of these “little merchants” from the rise of the penny press in 1830s New York through the wars, panics, and protests of the 19th century, highlighting how these children—boys and girls, blacks and whites, immigrants and natives—became key political actors and symbols in the making of modern America.Published by Oxford University Press in 2019, the book has garnered rave reviews and several prestigious awards: the Frederick Jackson Turner Award, given by the Organization of American Historians, the Philip Taft Labor History Prize, and the Frank Luther Mott Research Award for best book on journalism and mass communications.The newsboys “now have their Boswell” in DiGirolamo,” said the Wall Street Journal. “His Crying the News is an encyclopedic account of these heralds of the golden age of newspapers in America.”“Monumental,” said Journalism History. “A well-balanced book that refuses to romanticize its subjects.”“Breathtaking,” said the New England Quarterly. “The author resurrects countless historical characters, telling their story with ingenuity and grace.”
Slavery and Resistance in New York - John Harris Lecture & Jonathan Daniel Victorian Society New York 2021-06-14 | An online lecture sponsored by the Victorian Society New York.Recorded November 16th, 2020Speakers: Prof. John Harris and Prof. Jonathan DanielAbout This Event: Congress banned American participation in the transatlantic slave trade in 1808, but fifty years later the United States was still steeped in the traffic. By this stage, the trade’s home was no longer Charleston or New Orleans, the well-known slaving hubs of the South, but a booming northern metropolis: New York City.New York City rose from the ashes of the Great Fire of 1835. But the many tales of Gotham’s growth rarely acknowledge the truth: that the city was not only built on the backs of slaves, but was essential in keeping slavery and the slave trade alive.The scale of the illegal slave trade through New York was stunning. In the years leading up to and during the Civil War, hundreds of slave ships embarked from Gotham’s wharfs for the African coast. Around 200,000 men, women, and children would be packed aboard these vessels, shipped across the Atlantic Ocean to the deadly sugar plantations of Cuba.John Harris, a professor at Erskine College, will recount this stunning and little-understood history, drawing on his new book, The Last Slave Ships: New York and the End of the Middle Passage. His talk will reveal who ran the illegal slave trade, why they got away with it, and how Abraham Lincoln’s administration final squashed the trade during the Civil War.In The Kidnapping Club, University of Michigan historian Jonathan Daniel Wells tells the story of the powerful network of judges, lawyers, and police officers who circumvented anti-slavery laws by sanctioning the kidnapping of free and fugitive African Americans. Nicknamed “The New York Kidnapping Club,” the group had the tacit support of institutions from Wall Street to Tammany Hall whose wealth depended on the Southern slave and cotton trade. But a small cohort of abolitionists, including Black journalist David Ruggles, organized tirelessly for the rights of Black New Yorkers, often risking their lives in the process.Taking readers into the bustling streets and ports of America’s great northern metropolis, The Kidnapping Club is a dramatic account of the ties between slavery and capitalism, the deeply corrupt roots of policing, and the strength of Black activism.
Dreicer & Co: Forgotten Jewelers of the Gilded Age Victorian Society New York 2020-05-19 | An online lecture sponsored by the Victorian Society New York.Recorded May 6th, 2020. Speaker: Anna Rasche G.G.This lecture explores the history of elite jewelry firm Dreicer & Company. Founded by Jewish immigrants shortly after the Civil War, the company began in a tenement laundry room, and ended in a 5th Avenue flagship designed by Warren & Wetmore. Although the brand is somewhat obscure today, by the turn of the twentieth century Dreicer & Company ranked alongside prestigious houses such as Cartier and Tiffany & Co., and boasted the nation’s wealthiest businessmen and U.S. presidents as patrons. Dreicer was celebrated for their intricate garland-style platinum mountings, singular strands of pearls, and ability to procure rare and historic gemstones. In addition to operating their jewelry business, the Dreicer family invested in real estate and developed properties along Fifth Avenue, and left a substantial collection of Renaissance & Medieval Art to the Metropolitan Museum.Speaker Bio: Anna Rasche is a gemologist and independent jewelry historian based in New York City. She holds an MA in the History of Design & Curatorial Studies from Cooper Hewitt/Parsons, a Graduate Gemologist degree from the Gemological Institute of America, and a BA in archaeology from Boston University. She is also co-founder of the Society for the Advancement of Social Studies, a history lecture series that has been bringing good times and fun facts to museums and bars around the city since 2011.
