Hagley History Hangout

In this author talk, which took place at the Hagley Library on May 10, 2018, Wesleyan history professor Courtney Fullilove explains how Turkey Red Wheat became the predominant variety planted in the U.S. Great Plains in the late 19th century — the breadbasket of the world at the time. She explains how both plant explorers and Mennonite farmers helped transplant this important product, demonstratin...

What did urban workers do for fun in the 19th century? With not a lot of money, a grueling work schedule, and only Sundays off, it could be difficult to escape the routines of the city and its toil. In this episode, Marika Plater (Ph. D. candidate in history at Rutgers University) digs deep into the archives to get at how working-class New Yorkers spent their limited free time, and what this revea...

Gerardo Con Diaz (Assistant Professor of Science and Technology Studies at the University of California, Davis) takes us back in time to when programs were not so intangible, and explains the different strategies that computer firms pursued to turn programs into profitable inventions. More info: www.hagley.org/stories

From Honda to Nikon, Kawasaki to Nintendo, Japanese brands are ubiquitous in America with a reputation for quality and reliability— but this wasn’t always the case. Around the time of World War II, most Americans were loath to buy Japanese products, not only because of the conflict, but because their goods on American shelves were often shoddy and cheap. How did Japanese companies turn that hostil...

Between 1836 and 1880, the U.S. Patent Office required that anyone applying for a patent submit a scale model along with their application. Reed Gochberg, the first researcher to dive into Hagley’s extensive collection of patent models, tells us about these fascinating objects and her attempts to understand how 19th-century Americans experienced and understood them. -------------------------------...

Railroad stations were the transportation hubs of the nineteenth century, nodes in a network connecting people and places across the country. But while they represented mobility, they were also places where travelers could be stopped in their tracks. In this episode, Zachary Nowak (Harvard University) explains how large urban train stations reshaped city life as powerfully as the railroads transfo...

From sidewalks to roads to buildings, concrete surrounds us in our daily lives, but we rarely stop to think about it. In this episode, Vyta Baselice (Ph. D. candidate in American Studies at the George Washington University) talks about her efforts to understand how concrete became the quintessential modern building material, showing up not just in big construction projects, but in everything from...

In this episode, we talk with University of Virginia Ph. D. candidate Alexi Garrett about her efforts to uncover the lost history of female business owners in the nineteenth century. At a time when married women’s property and income passed to their husbands, some single and widowed women were able to carve out economic niches for themselves, even becoming heads of major industrial concerns. But t...

Nicole Mahoney (doctoral candidate at University of Maryland: College Park) discusses early elite Americans and their interest and obsession with French high culture.

In this recorded lecture "Bulldozer: Demolition and Clearance of the Postwar Landscape," Francesca Russello Ammon explores how postwar America came to equate this destruction with progress. Although the decades following World War II were marked by rapid growth and construction in the United States, those years were also a time of large-scale destruction. In order to clear space for new suburban t...

In his talk, Alan Meyer provides an engaging account of private aviation, taking the audience inside a community that required exceptionally high skill levels, celebrated facing and overcoming risk, and encouraged fierce personal independence. Meyer uses the rise and fall of the Ercoupe, a personal plane lauded for its safety and intuitive operation, to show how ideas about pilot skill influenced...

Jesus Ruiz (Ph. D. candidate at Tulane University) discusses his research on the ideological origins of the Haitian Revolution. He explains the historical significance of the war and describes the Hagley materials that are pertinent to his research. These sources include journals from Louis de Tousard, Cambefort and others.

In this author talk on "Industrial Design for Modern Life," Dr. Danielle Shapiro explores the life and career of John Vassos, a Greek émigré who rose from anonymity as an advertising artist to become one of the pioneering founders of the industrial design profession. As the Radio Corporation of America's (RCA) leading designer, Vassos shaped the aesthetics of modern technology in the postwar era a...

Ryan Tate (Ph. D. candidate at Rutgers University) discusses his research on the development of coal mining in the Fort Union coal formation in the American West during the 1970s. See more at hagley.org/storiesfromthestacks

Cari Casteel (Ph. D. student at Auburn University) discusses her research in the cultural and technological history of deodorants and anti-perspirants. Why was deodorant marketed solely to women at first and how did the consumer boon after WWII changed that? Casteel explains how she is using Hagley Museum and Library's collections of old advertisements and the papers of designers and marketers lik...

Linda (University of Montana) and Marsha (Kansas State University) Frey discuss their use of the du Ponts' family letters to support their research on the French Revolution. In the interview they discuss some of the challenges the du Ponts faced as a family during the French Revolution, such as Pierre Samuel's imprisonment in France and the problems of getting mail in and out of a country in a nea...

Davor Mondom (Ph. D. candidate in the history department at Syracuse University) discusses his research on the politics of the Amway corporation and the Chamber of Commerce. He describes how both organizations supported free market ideals and the Reagan administration. Mondom also describes the ties between the two organizations and discusses how Jay van Andel, a founder of Amway, led the Chamber...

Listen to the full interview in the Hagley Digital Archives (digital.hagley.org)

A clip from a longer interview available in the Hagley Digital Archives (digital.hagley.org)

Laura Perry {Ph. D. candidate, English department, University of Wisconsin} discusses her research on cellophane in the poetry of Sylvia Plath. Perry's research seeks to understand why Plath used cellophane imagery instead of other similar materials. To engage with this issue she is consulting DuPont's cellophane advertisements as well as the findings of consumer focus groups.

Dr. David Kinkela (professor of history at the State University of New York: Fredonia) discusses the history of plastics and plastic ocean waste. Kinkela traces the impact of plastic products from their initial stages of development and advertisement as a new modern convenience to the realization that the world's oceans are full of floating pieces of plastic garbage.

In this episode, Nicholas Osborne discusses the history of savings banks in America that served the emerging middle class in the nineteenth century. He traces the difference between how these banks were supposed to encourage their customers to handle their money and how they actually did. More at hagley.org

Dr. Ana Maria Otero-Cleves (assistant professor at the University of the Andes in Bogota, Colombia) discusses her use of correspondence from the Lanman and Kemp company and their business deals with Latin America, especially Colombia.

Eva McGraw (Ph. D. candidate in art history at CUNY) discusses her research on the Civil War naval art of Xanthus Smith. Smith painted naval engagements of the Civil War and during the war he was a sailor and the personal secretary of Samuel Francis du Pont. Smith tried to make his naval engagement paintings as accurate as possible, he did this by corresponding with the officers of the ships that...

Jesse Tarbert discusses a time in the 1920s when good government meant big government. He explains how the Republican party sought to make the federal government run like a large corporation while the Democrats attempted to keep the federal government small and state level government strong. Tarbert is a Ph. D. candidate at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio.